Ever since I was a little kid I can remember my Grandma complaining about feeling hypoglycemic. As I got older I was simply astonished that she continued to do things that would make her feel horrible. Although she was an avid Adele Davis fan and knew a lot about healthy eating she had her vices and one of them was her pastries and coffee. I didn’t really understand her battle until I got older and experienced the scourge of hypoglycemia myself. And even though I’ve had every test in the book for low glucose and they’ve always come out normal I have severe and really disabling symptoms of hypoglycemia if I don’t eat every three hours. I’ve been taught this lesson literally thousands of times but haven’t quite learned and I still do things and find myself places without food and I crash and burn.
Yesterday although I took food to eat after church I came home and left for a party where there really wasn’t food so because I started feeling really bad I had to leave. As I was driving home I felt that familiar and horrible warning sign of impending doom and I didn’t get home in time to prevent the crash. So I went into the crash mode full on where I stayed until this afternoon when I felt better so I took a banana and peanut butter cracker and went for my 3.5 mile walk. The reality is that I have to eat before I start feeling any symptoms at all, because then I can prevent it from happening at all. If I do start feeling symptoms it’s really too late, eating will prevent a comatose state but it won’t prevent my feeling sick.
I really don’t need a diagnosis of hypoglycemia to know that there is really something messed up with my metabolism. I CANNOT go without food without severe and unrelenting suffering. If you have symptoms of hypoglycemia and you have normal lab tests you can still prevent yourself from suffering by eating small frequent meals consisting of real whole food (processed food is chock full of glucose plunging ingredients like refined carbs and high fructose corn syrup). Don’t buy into that there is nothing wrong with you and try to suck it up. In my opinion they just don’t have the right tests to “discover” some of the things that ail us yet. I never have the desire to eat sugar or refined foods because of the way they make me feel immediately after consuming them. To me eating a piece of refined cake is simply not worth the severe pain, heart beating wildly, blurred vision, sweat dripping off my face, feeling faint, etc. etc. I love to eat homemade cake but when I do (once or twice a year or so) I always eat it with some other really good whole food to make the glycemic index low enough for me to tolerate it.
If you have symptoms of hypoglycemia the best way to manage it is to eat a real whole food diet in 6 small meals a day with snacks. Figure out your own time table, for me just under three hours in between is about my limit. And from now on, I swear, even though I’ve said this so many times, I don’t care if I’m at a wedding, at the Oscars, or in the front row of a Presidential inauguration I’m going to stick to that time table, pull out my food and start eating. Otherwise for sure I will crash and burn and be sick for at least 24 hours and I don’t want to feel that EVER AGAIN!
Oh and if they do find another test, I don't want to do it, I cannot stand the thought even of going through some tortuous test and being sick and in pain for three weeks afterward. I happy with my own diagnostics, just have to stick to them!
Ever since I was a little kid I can remember my Grandma complaining about feeling hypoglycemic. As I got older I was simply astonished that she continued to do things that would make her feel horrible. Although she was an avid Adele Davis fan and knew a lot about healthy eating she had her vices and one of them was her pastries and coffee. I didn’t really understand her battle until I got older and experienced the scourge of hypoglycemia myself. And even though I’ve had every test in the book for low glucose and they’ve always come out normal I have severe and really disabling symptoms of hypoglycemia if I don’t eat every three hours. I’ve been taught this lesson literally thousands of times but haven’t quite learned and I still do things and find myself places without food and I crash and burn.
Yesterday although I took food to eat after church I came home and left for a party where there really wasn’t food so because I started feeling really bad I had to leave. As I was driving home I felt that familiar and horrible warning sign of impending doom and I didn’t get home in time to prevent the crash. So I went into the crash mode full on where I stayed until this afternoon when I felt better so I took a banana and peanut butter cracker and went for my 3.5 mile walk. The reality is that I have to eat before I start feeling any symptoms at all, because then I can prevent it from happening at all. If I do start feeling symptoms it’s really too late, eating will prevent a comatose state but it won’t prevent my feeling sick.
I really don’t need a diagnosis of hypoglycemia to know that there is really something messed up with my metabolism. I CANNOT go without food without severe and unrelenting suffering. If you have symptoms of hypoglycemia and you have normal lab tests you can still prevent yourself from suffering by eating small frequent meals consisting of real whole food (processed food is chock full of glucose plunging ingredients like refined carbs and high fructose corn syrup). Don’t buy into that there is nothing wrong with you and try to suck it up. In my opinion they just don’t have the right tests to “discover” some of the things that ail us yet. I never have the desire to eat sugar or refined foods because of the way they make me feel immediately after consuming them. To me eating a piece of refined cake is simply not worth the severe pain, heart beating wildly, blurred vision, sweat dripping off my face, feeling faint, etc. etc. I love to eat homemade cake but when I do (once or twice a year or so) I always eat it with some other really good whole food to make the glycemic index low enough for me to tolerate it.
If you have symptoms of hypoglycemia the best way to manage it is to eat a real whole food diet in 6 small meals a day with snacks. Figure out your own time table, for me just under three hours in between is about my limit. And from now on, I swear, even though I’ve said this so many times, I don’t care if I’m at a wedding, at the Oscars, or in the front row of a Presidential inauguration I’m going to stick to that time table, pull out my food and start eating. Otherwise for sure I will crash and burn and be sick for at least 24 hours and I don’t want to feel that EVER AGAIN!
Oh and if they do find another test, I don't want to do it, I cannot stand the thought even of going through some tortuous test and being sick and in pain for three weeks afterward. I happy with my own diagnostics, just have to stick to them!