Have you had your LOW BG today?

Yes I did NOW am 55 mg/dl . What a lovely number!

Yes, mine was 55 at 5am! Yeesh! Thank goodness for my DexCom waking me up so I could eat, hahaha

Yes, not sure what I was though. I had checked a couple hours before and was 70, so I was fine. But later I started to not feel good at all and had to get something to eat quick.

crazy, I just tested and I was 55 at 5:43 pm

I think numbers in the 50s are scary, not nice! No lows today.

yeppers
just a few minutes ago

53
[felt kinda light headed/dizzy]

yes mine was 41 right before dinner.

50 with flashing lights before my eyes. Too much yardwork!

interesting, it seams that 50s is the lucky number!!! Am glad that we all past that and now it is in the past. But feel free to add any new lows, hope non come! :o)

Yup I was 47 at 130… i ate everything in sight and only managed to come up to 94 for my morning reading… I was reallyexpecting a high to follow knowing what I shoved in my mouth last night :slight_smile:

Mattie, hope you didn’t went that high in the morning! My self, I usually will have a 300’s! Glad that you make it

i have a really dumb question. why am i not experiencing a lot of lows like ya’ll are? i was dx t1 about 3 months ago, and really have only been low maybe 4 times. doing the poor man’s pump-lantus and humalog. if anything my bg is screaming high all the time. are the lows everyone is dealing with just another “bonus” i can look forward to on down the road?

Am not sure what to tell you my friend! I been T1 for over 26 years, and did do the “poor man’s pump” for couple of years, but don’t remember having much of lows! Since I didn’t used to test my BG often!!!

But my myth is that people on pumps have lows more than others, since she (the pump) will keep in giving insulin all the time unless you reduce the amount or eat something!! I had a low today since I didn’t eat lunch and was active without decreasing my dosage!!!

Hope this help, if not then ask your Endo or educator!!

I think a lot of it depends on your personal style of diabetes management.

I can really only speak from personal experience, and my blood sugars are dropping really rapidly, and I’m going to pass out soon (yes, I’m getting a lot of sugar, but I also gave myself a LOT of insulin), so this might not be terribly coherent. When I was first diagnosed, I rarely got low. I think it took me months before I got low, and my parents practically had panic attacks trying to figure out what to do. I don’t know if it’s because I was just diagnosed, if I were more cautious and gave myself less insulin, if my body resisted lows somehow, or some combination of those.

However, as I got more used to diabetes and got better control, I got more lows. One of the side effects of good control (for almost everyone) is increased low blood sugars. For myself, I know why I get lows a lot: I hate high blood sugars. I HATE them. I somehow went up to 270 after lunch today, so I gave myself a massive amount of insulin (I’m not telling, because people would just tell me I was crazy). When I was first diagnosed, I wouldn’t have done this, because I didn’t know enough and diabetes hadn’t pissed me enough enough to make me hate highs so much. But now I’ve settled into an (incredibly unhealthy) pattern where I give myself more insulin than I should to make sure my blood sugars don’t go high.

This means I get low several times a day. It also means that I almost never have highs. (SEriously, I’ve been above 180 once this entire month and above 140 about 5 times.) It’s a balancing act. We’re all trying to figure out the best way to balance – I am one of the few people I’ve heard of who errs on the side of too many lows; most people err on the side of too many highs. I suppose you could strike the perfect balance, but it would be really hard and really stressful.

Anyway, I’ve already had two cans of coke, time to down at least 3 more, or the paramedics will be coming…

thanks ya’ll for the info. i think i’ve pretty much narrowed it down to a dosage thing. i don’t want to go too low, and i swear my doc told me not to go too low as well. maybe it has something to do with me being a newbie. who the hell knows…

The doctors tell you not to go too low. They also tell you not to go too high. That’s pretty much impossible.

i know. i almost want to say “you went to medical school for that?” maintain a happy balance. yea sure doc. deal with this up close and personal for a couple of days, and come talk to me about it. i have learned more on the internet than any dr. has been able to tell me since this happened. and my neighbour and friend accross the street is a d.o. go figure…

One of the “dirty little secrets” of tight control is that people have lows (under 70 mg/dl but hopefully above 40 mg/dl so we can still function) frequently. Often more than once a day. You can read lots of posts about the topic on this site.

As long as I can still function (as in, don’t require someone else’s help to get glucose), they’re just part of my day. Although I wish my A1Cs were lower, I am very proud to say I have had only 2 emergency room visits because of lows in my entire 36 years with diabetes (and 2 because of highs that happened during bouts with flu/accidentally missed insulin dose). And I’ve needed the help of another person to feed me glucose only a handful of times in the past decade.

Of course, hypos no longer cause for me the sweats, shakes, etc., that drive people crazy (over my decades with diabetes, I am less aware of my hypo symptoms and the newer rapid-acting insulins have helped), so maybe that’s one reason they’re easier to take. And I test my blood glucose a lot more than I used to (8-10 times/day), which helps me catch lows sooner.

One thing the artificial pancreas project is trying to do by hooking up an insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor with special dosage calculations based on the individual, is to keep PWDs in a tight range without so many episodes of hypoglycemia.

Recent research has shown that drastic hypoglycemia (especially in type 2s with heart risks and people at end of life) is not a good thing and that some people may need higher blood glucose targets.

Especially when you’re a newbie, hypos seem really scary and there’s a lot of talk about avoiding them. Which, if you’re driving a 10-ton-truck for example, is a good idea.

As is not drastically fluctuating between low lows and high highs, which apparently is not a good thing even if your A1C averages out OK. Sounds good on paper, right? But then there’s real life.

I’m pleased that research is showing the use of CGMs in many cases helps people better anticipate and treat downward bg trends before they drop too far. Now, if we could only get them into the hands of all people who need them …

Yep, just a few minutes ago actually; 63. Glucose tablets ftw. 113 now

Yesterday … 13 mg/dl - glucagon used.