If you are a diabetic, you don’t want your blood sugar to go too low or too high.
Extremely low blood sugar is also known as hypoglycemia. If you are experiencing low blood sugar, you may notice the following symptoms:
- Shakiness, dizziness, or light-headedness
- Confusion
- Difficulty speaking clearly
- Nervousness, anxiety, or weakness
- Hunger
- Perspiration
- Sleepiness
If your blood sugar drops while you are sleeping, you may also experience nightmares, or wake up sweaty. You may also wake up confused, or irritable.
To give you a guide, normal blood sugar levels can be anywhere from 70 to 140 for non-diabetics, and 90 to 180 for diabetics, depending on whether you’ve just eaten, just woken up, or are somewhere in between. Hypoglycemia is anything below 70.
Last night, as my diabetic grandmother was preparing for minor outpatient surgery, she was allowed only clear liquids like broth and ginger ale and lemon gelatin. Around ten o’clock, her blood sugar took a nosedive and I got to experience hypoglycemia first hand.
She was in a cold sweat, and very shaky. As I helped her to bed, she started mumbling almost incoherently. First she was cold, then she was hot, then she was cold again – and she was VERY irritable as I was helping her get settled. I even got yelled at for not taking her socks off correctly! I warmed up some broth and brought in some Jell-O, which she ate. Her blood sugar was only 57 after the snack, so she ate a glucose tablet. Somewhere in there, she started talking to a sweater hanging on the doorknob, which was scary and funny at the same time.
I could tell her blood sugar was coming back up when she started making sense again. That didn’t stop me from camping out on the couch downstairs to be close to her throughout the night. But the snack and the glucose tablet did their jobs – before she went for her procedure this morning, her blood sugar was up to 81. I just hope we don’t have to go through this again soon!