As dangerous as high blood sugar is, low blood sugar poses an equal amount of risk to a person’s well being. When your blood glucose (blood sugar) drops to abnormally low levels, hypoglycemia occurs, bringing with it a bunch of debilitating side effects such as panic attacks, excessive sweating, dizziness, intense hunger, anxiety and other symptoms that have something to do with your circulatory, digestive and nervous system. As far as hypoglycemia treatment is concerned, the body already has its own defense mechanism. When the body’s level of blood glucose drops to abnormally low levels, the brain triggers a failsafe function that wakes up hormone and nervous system responses aimed at increasing blood glucose levels, as well as decreasing the body’s insulin secretion, effectively making sure that the body’s glucose levels remain stabilized.
Unfortunately, there are cases when the body’s natural defenses are not enough, or fail to kick in altogether. In these cases, hypoglycemia treatment would have to be done with the following; the basic premise of a hypoglycemia treatment is to provide a source of easily absorbed sugar to an infected person, and to do so in the fastest way possible. Regular (non-diet) soda, juice, candies, and even plain table sugar are good options. As a general rule, 10 to 15 grams of glucose is required to have desirable effects. Most food packaging contains info about the amounts of sugar or glucose they contain so you need to check that. As a rough estimate, 10 to 15 grams of glucose is equal to 10 lifesavers or 4 teaspoons of sugar. Other sweet foods like cake, brownies, or pastries are not recommended since it will take the body a long time before it absorbs the sugar they contain. If the patient does not improve after 3 repetitions of this process, you can consider the patient at risk and not responding to therapy. This is very dangerous and an ambulance should be called immediately for proper hypoglycemia treatment administered by professionals.
If the person’s hypoglycemia attack is so severe that glucose sources such as candies, sugar cubes or soda cannot be ingested through the mouth, a properly trained family member, roommate or physician should administer an injection of the right amount of glucagons, which will cause the liver to rapidly release its store of glucose. An improvement or positive response should be noticeable within minutes and will last for as long as 90 minutes, afterwards a more consistent source of glucose or sugar should be administered to the patient, such as cakes, cookies or brownies, to help maintain the glucose levels. If there is no glucagons injection available or there is trained person to administer the injection, it is important that an ambulance be called so the patient can receive proper medical care before things get worse.
It is important as well to assess and analyze the cause of the hypoglycemia attack, so that you can prepare for future ones or prevent it altogether. For diabetic patients whose hypoglycemia resulted from their insulin injection, an adjustment in dosage may help, and a doctor should be consulted for the adjustment suggestion.
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.
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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.
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