New Blog 1: Symptoms Of Low Blood Sugar

Wednesday 24 October 2012

Symptoms Of Low Blood Sugar

Hypoglycemia means low blood sugar level, although “unstable blood sugar levels” would have been more fitting. This term is used to describe a metabolic disorder, that may manifest itself in a variety of physical and ‘psychological’ symptoms. One must understand that glucose is a source of both physical (muscle) and mental (brain) energy. The brain, representing only 2 percent by weight of the body, has no energy stores of its own. It requires about 60 per cent percent of the all available glucose in the body and consumes about 120 grams per days regardless of whether we are asleep or awake (Source). About one teaspoon of glucose is available in the blood at any time. Most doctors believe that hypoglycemia is due to “insulin resistance”, which it shares with diabetes. see Robyn Cosford (1) As in diabetes, when a patient injects excess insulin, it causes the blood glucose concentrations to crash. This happens in non-diabetic hypoglycemia when the body produces too much insulin called hyperinsulinism. Consequently any extreme fluctuation in the supply of glucose to the brain will inevitably affect our emotions, feelings and personality. Hypoglycemia (or pre-diabetic insulin resistance) is also an important factor in the metabolic syndrome and therefore if you want to avoid diabetes and/or the metabolic syndrome you need to treat the hypoglycemia by nutritional means. The symptoms of hypoglycemia may mimic and even cause many psychological and physical disorders some of which are shown in the following list in order of frequency and as reported by hypoglycemics;