My daughter is not yet diagnosis with anything. Originally thought of as having ketotic hypoglycemia, newer symptoms emerged. This past weekend was rough, she woke up 68 on Saturday treated with 4oz of juice retested at 65 so gave 2 more ounce which pushed it back up into the 90’s. The whole day we kept watch of food intake and gave watered down juice periodically to keep the sugar from dropping. Sunday morning her fasting was 181, retested and got a 135 ( could a little juice really cause it to spike like that?) She had a good lunch at 2pm by 4:30pm she was 53, the endocrinology nurse said that fluctuations like that can happen with a viral illness but I am having a hard time wrapping my head around that. My sister is a T1D so I know for her a viral illness can cause fluctuations pretty significantly but my daughter is not diagnosised T1D, are fluctuations like this normal?
hello Kathleen, if her blood sugar is testing low, and she is not taking insulin, then she is experiencing some kind of problem in insulin production (too much insulin) or her body’s blood sugar sensing and feedback. These are all problems for an endocrinologist because there’s a million reasons why this kind of thing may be happening.
if you didn’t make any insulin, and had “a little juice” you could jump from a 50 to a 200 quite easily. each gram of carb can raise my blood sugar by 4-6 mg/dl. if I was 50 mg/dl, I’d only need 12-16 grams of carbs which is only a few ounces of juice, to be “normal” blood sugar.
when you have a virus, your insulin sensitivity, your hydration, overall inflammation, your liver function, can all be affected, sometimes severely.
even a person without diabetes can be overwhelmed by glucose.
If you look up a “glucose tolerance test”, it’s essentially to determine a point where you r body can’t keep up and your blood sugar rises.
I don’t know much about hypoglycemia as a disease, as a T1 I just have to deal with it as a function of too much insulin, too much insulin with activity levels, or not enough carbs… or any combination
hope you are both OK
@Mommyof1preT1D Hi Kathleen, if your daughter was using insulin I too might be concerned with her awakening with a 68 BG; what was your BG when you awakened - it might have been even lower than 68. “In-Range” for a person without diabetes is 70 - 180 mg/dl and that wide range is affected by how long it has been since food intake.
“Hypoglycemia” in days past was considered a condition on its own and had protocol for management; later it became known as “Pre-Diabetes”. Your daughter may be in this category and it is really good that you are watching closely - and I certainly hope that you have consulted a good endocrinologist and are following her advice.