Last night I woke up with low blood sugar, 58 at 1:30am. I'm pretty happy about it. Why?
1) It means I still have hypoglycemia awareness, which is your body's safety catch for the dangers of low blood glucose levels. It woke me up, with the characteristic fluttery stomach, quickened heart rate, and a touch of adrenaline. (I found some leftover Halloween candy. Did I over-do it? Probably.) Since, it's been some time since I have had an overnight low, I wasn't sure if it would wake me up.
2) It means my insulin is working. Despite fighting an infection and taking a medication that can causes insulin resistance (Levaquin), things came around during the night and I ended up with too much insulin in my system. As long as insulin works I'll be the post-Banting miracle called thriving diabetics.
Downsides?
Yes, there are also two of those.
1) It means I may have a headache today from it. But, based on recent history for me, it's par for the course. Feeling great otherwise.
2) It means my glucose levels today will run 180-200 for about 6-8 hours and not respond normally to insulin. I have to keep calm and not over-correct. You can stack insulin and have it all come into play at the wrong time, and cause the situation all over again. Just stay chill and wait until you see yourself coming out of it. I would say about 3pm I'll start seeing if I'm responsive to insulin.
I have quite a few things to write about, so be ready for some activity in the next few days.
One more thing... what about my glucose sensor? Did it warn me? No, it was 30 minutes behind the game and was still showing 70 when I woke up. That's fine. I might just change my warning setting to 80, just to catch dips like that. Infrequent as they are, I'm not too worried.
Do you use the predictive alarm? On minimed I found the predictive alarm useful. I'm sorry to say Dexcom doesn't have that feature.
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure that you can depend on waking up from a low because you woke up from this one.
Is the Levaquin causing you insulin resistance? I got the impression from your most recent posts that you haven't taken much insulin lately.
Jonah, I think the predictive alarm is active, but from what I remember it is only triggered when things happen at a certain rapid rate. My changes don't usually happen fast enough to trip it. I think you have to have the double-up, or double-down arrows showing to get a predictive alarm. I didn't even have a single-down arrow showing.
ReplyDeleteI know, it doesn't prove anything about the future, but I haven't had many times where I wasn't glancing at my CGMS readings and noticing trends already. I think more often than not, my CGMS will show a low reading and it's not accurate.
I'm not sure what the Levaquin is doing for me right now. I remember another time when I took Levaquin and it was clear that my insulin didn't work as well during those 10 days. It frustrated my BG control. This time, it's hard to tell whether it's infection, or the medicine impacting my BG. Either way, it's off a bit.
Sorry about the Lows, Nathan. Those are never fun. I've had luck from the predictive alarms on both the MM and the Dex CGMs. Anything helps, especially when it's the middle of the night.
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