Hypoglycemia is a very dangerous affliction that is most common among diabetic patients and small children. However strange it is (since diabetes is a sickness resulting from blood sugar levels that are too high), hypoglycemia results from the body’s blood glucose levels running too low, prompting the body to jumpstart its glucose maintenance and production processes too fast for the body to catch up. Hypoglycemia causes in the patient various debilitating reactions such as dizziness, intense hunger, shaking, anxiety attacks, convulsions and many others. In the long run, hypoglycemia attacks can increase in severity to the point where the damage can be long term, such as retrograde amnesia.
Among the list of hypoglycemia causes, the most common is for diabetic people to accidentally take medicine intended for other people, or if they take the wrong dosage. This would result in their blood sugar levels to go down way below than what is originally intended. While this is the most frequent case, there are other hypoglycemia causes:
As a general rule, hypoglycemia causes are based either on your body producing too much glucose, or not getting enough of it. This means people who exercise too much and use up too much glucose is as much in a risk as people who don’t eat too much, resulting in lack of glucose intake.
Skipping meals or fasting, or not eating at the right time can cause hypoglycemia attacks, as lack of food means the body will also lack sources for natural sugar. To avoid this, it is important to keep a proper schedule for eating and to follow it to the letter. Majority of hypoglycemia attacks occur when you have an empty stomach, or fasting, on the other side of the coin, there are cases when eating too much food causes your blood sugar levels to rise too fast, prompting the body’s natural defenses to force it down even faster, which ultimately results in another hypoglycemia attack. Long-term starvation will most certainly cause hypoglycemia, provided that your body survives the total absence of fuel needed for its daily activities.
Drinking too much alcohol will also increase the chances of hypoglycemia attacks, since most alcohol contain a lot of sugar and carbohydrates, both catalysts of hypoglycemia. The risk is further increased if a person habitually drinks on an empty stomach.
Illnesses pertaining to the liver such as drug-induced hepatitis, can result in the development of hypoglycemia, and is probably second only to improper medication when it comes to the most common hypoglycemia causes.
It is probably the rarest of all the known causes, but a tumor in your pancreas (insulinoma) could increase the body’s natural production of insulin, resulting in the body overreacting and probably driving blood glucose levels way below the appropriate level, resulting in hypoglycemia. Adults are less prone to this kind of hypoglycemia catalyst than children, though. Enlargement of certain beta cells in the pancreas could result in excessive insulin production and release. People who have recently undergone gastric bypass surgery are very prone to these.
Certain deficiencies in your adrenal and pituitary glands could also trigger hypoglycemia, if they fail to produce certain key hormones that function as natural regulators of the body’s glucose production and maintenance.
Quick Tip #1
Treatment of hypoglycemia is an ongoing process, remember to have a good diet with evenly spaced out meals every 2-3 hours apart. Also exercising can really help in keeping this condition under check.
|
Quick Tip #2
A lot of symptoms of low blood sugar have common signs as other diseases. If you exeperience any of the hypoglycemia symptoms, do consult your doctor for treatment.
|
|