[angelsbridges]

Dumb question, I suppose. But is it normal to have both? Is that a symptom of prediabetes? I've been trying to look up having both, but have been unsuccessful.

How many of you get both?

[fgummett]

At the same time..? Never.

With poorly controlled BGs, is it expected that you will go low at some times and high at others..? Often.

Think of it like waves on the ocean : rough seas have both peaks and troughs, calm seas have nice flat swells that barely change from the horizontal

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And by definition, a truly "non-diabetic" person always has well controlled BGs... no matter what they eat.

[xMenace]

Very ofter Hypos are followed by long nasty Hypers after your liver dumps a bunch of glucose and hormones into your blood stream to save you. hypo-hangovers!

As a premee, It seems logical your body is struggling to maintain stability and loses teh battle either way once in awhile.

[Subby]

Originally Posted by angelsbridges

Dumb question, I suppose. But is it normal to have both? Is that a symptom of prediabetes? I've been trying to look up having both, but have been unsuccessful.

How many of you get both?

Are you firm in your understanding of the words? The word "glycemia" refers to the level of sugar in the blood. The words hyper and hypo of course mean, high and low. So, literally the terms mean

hyperglycemia - high blood sugar
hypoglycemia - low blood sugar

If that was way too back to basics, my apologies.... but it helps to cut away impressive sounding words sometimes. They are very straightforward things.

For someone on insulin therapy, staying in good control is to a greater or lesser extent a tightrope walk, and they will likely fall either way to some if not regular, then perhaps "expected", amount. Both are extremely familiar things, to insulin dependents. Fully blown diabetics who under medicate will always go high - this is the natural state of an unchecked diabetic - so in those cases, they may never or very rarely, see a low.

For someone prediabetic without injections, it would be a case of your pancreas not keeping up with sugar in the blood (not enough insulin = high blood sugar) or spurting too much/innapropriately compared to sugar in the blood (excess insulin = low blood sugar). I don't know how much you fit a typical profile, but both states are not suprising of a pancreas in trouble.

[AngelKitty]

Originally Posted by fgummett

Think of it like waves on the ocean : rough seas have both peaks and troughs, calm seas have nice flat swells that barely change from the horizontal

Very nice analogy Frank, the surfer girl in me relates to it nicely

[angelsbridges]

Thank you...and yes, I know they mean high and low blood sugar. I seem to swing between the two of them, so the ocean analogy was a really good one!

I know this is probably still a dumb question, but can this do any permanent damage to your body? (swinging from 150/160's to 70's?) My doctor says there is nothing wrong with me at all (other than being prediabetic and hypoglycemic&reactive hypo) My doctor is also a jerk (haha) and hasn't been helpful at all.

[fgummett]

Can this do any damage... well here is my other analogy (I only have the two )...

I think of the body like a house-plant which needs just the right amount of light, water, heat, plant-food, soil type etc... too much or too little of any of those and it will likely not fare too well... anything from wilting leaves, to a trip to the compost pile

In the same way, our bodies have evolved to function within certain ranges... there are many control mechanisms which strive to maintain these ranges... this is termed homeostasis

Think of what happens when our body-temperature is too high (fever) or too low (hypothermia), and how we have mechanisms such as sweating and shivering that work to maintain our normal temperature.

BG is one of these things which the body prefers to maintain in a "normal" range... the question may come down to what is considered the "normal" range

[Subby]

Swinging itself can cause damage, but only on the more extreme end (and you'd feel pretty traumatised and weird when that extreme happens) and probably usually caused by taking insulin.

The difficulty with deciding if your BGs may be high enough to cause damage, is that your quoted BG are only points of reference.... what happens between them is of prime importance. What is more convenient for assessing long term damage, is an A1c result. Or, a set of BG tests of fasting, premeal, 2 hour, 4 hour, for each meal, would give better indication what territory your BG is "hovering around".

If you are up at 150 only for a small part of the day and quickly move down to say 90s or 100s, I don't think you need worry overly about long term complications at this stage. Again though, an A1c would fill in the picture better for how indicating your risk.

It should be said though that diabetics who get bad complications within say 5 - 10 years generally have far, far worse BGs than you.

[angelsbridges]

Ok, that's good to know. I'm finding that it really is a pain to have them dx and go. They don't really explain anything to you.

I'm really glad they caught the prediabetes though...if it were more serious, I think I'd have a breakdown.

I'm finding that "normal" for me is between 90-100 (as long as I'm eating well - no slipping). Some days it's higher, some it's lower, but normally I'm around that range. Yesterday I stayed at 150 2 hours post prandial, and the day before that I was at 112 4 hours after eating. I guess it will just take some more exploring!