When I have a low blood sugar at night, when I close my eyes I see a round ring of white light … like a fire ring. Do others see this? Anyone have any idea why this happens? When I wake up at night and see this I know I better get up and check my sugars. Usually I’ll find I am in the 40s when this happens, as it happened last night. The only other feeling I had was a sinking feeling … wasn’t sweating or shaking like sometimes I do with a low. Within a few minutes after eating something it disappears.
I don’t get a ring of light, but lots of spots of light. If I wake with a low in the middle of the night, I usually wake from night terrors. It’s a horrible feeling! Once I wake up, everytime I blink, I have lots of spots of light and know I need to eat, fast. I, too, if I get a chance to test, generally discover my numbers to be in the 30s and 40s. Typically, I will wake up too late, and my body pumps sugars into my system to compensate for the ultra-low and I get to battle all the next day to bring them down rather than up! Ugh.
My opthalm. told me that the retina needs sugar to function properly and low bg makes it goofy. I don’t see a “ring” but I see “blotches”. It is also one of my symptoms for a nightime hypo. I wake up and look at the window where the streetlight is shining. If I see blotches, I’m usually in th 40-50 range.
I see a kind of floating ring of light when I am low and close my eyes. I don’t see it at night though, it always when I am in the shower, usually in the morning. And now that I think about it I can’t recall a time when it happened and I wasn’t in the shower…how strange diabetes is and how it effects us all in similar ways, but in varying degrees from person to person
When I was a kit, I used to get double vision when I went low. It made walking difficult.
As an adult I have had episodes of blotchy vision. Weird.
-Dena
Visual ques on low blood sugar are probably a lot more normal than the Dr’s would have us all believe.
Everything from the eyelid back to the visual processing parts of the brain are running on glucose. Disrupt that and it seems like it should get noticeable pretty fast somewhere in the chain. Kind of low sugar for me will show up pretty fast as bright spots. A little lower and I will have a hard time focusing, getting worse to the point where I am walking around with one eye closed.
Down under 15, I start having full on hallucinations…
Those are the Kafka lows…
I have managed to avoid them since I got to know the other warning signs of a bad low coming on.
I get tunnel vision when I’m low, and am sensitive to light when I am high. I’ve noticed a ring of fire in the mornings when I shower. I have no idea if it’s related to BG.
Hi Gail … I get the exact thing you do … white circles of very bright light surrounded by a fire ring or burning embers. I try to focus on them and and amused when I can make them change size by flexing the muscles that make the eye move. It happened last night actually. When I tested I was at 55.
I get a white ring as well in the mornings. When I go low I usually have tunnel vision. When I’m either sleeping or about to fall asleep I have WEIRD dreams and such… in the dream when weird has reached its peak, I usually tell myself I’m low while still dreaming and wake up… thank God, because at certain times, I probably would have dropped too low and blacked out.
Yes, a white ring at the center. It stays there when I close my eyes. I blink several times and then I know that the meter can wait. I will grab the glucose tabs first. Good to read all the different visual perceptions of the hypo condition here.
I get white blotches with red fire like rings around them but I don"t have to be low I just have to be dropping real fast. In fact that is when I get them most. When I am low I get blurry tunnel vision. I do get a sinking feeling also.
I really hate low’s but I hate knowing I am dropping so fast I have to try to catch it.
Be well and be loved
