Who’s with me? My husband loves thunderstorms, I hate them. Not due to sound so much as due to their affect on my blood sugar. As goes the barometer, so goes my glucose meter. It’s SO frustrating!!!
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Wow, never heard of that. But I’m a storm lover. We had two F4-F5 tornadoes go right past our house when I was growing up in MN. My mom was screaming the Lord’s Prayer at the top of her lungs and clutching my little brother and sister, toddlers at the time, and the roar was so loud you couldn’t hear her–or even the thunder from the continuous lightning landing all around our house. I was ten and though it was the coolest thing I’d ever experienced. Coincidentally our science project in school that week had been making barometers out of a jar with a balloon stretched over the opening and a popsicle stick glued to it to gauge the expansion/contraction with ambient air pressure. When we got to school, every single one of the balloons had popped. Didn’t know barometric pressure was a problem for BG meters though!
I like them for their entertainment value, but I hate them for what they can do to computers and electronic equipment. All in all, I’d rather do without.
I love storms! Rain, thunder, and lightning are one of the most relaxing things in the world to me.
That being said, I’ve never heard of them being able to affect blood sugar. Is this because they’re stressful to you?
Any form of stress—physical, mental, emotional or what-have-you—can affect blood sugar.
Stress will always shoot me up, while feeling love will drop me down.
Let’s hear it for love!
️
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Storms in and of themselves only stress me when there is a possibility of tornadic activity.
A few years ago, around 4:00 in the afternoon, I visited my CDE to attach a CGM for a week long CGM tracking study. By noon the next day, I was calling her freaking out because ever since we had attached it I was unable to settle between 60 and 200–sometimes hitting both within the same hour of each other. The CGM was the ONLY difference. I was so frustrated I asked her if there was any possibility I was in a double-blind study I didn’t know about and the CGM was controlling my pump without my knowledge. I knew how “conspiracy theorist” that sounded but it was the only thing I could think of.
Her response? “We had a thundersnow storm last night, and barometric pressure affects blood sugar”.
First I had ever heard of it, but now that I’m aware of it I definitely have lows when a storm comes through.
Sorry, didn’t mean to imply it was a meter problem per se, just that when the barometer drops, so does the number 
Interesting. Or as Spock would say, “fascinating”.
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I do have to say I’m very impressed with that CDE. She could tell through the phone I was in the middle of a low when I called and talked me through the conversation until she could hear somehow that I had come back up.
I also love storms. But that is probably due to the fact in live in so cal and we don’t get much rain. I open the garage door, pull up a beach chair and sit and watch. Love them! Never noticed any blood sugar, testing issues. Like I said for me, very relaxing and fun. But when living in Chicago as a child, tornado warnings always scared me to death.
I know storms bother me because they can dramatically increase my joint pain, and I know that’s true for a lot of people with joint problems. I hadn’t noticed an effect of that on my blood sugars, but I wonder if that could be the mediating pathway, since pain can certainly effect all sorts of body systems?
It can at least theoretically affect pump performance anyway. This is why you’re supposed to unclip from your pump during air travel, though I never remember and I’ve never noticed a problem. But If you load your reservoir up at a certain local air pressure and later on there’s a severe low pressure system in your locale, you could get higher relative pressure inside the reservoir that would cause it to push out more insulin than intended. I rule it plausible anyway. Where are the Mythbusters when you need them?
Interestingly enough, it happens to my husband too. He’s not diabetic but he is hypoglycemic.
I also just found this
I have noticed this past year that my BG level also drops when a " front is coming. I also have a large drop in blood pressure and some days , have been in bed from the symptoms.
The real problem with the influence of stress on blood sugar levels is that the patient can’t anticipate exactly how the subconscious mind will process any stimulus, so there is no way to measure and take some extra insulin to handle its effects. For me, lecturing to students sometimes raises my blood sugar by around 60 points, while other days it has no effect. How on earth am I supposed to maintain strict control with variables like this thrown in?
And yet the typical GP and even many endocrinologists will simply accuse his patient of cheating on the diet when confronted by results like this. They are like policemen with no idea of what’s in the criminal code.
I can totally agree with you! I love it too but these sounds really affect me in every way. Sometimes I get a headache on the right side whenever it does happen. This really gets me annoyed because these are things I don’t have power over. My husband told me that I should wear something to protect me from the sound but it is not so. So you will just have to make sure that you keep yourself in a room that is as sound proof as possible.
i don’t like storms too, specially if its too loud I’m scared of lightning