What Are the Risk Factors?
The following people have a greater chance of getting hypoglycemia, including:
- People taking insulin or insulin shots
- Persons who use oral diabetes medication like sulfonylureas
- Those with liver or kidney failure
- People who have had diabetes for an extended period of time
- Others who don’t experience hypoglycemic symptoms (hypoglycemia unawareness)
- People who take multiple medications
- People with disabilities that may prevent a faster response to lowered blood sugar
- Persons who have an increased alcohol intake
What Are the Possible Complications?
Being unaware of its symptoms or refusal of immediate hypoglycemia treatment may become deadly or even become fatal. The brain is in constant in need of glucose to function, so having low blood sugar levels may cause:
- Seizures
- Fainting or loss of consciousness
- Death
Note that you must familiarize yourself with your own early symptoms. Hypoglycemia can increase the risk of grave, if not, deadly, mishaps.
How tTo Deal with Low Blood Sugar
Here are ways to be prepared and deal with hypoglycemia:
Monitor and treat your blood sugar early. Monitor and check your blood sugar often to treat it as soon as possible symptoms arise. If you have had hypoglycemia for a long time now, you may not notice its symptoms until it becomes severe. Carefully monitoring will make sure that your glucose levels are within your doctor’s recommended target range.
Never skip meals or delay snacks. You need to be consistent with what you eat and when you consume meals, especially when you are taking insulin or other types of diabetic medication.
Take medicine on time. Take medication as prescribed by your doctor if you are ingesting diabetes medicine.
Adjust your medication and food intake according to your physical activities. Balancing how much you consume with the type and length of your activities will aid in lessening the frequency of hypoglycemia.
Eat something while ingesting alcohol. Drinking alcohol can cause delayed hypoglycemia hours later, making blood sugar monitoring even more necessary.
Record your blood sugar levels. This will aid not only yourself, but as well as your doctor identify patterns that cause hypoglycemic episodes and find ways to prevent them.
How To Treat Hypoglycemia
If you have possible symptoms, here are possible hypoglycemia treatment methods:
Consume small amounts of fast-acting carbohydrates. These are sugary food that are quickly converted into sugar in the body. These include glucose tablets, fruit juice, honey, and sugary candy.
Recheck blood sugar levels 15 minutes after treatment. If blood sugar levels are still under your target range, eat or drink more sugary food, then check your blood sugar levels again after 15 minutes. Repeat this until your blood sugar level is back to its usual target range.
Have a snack or meal. Once it turns back to normal, go eat a something that can help stabilize and replenish your body’s sugar.
For severe hypoglycemia, you may need someone to help you recover or take a glucagon injection from a glucagon kit. When there is no glucagon kit available, call for emergency medical assistance.
Key Takeaways
Hypoglycemia is a condition common to diabetics that, whether mild or severe, should not be ignored. When early signs of low blood sugar appear, do not hesitate to contact a healthcare professional for diagnosis and treatment. When left untreated, it could lead to fatigue, fainting or even death.
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