When you are asleep and dreaming, are you ever diabetic in those dreams?

Type 1 and LADA
#21

I definitely have had some diabetic dreams, which are strange because I have also occasionally had lucid dreams where I’m aware of being asleep and dreaming. One really weird one:

I remember having one dream where I woke up with low blood sugar in bed and was yelling for my wife to bring me some glucose, but she just wouldn’t wake up. Then I realized that I wasn’t really yelling out loud at her; I was trying to, but no sound was coming out of my mouth. It was kind of like a night terror, where you can’t move and speak upon waking.

At that point, I ‘woke up’ in my dream, realizing that I was actually dreaming about having a low blood sugar. But I told myself, you’re probably having this dream because you are having a low while you’re asleep.

So, in my dream I started telling myself over and over to wake up. I finally did wake up all sweaty and shaky. I rolled over and checked my blood sugar and of course, it was 60 in real life.

While I’m glad my body figured out how to wake up, it was exhausting. And my wife assured me the next day, that I hadn’t screamed at her during the night.

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#22

Yes! Even now, after quitting cold turkey 37 years ago, I occasionally find myself with a cigarette in my fingers in my dream. And a little voice whispers, Hey, it’s ok, you’re only smoking a couple a day…

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#23

I do have D-dreams fairly often, maybe 3-4 times a month, though I don’t keep count. They’re usually about some problem with keeping it in control. Like I’m at a big banquet or party where there’s tons of high-carb food everyone’s enjoying and I’m struggling with the all-too-familiar issue of trying to bolus for it somehow vs Just Say No. Just like real life!

I generally don’t have low-BG dreams even when I’m actually having an overnight hypo. Usually real hypos just wake me up (thank goodness).

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#24

Never a diabetic in my dreams except a few times when I’d go seriously low (which no longer happens now that I have a CGM). It seemed to me my brain was trying to talk me out of waking up and treating. In one, around the time I was working a lot on my family tree, I was looking at a long list of male ancestors which included me, all with the same name, let’s say Andrew Smith, and they had to be matched up with their wives in the second column. In the dream I was aware that if the Andrew Smith who was me couldn’t be linked to a wife, then that would mean I didn’t exist. And if I didn’t exist, then I couldn’t be having a low, and I wouldn’t have to get up and treat it.

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#25

While I spend a fair amount of energy and attention dealing with my diabetes every day, I cannot ever remember diabetes entering my dreams.

One thing I have noticed, however, is that I have woken up from a nightmare when my blood sugar was hypo. That has only happened a few times as I rarely dream nightmares.

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#26

Great question! I’m not usually no, but if I’m low and not symptomatic enough to wake up I dream of sweets and me going to the kitchen for food.
I was also anxious about my hba1c one time and dreamt my endo would take my pump off me for not doing a good job. I told him about and he laughed. :slight_smile:

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