I had no idea. I sometimes stay at 65-70 for an hour or something and she said that is dangerous (aside from passing out). She said there were studies that frequent low BG readings starves the body of oxygen or something. This is part of the study.....
Researchers with the VA Diabetes Trial, one of three major studies out this week designed to see if tight glucose control reduces heart disease, reported today that the strongest predictor of heart attack or stroke was not high blood glucose, but the opposite: very low blood glucose.
Rich,
The researchers with the VA Diabetes Trial did not categorize 65-70 as “very low blood glucose”!
They did not say that 65-70 was starving the body of oxygen.
70 is the bottom border of the target zone. Your skin and fingernails should still look pink in the target zone!!! At 70.
When you go to 50, you should consider yourself in the hypoglycemic zone.
And get out of there!
When you go to 65, take a glucose tablet or 2, depending on your weight and what it takes to raise you, and raise yourself to 85. Nice and easy up.
But we do know that people staying in the 50 to 65 range lose their ability to recognize their lows. and sometimes they dip down to 40-50. And it’s not good.
Then they’re into that low blood sugar range. That is not what tight control means. That’s TOO LOW. And that can lead to heart attacks.
Why staying at 65-70 for an hour? Do you like it down there? If I am at 70 I will nuke it with one glucose tab. The shorter the better because I do not want to get used to lows.
I have not read the VA Diabetes Trial yet. But according to your summary the lows are a good predictor for the heart attack or stroke. This does not necessary mean that the lows have caused the health problem. Maybe there is an unknown reaction shortly before the crisis that is causing the low? Just a thought.
Well, 70 is not critical but our meters are not very accurate: 70 could also mean 60 mg/dl. Thus I would consult my feelings too. In most cases I can not stabilize 70 mg/dl. It is more a sliding situation on its way to lower regions.
In a hypo our brain gets starved of oxygen. Repeated lows results in a long term damage to neurons in the brain. This leads to dementia in the long run. Diabetes related dementia is not the same as dementia suffered by Alzheimer’s disease.
The other effects could be bouts of anxiety if hypo incidents are not reduced or well treated.
Yeah, even a casual net search on VA diabetes trial pulls up lot’s of info. Some things to keep in mind, the trial was conducted on Type 2 diabetics, only, who already had a higher risk or indicators of CVD, tight BG control was accomplished with a wide range of drugs, one of those drugs was Avandia.
"Participants in the Veterans Affairs Diabetes Trial (VADT) were 97% male, with an average age of 60 years at the time of study entry. Participants were assigned to standard or intensive blood glucose treatment groups. Average period of follow-up for individual patients was 6.25 years. VADT lasted 7.5 years, closing in May 2008.
VADT focused on patients who had not been helped by simpler therapies. At the time of enrollment, more than 40% of the participants had experienced previous cardiovascular events, more than 50% had abnormal lipids, 80% had high blood pressure, and most were obese."
There’s not much mentioned about the actual BG levels other than levels required to induce “impaired consciousness”.
As for the connection between low blood sugar and low oxygen levels, I’ve never seen anything pointing to that connection, in general, and the information on the VA trial itself makes no mention of it.
