When blood sugar fails: How to spot the signs of a glucose-deprived brain

Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) is common in people who have diabetes. But it can also sometimes affect people without diabetes. You should treat it right away by consuming fast-acting carbohydrates to help raise your blood sugar level. If left untreated, severe low blood sugar can be life-threatening.

What Is Hypoglycemia?

Hypoglycemia happens when your blood sugar (glucose) drops below a range that’s healthy for you. It’s also called low blood sugar or low blood glucose. It’s most common in people with diabetes, especially if you take insulin. It can also sometimes happen to people without diabetes.

For most people with diabetes, hypoglycemia is when your blood sugar level is below 70 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) or 3.9 millimoles per liter (mmol/L). For most people without diabetes, this is when your blood sugar level is below 55 mg/dL or 3.1 mmol/L.

Glucose is your body’s main source of energy. If your blood glucose drops too low, your cells and brain don’t get the energy they need to work. This leads to symptoms like shakiness and confusion. It requires immediate treatment by eating or drinking sugar/carbohydrates. Severe hypoglycemia can be life-threatening.

Too much insulin or diabetes medication, not eating enough and too much physical activity are the main causes of low blood sugar if you have diabetes. If you don’t have diabetes, certain medications, alcohol use or health conditions may lead to it.

Symptoms and Causes

 

Symptoms of low blood sugar

Symptoms of hypoglycemia often start when your blood sugar is around 70 mg/dL or lower if you have diabetes. If your blood sugar drops quickly, symptoms may begin before it reaches this number. Low blood sugar can happen quickly and can vary from person to person and with each episode.

Many of the early symptoms of low blood sugar happen because your body releases hormones that help raise your blood sugar. These signs are your body’s way of warning you that you need to take action. The signs include:

• Shaking or trembling
• Sweating and chills
• Faster heart rate
• Dizziness or lightheadedness
• Extreme hunger
• Weakness
• Confusion or trouble concentrating
• Anxiety or irritability
• Color draining from your skin

If your blood glucose is often high, your body can get used to it. Because of that, you may feel symptoms of low blood sugar at higher levels.

Signs of severe hypoglycemia include:

• Blurred or double vision
• Slurred speech
• Clumsiness or difficulty with coordination
• Being disoriented
• Seizures
• Loss of consciousness

This is life-threatening. Severe hypoglycemia needs immediate treatment with emergency glucagon and/or medical intervention.

You can also have low blood sugar while sleeping (nocturnal hypoglycemia). Symptoms may include restless sleep, sweating through your pajamas or sheets and having nightmares.

Hypoglycemia causes

Low blood sugar happens for different reasons based on whether you have diabetes or not.

Causes if you have diabetes

Common situations that can lead to low blood glucose levels include:

• Taking too much insulin, the wrong insulin or injecting it into muscle instead of fat tissue
• Not timing insulin and carb intake correctly (for example, waiting too long to eat a meal after taking insulin for it)
• Taking too much or too high a dose of oral diabetes medications
• Being more active than usual
• Drinking alcohol without eating
• Eating meals later than usual or skipping meals

If you’re pregnant and have Type 1 diabetes, you’re also more likely to have low blood sugar during the first trimester due to hormone changes.

Causes in people without diabetes

The two main types of non-diabetes-related hypoglycemia are reactive hypoglycemia and fasting hypoglycemia.

Reactive hypoglycemia

Reactive hypoglycemia (or postprandial hypoglycemia) happens when your blood sugar is low after a meal. It typically happens two to four hours after eating.

Researchers don’t know the exact cause. But they think it happens due to a sudden spike and then a fall in blood sugar after eating certain simple carbohydrates like potatoes, white bread, cake and pastries.

Bariatric surgery can also cause reactive hypoglycemia. This is because sugar can move through your body too quickly, causing your body to release too much insulin.

Fasting hypoglycemia

For most people without diabetes, not eating for a long time (fasting) doesn’t lead to hypoglycemia. This is because your body can keep blood sugar in a healthy range.

But certain conditions and situations can lead to fasting hypoglycemia, including:

• Excessive alcohol consumption: Alcohol can stop your liver from making new glucose. If you drink a lot of alcohol over several days and don’t eat enough food, your body can use up its stored sugar.
• Critical illness: End-stage liver disease, sepsis, starvation or kidney failure cause your body to use a lot of energy.
• Adrenal insufficiency: Adrenal insufficiency causes low cortisol levels. Cortisol helps keep your blood sugar in a normal range. When cortisol levels are too low, your blood sugar can drop.
• Non-islet cell tumor hypoglycemia (NICTH): This is a rare but serious condition where a tumor releases too much of a hormone that acts like insulin.
• Insulinoma: This is a rare tumor in your pancreas that makes insulin. It leads to hypoglycemic episodes, most commonly in the early morning.

If you think you have hypoglycemia, talk to a healthcare provider.

Hypoglycemia unawareness

Some people don’t have early symptoms or don’t notice them. This is called hypoglycemia unawareness. It can increase the risk of severe episodes and sudden loss of consciousness.

Diagnosis and Tests

How doctors diagnose this condition

If you have diabetes, checking your blood glucose level can confirm low blood sugar.

If you don’t have diabetes but have hypoglycemia symptoms, your healthcare provider may check your blood sugar during a supervised fast. You may need other tests, like imaging tests, to look for an underlying cause.

If your provider suspects reactive hypoglycemia, they may recommend a mixed-meal tolerance test (MMTT). During this test, you’ll drink a beverage containing protein, fat and sugar. A provider checks your blood sugar several times over the next few hours to see how your body responds.

Management and Treatment

How is hypoglycemia treated?

You treat mild to moderate hypoglycemia by eating or drinking sugar (carbohydrates).

Healthcare providers often recommend the “15-15 rule” to manage low blood sugar:

• Eat or drink 15 grams of fast-acting carbs to raise your blood glucose.
• After 15 minutes, check your glucose level.
• If it’s still below 70 mg/dL, have another 15 grams of fast-acting carbs.
• Repeat until your glucose is at least 70 mg/dL.

Children may need fewer grams of carbs to treat hypoglycemia. Check with your child’s healthcare provider to see what’s right for them.

How is severe hypoglycemia treated?

Severe hypoglycemic episodes require the use of emergency glucagon. Usually, someone else has to give it to you. It comes as an injection or nasal powder. It triggers your liver to release stored glucose, which then raises blood sugar.

If someone you know needs emergency glucagon, follow the instructions on the package. When the person regains consciousness (usually in five to 15 minutes), they may have nausea and vomiting. If they’re lying down, roll them onto their side to prevent choking. If they have slurred speech or are disoriented or unconscious, don’t give them food or liquid. They could choke.

You should call 911 or emergency services right away for help. Even if they have taken glucagon, they still could need emergency services.

Complications

Frequent mild to moderate hypoglycemia can affect your daily activities, including work and school. Operating heavy equipment, such as driving a vehicle, while having low blood glucose levels can also be dangerous. You may be more likely to get in an accident.

Prolonged severe hypoglycemia is life-threatening and can lead to:

• Multiple organ failure
• Cardiac arrhythmias
• Cardiac arrest
• Permanent brain damage
• Coma or death

Outlook / Prognosis

What can I expect if I have hypoglycemic episodes?

Frequent low blood sugar episodes can be dangerous if you have diabetes. It may mean your treatment plan needs to be adjusted. Talk with your healthcare provider if you have frequent lows.

Hypoglycemia can make it hard to think clearly and can become dangerous if it happens while you’re sleeping, driving or alone.

Here are some tips to help you stay safe:

• Always have snacks available in your home and on you when you’re away from home.
• Wear a medical alert necklace or bracelet that says you have diabetes.
• Teach people you spend time with about hypoglycemia and how they can help you.
• Always have emergency glucagon on hand. Educate your loved ones on how and when to use it.

Prevention

How can I prevent this condition?

It can be difficult to totally prevent low blood sugar when you have diabetes. But your healthcare provider may be able to adjust your diabetes management plan to try to reduce the number of low blood glucose episodes you have.

It’s easiest to do this when you and your healthcare provider understand what causes your blood sugar to drop. Give your healthcare provider as much information as possible about any low blood sugar episodes. Fixing the problem may be as simple as changing the times you take medication, eat and exercise.

Important of knowing low glucose symptoms

Hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, is quite common in people with diabetes. It’s important to learn your personal warning signs and monitor your blood sugar regularly to try to prevent these episodes. Work with your healthcare provider to adjust your management plan if you have frequent low blood glucose. The more you know, the easier it’ll be to adjust your plan.

If you’re having low blood sugar and don’t have diabetes, you should see a provider. While it’s rare that the underlying cause is serious, it’s possible. It’s better to get checked out sooner rather than later.

 

 

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for food, medicines, exercises and so on.   

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When you really ‘can’t eat just one’ — the shocking truth behind addiction to ultra-processed foods

   

We’ve all been there: Opening a packet of chips with the very genuine intention of having just a few, only to find ourselves at the bottom of the bag, a mix of pleasure and guilt — salt and oil, too — coursing through our blood vessels.

Why do these ultra-processed foods, or UPFs, have such a powerful grip on our cravings?

A recent analysis — titled Social, Clinical, and Policy Implications of Ultra-Processed Food Addiction and published in the journal The BMJ by US-based researchers Prof Ashley Gearhardt and colleagues — argued why UPFs need to be conceptualised as “addictive” and why doing so would contribute to improving health.

UPF addiction as bad as substance abuse

Prof Gearhardt, of the University of Michigan and the lead author of the study, has been at the forefront of defining food addiction.

Adapting diagnostic criteria from substances like alcohol and cocaine, she developed the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) in 2009. The criteria includes excessive use, cravings, continued consumption despite adverse consequences, and withdrawal symptoms.

Gearhardt cited a recent analysis of two systematic reviews using the YFAS and said that recent research is shining a spotlight on the worrying global trend of food addiction.

An extensive analysis of studies spanning 36 countries discovered that 14 percent of adults and an alarming 12 percent of children are showing signs consistent with this type of addiction.

To put this into perspective, these numbers are very close to the addiction rates observed for other commonly-consumed legal substances — specifically, 14 percent of adults are addicted to alcohol and 18 percent to tobacco.

When we delve deeper into specific groups, the situation appears even more grave. For instance, among obese individuals who are undergoing bariatric surgery, the prevalence of food addiction soars to 32 percent. And for those diagnosed with binge-eating disorders, the number is even higher, with over half showing symptoms of food addiction,” the authors state.

Beyond just the behaviour of excessive eating, this kind of addiction is also linked to core elements typical of other addictions, such as reward-driven neural dysfunction, impulsivity, and difficulties regulating emotions.

Moreover, it correlates with deteriorating physical and mental health, as well as a diminished quality of life.

What are ultra-processed foods?

UPFs are industrially-made foods containing ingredients that we would not typically use in our home kitchens.

They are the primary source of refined carbohydrates and added fats in many modern diets. These foods often combine both carbohydrates and fats in equal measures, unlike natural foods.

The article’s authors explain that, for instance, while an apple is mostly carbs and salmon is mostly fats, a chocolate bar combines both in almost equal amounts.

The authors also cite that recent research reveals an alarming statistic: One in seven individuals are addicted to ultra-processed foods. In fact, these foods, designed to delight our taste buds, now rival some narcotics in their addictive properties.

The result? UPFs have now surpassed tobacco as the primary cause of premature death, emphasising the urgent need for a shift in our eating habits.

Approximately 12 percent of children are believed to be trapped in the clutches of UPF addiction. The stark numbers highlight the pressing need for regulatory measures to protect our younger generation.

How do UPFs get us hooked?

The authors state that these highly-processed delights, whether they are chips, chocolates, or carbonated drinks, aren’t merely hard to resist due to lack of will power; they’re designed that way.

“Researchers have found that UPFs, particularly those rich in refined carbs and added fats, stimulate our brains in ways that make them nearly irresistible,” the analysis in The BMJ states.

Gearhardt’s research has unveiled extreme cases, likening the inability of some individuals to resist UPFs to a lung cancer patient’s struggle to quit smoking.

While traditional food serves to nourish, UPFs primarily aim for profit. Our biological systems, designed to ensure that we consume sufficient sugar and fats, are thrown into overdrive when bombarded with UPFs.

The authors cite the example of distinguishing between homemade cookies and store-bought ones.

“While you might indulge in a few homemade cookies, resisting the pull of a store-bought pack is significantly more challenging. The reason lies in the concentration of addictive ingredients in the latter and their promotion through aggressive marketing,” they explain.

How fast these foods release their addictive components into our system can boost their addictive potential.

“Just as a cigarette delivers nicotine quickly to the brain, making it more addictive than a slow-release nicotine patch, UPFs can affect our brain rapidly due to their altered food matrix. In simpler terms, UPFs are made to be easily and quickly consumed, releasing their ‘addictive’ components rapidly,” explain the authors.

Explaining further, they claim that many UPFs come with flavour enhancers that boost their sweet or savoury taste, and texturisers that make them feel good in our mouth. While these additives might not be addictive by themselves, they reinforce our desire for these foods. They play a role similar to additives in cigarettes, like menthol, which can amplify the effects of nicotine.

To simplify, consuming UPFs floods our brains with dopamine, a “feel-good” chemical. However, as this dopamine surge recedes, it leaves behind a void, prompting us to reach for more UPFs to fill that void. It’s a vicious cycle that mirrors the effects of alcohol and nicotine.

These foods, especially when ultra-processed, have been designed in such a way that they trigger our brain’s reward systems even more than natural foods.

Are all fatty foods addictive?

The authors explain that not all fatty foods have addictive potential. The Yale Food Addiction Scale asks people to report on the intake of foods with high levels of refined carbohydrates or added fats, such as sweets and salty snacks.

Just like how only certain drugs are addictive, only specific foods seem to trigger addictive behaviours.

The major culprits? Foods loaded with refined carbohydrates or added fats — think sweets, salty snacks, or that delicious chocolate bar you just can’t resist.

“These types of foods are most strongly implicated in the behavioural indicators of addiction, such as excessive intake, loss of control over consumption, intense cravings, and continued use despite negative consequences,” the authors state.

Interestingly, not all foods high in fats are addictive, remind the authors. Take nuts, for instance. Even though they have a considerable amount of fat, they don’t seem to be as addictive as UPFs. This could be due to the fact that the fats in nuts are trapped within cell walls, making them less available during digestion.

Breaking free from UPF addiction

Recognising the existence of UPF addiction is the first step, claims the analysis. Those trapped in its grip should look for early interventions, as they’re crucial for shortening the duration of such disorders.

While UPF addiction isn’t officially acknowledged as a medical condition, potential treatments are emerging.

 

Doctors South First spoke to agree that there are a few patients seeking help to battles this addiction through methods like cognitive behavioural therapy.

Meanwhile, Dr Vijaykumar, a paediatrician from Bengaluru, tells South First that the Indian government should consider marking UPFs as addictives.

He says, “With obesity creeping into not just adults but children as young as 5-year-olds, it is absolutely important to have a mechanism to regulate the UPFs in the market. We will soon start seeing several lifestyle-related diseases in children as well.”

Metabolic Health Coach Shashikant Iyengar agrees: “Childhood obesity is on the rise in India, largely due to the ready availability of highly processed, addictive junk foods. These products are often loaded with refined grains and oils, making them incredibly difficult to consume in moderation. To tackle this issue effectively, we require robust government regulations regarding how these foods are advertised.”

“It’s crucial to embark on an educational campaign aimed at the general population to raise awareness of the detrimental consequences of excessive ultra-processed junk food consumption. Treating addiction to these foods as seriously as drug addiction is a necessary step to curb the escalating issue of childhood obesity,” he tells South First.

A policy-level change is needed

Authors in The BMJ analysis suggest that broad-based policy measures, including imposing taxes on sugary drinks and introducing warning labels on UPFs, can help stem the tide, and Indian doctors vehemently agree with this.

They claim, “With UPFs becoming a significant part of most diets, especially in vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, it’s evident that individual actions are insufficient. Policy measures are the need of the hour,” adds Dr Vijaykumar.

Meanwhile, a released recently study from Nutrition Advocacy for Public Interest (NAPi) — titled The Junk Push: Rising Ultra Processed Food consumption in India: Policy, Politics and Reality — showed how misleading marketing, rising consumption of UPFs in India, and the role of UPFs is triggering an epidemic of non-communicable diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension, especially in children.

Reacting to the analysis, Dr Arun Gupta, Convenor of NAPi and former member of the Prime Minister’s Council on India’s Nutrition Challenges, tells South First, “It is well known that rising consumption of UPFs is a serious health hazard and greatly enhances the prevalence of obesity, diabetes, and other non-communicable diseases. This study adds significant value to the efforts of the Government of India and public health advocates in order to regulate the marketing of unhealthy UPFs, being addictive.”

He explains the fact that the speed with which we deliver carbohydrates and fats to our gut has an addictive potential. It is no surprise why food corporations spend hundreds and thousands of dollars to achieve a “bliss point” for their food and drinks.

Leaders must act

Stressing on the importance and expressing the urgency of implementing policies surrounding this, Dr Gupta adds, “Policy making is clearly a call of the governments, both state and Union. They better act earlier than later. For political parties, it is an opportunity to build a public health regulation to control NCDs in their manifestos for upcoming 2024 elections!”

He says that if the party as a whole is not ready to take up the matter, then at least individual members of the Parliament can also propose a private members’ Bill on this.

The purpose of this Bill would be to draw the government’s attention to what individual MPs see as an issue and gaps in the existing legal framework, which require legislative intervention.

 

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.   

https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com. one can see my crochet creations  
https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com. feel free to view for easy, simple and healthy recipes    
https://kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com. for info on knee replacement
https://GSiyers home remedies.blogspot.com   is the latest addition to my blogs