I was just feeling dizzy, shaking and sweaty and tested my BG. It was 75. Normal? I had eaten about 20 hot wings just 30 minutes or so before I started feeling this way. I feel this way on occasion and something sweet makes me feel better.
I think 75 mg/dl is a normal blood glucose. Our fingerstick meters, unfortunately, can be off by as much as 20% and still be within design limits. In other words, your actual BG could be 20% less or 60 mg/dl. I feel hypo symptoms when I’m at that level.
Did you eat anything in response to this episode? If so, what did you eat, and did the symptoms then go away?
I hope you’re feeling better.
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I just ate a bowl of raisin bran, drank a bit of sweet tea and I’m starting to feel less light headed. It’s weird…sometimes I feel like I’m going to pass out, hands start to shake and I get very sweaty. I’ve tested my BG a couple times now. The first time it was normal. i wasn’t sure if 75 was normal or not.
Thanks!
Could be reactive hypoglycemia or perhaps a reaction to the speed of the drop rather than the absolute number, because 75 is a pretty normal number, especially for a fasting glucose. If youre used to running higher, then a 75 can feel “low” too, I believe.
I get that feeling too. Interestingly, I wore my son’s almost-expired Dex transmitter for a week and found that I typically spend a ton of time between 65 and 85 and the feeling I got when I thought I was “high” “low” etc. was basically totally uncorrelated with the actual number. I only started to et that shaky, ill feeling when I briefly dipped down from 60 to 59. I know that when pregnant I took a glucose tolerance test and was 57 at the 3-hour-mark, but didn’t start feeling really shaky and ill till I left the office about 30 minutes later.
So my personal opinion is that 75 is not an unusual number for a healthy, non-diabetic person. There was a study of people wearing a CGM which showed that most non-diabetic people spent the majority of their time below 100, and even spent a fair amount of time between 50 and 70 – typically defined as hypoglycemia for diabetics.
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It might have been lower prior to testing…I didn’t test until I had already consumed some sweet tea and I’m not sure how long before I tested that I drank. Not used to keeping track of these things on myself. I just know I was very shaky, etc., drank some sweet tea because sweet stuff makes me better when I start feeling that way (it’s happened before), and then after a bit I thought to myself (because I was still shaky), wonder what my BG is? Then I tested…it might very well have been much lower. Oh well. Just curious! I get shaky/sweaty/dizzy maybe once or twice a month and HAVE TO eat or drink something sweet or I feel like I’ll pass out.
I had reactive hypoglycemia episodes before I was formally diagnosed. I don’t think these episodes correlate 100% with subsequent diabetes. It’s something to mention to your doctor when you visit.
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I have also seen many CGM graphs of people who didn’t have diabetes having swings both high and low.the key is most come back into range as their body takes care of it. So just because someone makes their own insulin, doesn’t mean there isn’t swings. Just like all of us PWD!
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According to Bernstein, his non diabetic, non pregnant, non obese patients typically present fasting numbers between 75 and 90. So no, I wouldn’t consider that particularly low absent any other factors (important qualifier!).
$0.02
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My understanding of why Type 1s can have such low BG and not pass out is because our bodies have become accustomed to getting a little less glucose than it needs.
As far as sugar normals go, you could have a low BG and it could be VERY serious.
My sister’s youngest son went to his Dad one day and said, “something’s wrong with Mom.” He explained quickly that she was talking strangely (babbling is the word he used). They went to her and ended up calling 911. It ended up that she had forgotten to eat (she’s NOT diabetic) and the EMTs measured her BG at 43. They gave her a box of juice or two and told her to eat something.
So, while 43 is not a good number for anyone, it’s a very dangerous number for someone without diabetes.
By the way, send me some of them hot wings. That sounds REALLY good!
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Per my hospitals laboratory “normal” (non diabetic) random blood glucose levels are 65-126
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This is exactly what I was thinking.
Before I put a lot of weight on my 5’4" frame during my “late-in-life” (nearly mid-forties) final pregnancy, (I went from 115 pounds soaking wet to [embarrassed to admit] a high of 207 pounds which I am only now [14 years later] managing to lose with a LCHF lifestyle), I believe I was experiencing reactive hypoglycemia during especially long surgery cases. On several such occasions, I became significantly light-headed, unable to concentrate as well as the situation demanded, and less steady-handed than I needed to be, so I excused myself from the room and “scrubbed out” because I didn’t want to lose consciousness and fall into the sterile field. Fortunately I was never the primary surgeon or even “first assist” during the surgeries when this occurred. Of course, I never had the opportunity to utilize a BG meter in the operating room (or “theatre” as you British- and other-inclined folks call it), so I do not know how low my blood sugar actually was at those times…
I very likely could be mistaken and/or am being overly influenced in my above ^ belief now that I have, thanks to 23andme and Promethease, the knowledge that I possess a homozygous allele that places me at a 15-fold increased risk of developing Type 1. Who knows…
ETA: If you’re going to send Timbeak48 some hot wings, consider doing the same for me (the hotter, the better!) 
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Which is why I no longer get my Jockeys-for-Her in a major twist until my daughter’s BG dips to under 64-ish (unless a somewhat higher reading is accompanied by a Dexcom directional arrow that is anything other than horizontal or trending upward.) And believe me, I am diligent about making sure that her percentage of “time spent low” is well above the mark which my daughter’s endo (and I) consider unacceptable.
LOL. Yes, when a British doctor is described as being “in theatre”, it does not mean he’s watching a show.
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We couldn’t figure out why my daughter would get so angry when she was younger, she’d yell and scream for no apparent reason. She even screamed at me that she hated me. So I grabbed my meter, can’t remember which one it was back then and she was 45. I was going to test her again, but she wouldn’t let me. I knew that was too low, especially for a non-diabetic. So whenever she’d start yelling, I’d shove a candy bar or can of soda pop at her.
I asked the doctor to do a glucose tolerance test on her, but since her fasting was normal, she refused. When my daughter went to college it was determined that she is hypoglycemic. When she was diagnosed her fasting was 32.
As PWD we tend to focus so intently on controlling hyperglycemia that it’s easy to forget that diabetes is not the only blood sugar disorder in the world. Some non-diabetic people are, in fact, seriously hypoglycemic, a condition quite separate and apart from ours.
We once drove from a wedding to the corresponding reception and gave a ride to one of the guests. Halfway there she started looking rather green around the gills. Concerned, we asked what was wrong and she explained that she suffered from chronic hypoglycemia. I said, “well, you picked the right car to hitch a ride in,” opened the glove box, and handed her a tube of glucose tabs. 
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