hypoglycemia

[zookeeper]

Hi i am new to this site today.

I have been clear since my cancer op 6 years ago but had numerous digestive problems.The last being blood sugar problems i kept feinting/blacking out and it took our medical profession 18 months to find its cause.The food i eat mainly carbohydrates cause me to have sugar highs which in turn go down through the floor to 1.7 of which 4 is a limit

Has anyone else reading this had similar problems i would be interested in hearing back.

[Lucoid]

Hi Zookeeper

I think you are having Rebound Hypoglycaemia where you oversecrete insulin in response to a carbohydrate load. I ate a whole jacket spud for the first time the other day and felt quite tired afterwards. I find myself eating a lot of carbs, and I am trying to move away to a more protein based diet.

[jay2908]

I too hav the same issue. I've found that eating smaller meals helps a lot. Also if I feel tired after a meal and I know that my sugar is low, I tend to have a sweet or an apple. Something that I can't eat in one go thus releasing a slow amount of sugar to compensate for the low blood sugar.

[spanner16]

I'm just trying to deal with this myself - I now have a blood glucose monitor and am trying to stick with eating low GI foods (ie brown bread, sweet potatoes, brown pasta etc) this means that I won't get a spike of sugar in my system causing my body to produce loads of insulin and then generate a low blood sugar drop. I also now keep a mini bag of jelly babies in my purse and some lucozade tablets and if I feel unwell and check my blood sugar levels and it's low then I eat the jelly babies or a tablet and that tends to make me feel better pretty quickly. I've also got some cans of 'full fat' coke in my house and that does the same job if I'm home.

[JanA]

I have also experienced this & still do, my remedy is that I carry a packet of Dextro Energy & take 1 when I feel it coming on. If at home I have a cup of tea with a spoonful of sugar & a biscuit which seems to do the trick. Hope this helps

Jan

[Hidden]

It does indeed sound as if you are suffering insulin spikes created by your new digestion system having / creating too much sugar. You are doing a sensible thing in monitoring your levels. Dumping syndrome can effectively turn you into having the equivalent of diabetes. Hence the jelly babies making a rapid re-balancing.

You can make things somewhat better by avoiding foods that cause your body to create excess sugar quickly - hence the comments about carbohydrates above. Try concentrating on foods with a low glycemic index.

There are some factsheets that may help opa.org.uk/pages/factsheets...

I think that trying diets designed for diabetics might also help.

The fainting without warning is a sign of this that others have experienced.

[golpharm]

I also had the oesophagectomy some 7 years ago and have recently started to experience the same hypoglycaemic episodes and the most severe was reducing my blood sugar to 1.2 with a coma thrown in for good measure. I now carry sugar lumps with me and have obtained Dextrogel on presciption. I am now trying to have 5 small meals daily instead of the more sociable way of eating.

[Hidden]

This is an extra comment made at the talk at Saturdays' meeting at Guy's hospital that might possibly be relevant to these sort of situations. Sometimes other things can contribute to these effects, for instance the medication that you might be on for other things. The specialist dietician gave an example of blood pressure pills that had been continued for somebody at the same level as before without being reviewed, even though his blood pressure problem had been largely resolved. So her message about this was to make sure that medication is at the right level first; and then think about diet.