Are the emotions that surface whether during either kind of situation… are these emotions solely caused by the brain being seriously deprived/flooded (respectively) by our bloodsugar?
Or are these emotions always there and normally just able to be surpressed? Once the higher brain functions “the locks” are broken/turned “off” uttt-ohhh, this is how we truly feel about things: Combativeness, severe denial, insane upset, crazy weepiness, bizarre anger, etc. take your pick.
Hi Stuart,
I am back again. It seems that all the time our pancreas, liver, brain, etc are dealing with our surges in blood sugar or insulin our different body systems are busy dumping out all kinds of hormoes. We could get so jazzed on adrenaline we are ready to fight or flee. Other hormones may make tears roll to the surface and we are surprised by them. Somethng may bring us up short and we are saddened by something or fearful of something and surprisingly the flip side of that is anger. What I mainly want to say is that we get so many hormones dumped into us and we are in constant flux. I guess I just want to say roll with whatever comes up and if you have someone who is close enough to you they can ask if you need some help or tell you that you are pretty tightly wired right now and maybe need some time to step back for a minute. I am a very impatient person and a few friends of mine can tell me it is time to take a break or ask me if I need something. Then i realize what they are saying and I stop and get hold of me and try to relax more. It usually means I need to check my blood sugar again. I hope this is at least a little help to you. Most of the times I am either in trouble with a bad high or a bad low is coming. The more stable I can stay, usually the better I can handle things.
Thank you for your thoughts I appreciate it. Guess that I’m fascinated why the serious emotions pop up all of a sudden whichever we are real low/very high… The emotions are pretty crazy strong. This is not “new stuff” for me by any means, but I’m puzzled what triggers them. There before or solely sugar triggered…???
Kind of a variation of the nature vs. nurture debate I suppose…
Stuart
Hi Stuart,
I wish I had some actual answers for you. I have been really disappointed in myself lately for the emotions that keep coming up for me. I will be doing something like shopping or working with my flowers or loading the dishwasher and all of a sudden the tears will start to roll. And I thought I was a really strong person and able to handle a lot of pain, but that is no longer true apparently. We have a close family member dying slowly right now and I have been in a very great deal of pain for the past 7 months. But I take my pain meds and pick up and go on I have also been dealing with kidney failure and chronic congestive heart failure. But still I have managed to keep going and have a good outlook each day. Only now I am pretty disappointed in me because I wind up shaking and crying when the pain is too bad or losing my temper when I am too tired and forgetting to do a number of things each day. And i agree the emiotions are so strong it is amazing. And the highs are way too high and the lows hit more often than ever before. So I guess my question also is this from the sugars or do we just run out of “okay we can do this”? Is loss of patience the problem? I am exercising, I am meditating and using guided imagery. I am taking those nice warm relaxing baths and coming on here to talk to everyone. I know one trigger for me is loss of sleep. The pain doesn’t let me sleep much. And there are always a lot of people who come back and forth because my sister-in-law is dying. I know that one big trigger for me is the sleep, but I would really like to know what else is the trigger also. I really wish I had a good answer for you Stuart. I am pretty puzzeled too.
Saundra
I do not know what I can possibly say… is compassion, our “empathy” enough??? I do know a trick or two about pain however… have you spoken to your MD? A Pain Specialist??? The inability to achieve REM sleep does meaningful damage to your mental space and your body.
There is a definate dispassion I seek. “Blissed out” means crashing down is possible. Emotional darkness means serious laughter is necessary… a different perspective required. The “middle path” is my goal…
Hi Stuart,
Thank you very much for your compassion and empathy. I appreciate it very much and am so very glad you did not say sympathy. I am somewhat embarrassed about complaining so much. Normally I do not talk about these things so openly.
Yes, all of my doctors are helping. The pain specialist says he can add more pain meds by mouth, and can block pain in certain small areas, but can’t get all of it with blocks. And the problem with the blocks is that the effectiveness is gone very soon after you have lain there and let them stick a very long big needle down very deeply into an extremely painful area.
There is some good news. The area of necrotic bone in my hip isn’t spreading too rapidly. And antibiotics have helped somewhat. And the crushed vertebrae in my back are not buckling to the side more than a quarter of an inch in two months. So that is encouraging to me.
I did not mean to make you sad or uncomfortable and am sorry if I did.
I just wish I knew how to be a stronger person and would love to find a middle path. In the meantime, I take my pain meds and I know that I can make it through today. I don’t look at tomorrow or tonight because I can’t handle those yet. When they get here I will deal with them then.
I enjoy talking with you and that in itself is a comfort. Thanks for listening.
If you find the directions for the middle path, I would appreciate learning them.
I wish I knew the answer, but I think the answer is no either one or the other. It is probably a really mixed combination. Being very low is not a usual or good situation for us humans. Lows cause release of adrenoline.
My wife has a broken c1-c2 disc
a broken c5 with tiny shards pressing on the spinal cord All were operated on, after 6 years of worthless treatments that delayed the symptoms but did nothing for the severe neural pain. Went in golly-gee, found shards on the spinal cord ~… hey we found the problem…~ and fused her…
.
Then determined (three years later) C2 was literally broken. Untreated death paralysis were her only options. Now she has more rods, screws, pins than a home depot sale, but stable enough and living… with ME but living at least ; ).[Poor woman he, heeee, heee]
She ended up on a drug called neuronton after all the others and her pressure, her pain is reduced. The bad side it is for life… well they could cut the ganglia, but she wasn’t a fan of that one…
Necrotic bone… caused by insuffucent capillary blood supply through the hip bone? Is hip replacement the end result?
It is ok dear lady I am not easily “uncomfortable”, I merely wish there were something more tangible I or any of us could do to reduce the suffering you face(d).
I am glad to listen & share…
There is often too little I can do about events in my life, but how I react to them is MINE I fear. The middle path a positive place to be a little detached, a little laughter… a good place!
I’m appalled & amazed that serious work has not been done to explain the mental aspects, the brain aspects of low or high sugar. What the blazes causes these kinds of meaningful, such STRONG emotions
Hi Stuart,
Thank you once again. I definitely enjoy the smile you always bring me. You have a neat sense of humor and I hope you are not offended when i say you are a thoughtful person.
I am very sorry for all the pain your wife must have endured with her neck and am glad there is a medication that brings her relief after her surgery. It seems to take so long for an answer to be found.
Neurontin is an excellent drug. Unfortunately I am not able to take it. It is really contraindicated for people with kidney and or heart failure. Also one of the big side effects is edema and i struggle with that a very great deal. The pain specialist offered it early on, but the nephrologist and cardiologist both said no. And you are correct about the offer of a hip replacement. The pulmonolgist says he can’t guarantee to ever get me off a ventilator to breathe again on my own. The nephrogoist says he thinks he can keep me okay on dialysis, but it will be permanent. The cardiologist says he doesn’t think he can get enough cardiac output to get me through a big surgery. But you know what? I am not a big fan of surgery anyway. And i am still here and today was a good day. And i have plenty of pain medicine. And next weekend I am going to celebrate the 8th birthday of one of my babies and the 1st birthday for another one all in one weekend.
I know the necrotic bone can’t be fixed and will just keep going without the surgery But since i can’t have the surgery I will get through with a little help from my friends. My daughter and i were laughing the other day. She has a drug screen coming up for work this next Monday. We sure know i wouldn’t be able to pass that one.
I used to be a person who rarely swallowed pills. Wow. How things change.
I like your middle path. It is indeed a positive place. And i love to laugh. I have been looking for this joke my son sent to me about a man who buys a small taser gun for his wife and decides to try it out before he gives it to her. I laughed so hard on this one. I really hope to find it so I can share it. I laughed for days over it.
It is nice talking to you Stuart. You give a very great deal.
Thank you. My day has been a good one and after reading your post, my evening and night will be good ones too.
Hi Debb,
That was a funny story. Thank you so much. It reminds me of a story about my husband.
We were on a trip through the Smoky Mountains and he decided to stop the car on the side of the road where a lot of people were gathered. He got out of the car to see what the attraction was. The people were watching a mother, black bear and her two cubs. So. my husband tells us to come on, get out of the car and let’s go look. We get up to the side of the road and find that some of the people are feeding the bears candy bars. Well, they ran out of candy and my husband decides to go up and start waving and yelling to get the mother bears attention. She noticed him all right and started running towards him. He turned around and started running towards the car. Thank God he didn’t
run to me standing there beside the road with all of our small kids. He had the car keys, but the car wasn’t locked and he kept yelling at me to open the car. He was running around and around the car yelling with the mother bear hot on his heels. I felt bad about it later but at the time all I could do was stand there and laugh. He was running so fast he was almost coming up berhind the bear. Finally he stops and opens the car door and jumps in. Well, the bear is so mad and she wants more candy and she jumps on top of the car and climbs back and forth over the car swatting at the luggage in the luggage rack on top When she got up on top of the car, my husband just lost it. He was screaming at me to make her go away. I told him to just calm down and be more quiet and she would get down. He finally did and she hopped off the car and took her cubs on up the mountain. I felt bad that he was so scared, but he has never tried to jump out at a bear again. Especially a wild one that is only a few feet away from him.
Next time I will tell you about the wild buffalo he wanted to pet in Yellowstone National Park.
I just read a German study that said the brain perceives negative emotions more acutely and represses positive emotions when experiencing hyperglycemia. I thought it was very interesting. It showed different parts of the hypothalmus are active while high than while low.
I've always had a lay-theory though: Your body reacts so strongly while low for 2 reasons firstly because the brain drops non-essential functions like emotions to focus on getting the essential functions taken care of for the longest period of time. Secondly, to give someone else a heads up that you are in distress.
Same sort of theory for emotions ties to highs: there is a correlation between stress & anxiety and highs. I think that if you body is already high, a fight/flight hormone will cause you to exert more energy to exercise the blood sugar level down. And your body is taking on extra functions like sending your kidneys into overdrive to flush your bloodstream and is dropping the priority of emotional care (i.e. making seratonin or other positive mood hormones).
I'm not a doctor, just a long-time type 1. I'm continually amazed at what our body knows to do to wake us up or make us aware of blood sugar imbalances like sweats and shaking for lows and crying and extra urination for highs. :-)
I don't seem to get that emotional with highs and lows. The only thing I feel if I'm extremely high (like 300+) for hours at a time is sometimes intense frustration and maybe anger ... With lows, I don't feel much of anything. I hear about people yelling or crying during lows, but I've almost never done that. When I was a kid and had severe lows (too low for me to treat on my own) I had a few instances where I was crying or combative, but I haven't experienced that as an adult.
Personally, I find the emotions triggered by hormones far more intense, random, and nonsensical ... like breaking down sobbing at TV commercials that aren't even remotely sad or emotional, getting angry at the wind blowing hair in my face or rain getting me wet, or feeling super depressed and unmotivated to work on even super exciting projects ... Thankfully, I only experience those a few days every month.
Emotions exist, so there is an amplification component, but it's the difference between thinking that something is no big deal and making a huge huge issue out of it. Let's say I'm jogging, listening to a song I like on my Ipod, and I accidentally hit a button causing the song to be skipped. Annoying, but no big deal, but if I'm really high and already in fight mode, it becomes a big deal. Also, regular highs reinforce the emotions, so I might repeatedly get angry over something my wife did in the past. In that case, maybe it is causing them.
Cant speak German, but would love to access that study! Have the link for it by chance 8 9 ???
Want to make certain I read your hypothesis correctly, adrenaline, cortisol, epinephrine cause high BG correct. That chemistry you believe suppresses the normal brain chemistry which gives access to positive emotions which cortisol, etc. encourages...
Did I get that right?
Have a very weak science/physiology background, just wanted to see if I missed anything of your hypothesis???
Wonder what role high BG readings play in terms of actual brain circulation, on some level. Literal sugar clogging the arteries, capillaries was what I envision(ed), if, if it works that simply... I do not know.
But if its anything remotely it close sure would make real sense. Not enough blood, too much sugar subtle things get clogged... poof, particular emotions. Sigh... have to get an education some day...
