Re: Wondering if this is related

>The issue is MaryG, that whenever I get my blood Sugar tested it is always perfectly healthy. And that has been by a doctor about 4 times within the last 6 months. Plus I did check it when I had a device about 2 years ago, and it would at worst be about 60 or sometimes no higher than 100.

High blood Sugar being particularly not likely in my case, since I often showed more signs of low blood sugar.

Hi Sam,

I am a bit confused; I was thinking that you didn't have a doctor. I'm glad that you do, and I'd think that would be the place to detail your symptoms, starting with those that bother you the most. To make sure you don't skip over those pointing toward diabetes, my idea is that you might put these somewhere near the top of the list: 1) urine smelling of ammonia at times, 2) extreme tiredness after eating, 3) improvement in symptoms after fasting, 4) periods of impaired mental functioning that are not always present but are present when you generally feel *so tired*.

I'd suggest writing down your symptoms succintly in a list on a piece of paper, with a copy for the doctor as you present the ideas it contains. Your doctor, if she/he is in any of the general specialites, has been trained to look for and find diabetes. With a doctor that you fully inform of your problems, you don't need the internet or me for discovering your diabetes if you have it.

So I hope you'll be at your doctor's soon, Sam. I hope that, with your doctor's help, you can find ways to start feeling better.

Especially for the benefit of others who might be wondering about diabetes for themselves, I'd just add these couple of comments...

1) Hypoglycemia isn't a discrete disease that stays the same if it suddenly pops up. There's a continuum that heads toward diabetes mellitis, and hypoglycemia occurs at the beginning. It often develops gradually, and while the straight hypoglycemia stage can last for years for some people, for many others it proceeds to borderline/prediabetes and eventually to full-blown diabetes. The Type I kind of diabetes can skip the hypoglycemia stage, but most/all? diabetics that are of the more common Type II kind have gone through a stage of hypoglycemia enroute to contracting the full-blown diabetes. And the hypoglycemia problem is never fully gone out of the picture. The higher a blood Sugar goes up above normal, the larger the prod on the diabetic body's tendency to overdo the insulin production in a protective response: "brittle" diabetes is what that tendency is called when you can, within a few hours' time zoom far too high to far too low. And in the opposite direction. All the while you are *so tired* you can't think or remember anything as that blood sugar change process is going on, at a sometimes amazingly fast rate.

2) Just taking a blood sugar isn't a really good way of going about diagnosing diabetes if you seriously have reasons to think you might have it. In particular, a morning blood draw after a fast, isn't particularly likely to show diabetes unless it's well on its way and pretty bad. Three other ways to diagnose diabetes are better: 1) Take an A1C reading. The higher above 5.5 the result, the more you want to start taking more readings and seriously paying attention to what you eat because diabetes is more likely than not. 2) Have a blood sugar reading taken at exactly 2 hours after sitting down for a nice full meal with plenty of carbohydrates and without exercising before the blood draw. That blood sugar reading ought not be above 140. 3) Buy a blood sugar monitor and look at your patterns for a few days to make sure you're not zooming up or falling too far down (nothing above 140 at the two-hour mark, and nothing below 70 at any point). Normal persons have bodies that can regulate so that there are no wild fluctuations at all. If you find hypoglycemia, then consider that you are prediabetic and read up/start paying attention to how many carbs you consume at any one particular meal. Start thinking in terms of tiny meals or snacks much more frequently than what you've been used to.


Best of luck,
Mary
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