Signs in my kids

Hello,

I am new to this forum but have been a T1D for a long time. Lately my anxieties have been high with my kids and have tested them here and there. Their sugars have been within the normal range until this morning. My daughters fasting was 65. She had no other symptoms and her check was more of an annual check and if i wasnt a T1D, I wouldn’t be so on edge with my kids developing it. I am starting to go down a rabit hole because i googled hypoglycemia (yes, I know, the worst thing to do) and it kept saying that it is a sign of an underlying disease or tumor, etc OR a precursor to diabetes.

Does anyone have any real life experience with this where their child had this as an early sign?

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Hi @usmcbear5 and welcome to the forum.
I’m not a parent, and hopefully some parents will respond soon. In the meantime I just wanted to say, normal fasting glucose for someone without diabetes ranges from 60/70 - 99, depending on what website you pull. A meter reading can vary by as much as 15% from the real number and still be considered accurate. And even people without diabetes can go low sometimes - probably due to activity or a medication they are taking: a non-diabetic friend of mine was cheering and started feeling dizzy. She was fasting at the time so it was assumed to be due to be low blood sugar - she was fine after having some food.
Sometimes things happen even to those without diabetes - a warning in the moment and not a sign of things to come. I can only imagine it must be hard for you, but hopefully that example makes things a tiny bit easier. And if it does happen someday, your daughter has an experienced resource to lean on.

Hi @usmcbear5 welcome to Type One Nation. I’m with @wadawabbit a 65 on a home finger stick meter isn’t hypoglycemia. Also, google is referring to type 2 anyway. Type 1 is an autoimmune disease and it doesn’t give advance warning. A random or fasting finger stick is inconclusive. If it makes you feel better, I worry about my son all the time. I don’t want him to develop diabetes but there is absolutely nothing I can do to prevent it if it’s going to happen. Cheers! I hope your children are well and happy!

@usmcbear5 Hi Jennifer, and Welcome to The TypeOneNation forum! I concur with what @Joe and Dorie @wadawabbit wrote suggesting that you may not want to assume anything from a one-time reading of 65 mg/dl; as you know from your personal experience that sometimes a particular reading means nothing. Keep in mind what you probably practice about “treating a low” and insulin dosing dosing for food, that what we do is observe our body and what we are feeling; and as you said, that your daughter didn’t exhibit any symptoms.

If I recall correctly what I read in the recent ADA Standards of Care", a professional guide for physicians, [these are MY words, not the written] a caution was given about jumping to conclusion based on an office finger-stick BG or HbA1c check.

As has been stated, T1D is autoimmune, and it involves the gradual destruction of the body’s ability to produce insulin. Typically, you only need about 5% of the insulin your body is capable of producing, so you don’t notice anything until most of the islet cells are destroyed. Sometimes it shows up when the kid gets sick, because usually you need more insulin when you’re sick. So if your production capacity is at, say, 7% of normal, you wouldn’t notice anything until you get a cold and suddenly need 10% instead of 5%.

The thing is that reduced insulin means high blood sugars, not lows. Diabetics get lows if we inject too much insulin. Without treatment, our BG values are sky high. Symptoms of that are excessive drinking, nausea, and vomiting.

As others have said, hypoglycemia is another matter, and one abnormal value doesn’t indicate much. Healthy people will go low if they haven’t eaten, especially if they’ve been active. (And that can include activity from the day before.)

If you really want, you can ask their pediatrician to do a blood test for beta islet cell and GAD-65 antibodies. That would show whether or not you need to worry, potentially years before they develop any symptoms. But talk to the doc about whether it’s necessary.