Day 5-

Ok, so today we talk about Blood Glucose, aka blood sugar, or just plain BG. Your BG is the level of glucose in your blood…. yes blood. It is measured here in the US mg/Dl. So it gets complicated from the get-go. The standard of a normal BG reading differs from organization to organization. Some organizations say a FASTING BG should be 80-120, others claim 60-110 or 70-100, or, or, or. When you have T1D you use something called a glucose meter to check your BG 8-10 times a day by poking your finger with a tiny needle called a lancet. Yes, I said 8-10 times a day, sometimes it is actually more if you are having a bad BG day or it can be less, but is rarely less. I see you have added up how many holes you can create in your fingers within a week… up to 70… yup that is correct. That is why if I cut myself you bet I get my meter out and check my BG! So, back to the “normal range of fasting BG”. So one of the issues with this is every glucose meter has a range of accuracy. Two different meters can be within 30 points of each other. 30!!!!!!! There goes your whole range. Also every T1D is different. For me, as an example, if my BG is 80 that means it is going down, sinking, man overboard. Very, very rarely do I go up after an 85 or below reading. So if my BG says 70 then I have to treat it as a low BG and have to have some carbohydrates, like juice or I like to use Honey Stinger Gels. But I only have 20-25 carbs to treat it… not a ton or it will go up to much and then my BG will be high. Another problem with having BG on the lower side of normal say 60-80 is you develop something called hypoglycemic unawareness. This is where your BG can be low, very, very low, say 30 and you can’t feel it and you don’t have any symptoms and you can pass out and if no one is there to give you something called a glucagon shot to revive you, you die. Yes, if you become unconscious from low BG and you are not administered glucose in some way you die. Fun times right? Ok, so back to BG target range. After you eat every person’s BG rises as you digest your food. It is only supposed to go up so much, a T1D target range for 2 hours post meal is 150-170 max…. ha ha haaaaaaa they are HILARIOUS! In a perfect world that would work, but something I forgot to mention is EVERYTHING IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE AFFECTS YOUR BG if you have T1D… well may be not everything, but pretty damn close! Illnesses, stress, hormones, the weather… yes the weather, sleep, food, exercise, the time of day and what you are doing, any sort of movement, just to name a few. If your heart rate is up your BG is going down, stress can make it either go up or deep seated stress and make it drop or maybe go up or who the F@ck knows.. Also a fun fact, when your BG goes low your liver automatically releases stored glucose to compensate for the low, so if you have T1D then your BG goes up and depending on how much extra glucose you have stored it can go wayyyyyy up, then you wait and give your self insulin to make it come down and then it is low again and you treat it and then we go back up the rollercoaster… so sometimes when you see me and I tell you I am having a bad day, believe me. Having BG all over makes you feel like you are hung over and got hit by a bus, plus if it is at night, say goodbye to any sleep. Oh and the low symptoms are super fun too, dizziness, shortness of breath, brain fuzziness, sensory overload -the frontal lobe of your brain that filters everything shuts down so now you are feeling and hearing every single thing going on around you… lights, noises, wind…. all at once at a high intensity. For a while when I woke up at night with a low BG my legs were cold from the inside out because one of your bodies defense mechanisms when your BG is low is to protect it’s organs and your brain so in return your body shuts down circulation to your extremities. Fortunately, that symptom was short lived. And now we move on to high BG. For a T1D anything over 250 mg/DL is high, meaning that is when organ damage starts happening. You see when you BG is high it actually makes your blood in your veins and arteries thicker, like sludge, so you whole body has to work harder. That is why you hear of Diabetics, T1D and T2D who have had continuously high BGs having serious complications, such as heart disease, eye damage, neuropathy, just to name a few. When your BG is high you heart has to work very hard to pump that sludge. It is no good, no good at all. Also you can end up in DKA, which, I have talked about a lot and the end result can be death. Symptoms of high BG is shortness of breath, thirst, dehydration, brain fogginess, exhaustion, and blurred eye-site because when your BG is high it actually makes the fluid in your eyes behind the lenses thicker and then in-turn pushes on your lenses creating kind of a fish bowl effect. It also affects your depth perception and can take hours to clear up. Just a reminder if you have T1D you use insulin to bring your BG down. So a review Low BG can equal death and high BG can equal death. I am not saying this to be dramatic I am telling you all this because it is a fact and my reality… fun stuff right?! Everyday my number one goal, no joke, is “don’t die”.