Symptoms of low blood sugar

 Early signs and symptoms of hypoglycaemia

Hypoglycaemia is a condition in which the sugar level in the blood is lower than the optimum or the required level when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin in the blood hence referred to as low blood sugar. The obvious symptoms of this condition include sweating, shaking, headache, hunger and blurred vision that occurs in the early stages. This condition can lead to death, coma or seizure if ignored.

However, not all those who are suffering from diabetes will experience early warning signs or symptoms.

Dr. Richard Bergentstal, who is also the author of an accompanying editorial on the study that was published in The Lancet, said that, literally, one can be driving down the road in a vehicle and start going round in a circle or even pass out.

He also added that the diabetics who are not able to realize when their blood sugar level is dangerously low are the appropriate groups of people who should use the continuous glucose monitoring devices which rises different alarm sounds when the blood sugar is too high or too low.

This group of people was not included in the earlier study of the device and the reason being that hypoglycemic unawareness is both scary and dangerous, this made the researchers to be afraid to experiment on search patients.

A large number of people who suffer from type 1 diabetes should be injected multiples time in a day with insulin, this is according to Norbert Hermanns, a senior study author from the Diabetes Academy Mergentheim, Germany.

Another cause of dangerously-low sugar level is miscalculation of how much insulin to be injected in the blood system or when to eat snacks.

 The trial Process

A total of 149 individuals who suffer from type 1 diabetes and hypoglycemic unawareness participated in the new study that was conducted in Germany.

For the first 28 days of the study that lasted for six months, every participant had to use the traditional way to monitor their blood sugar: The traditional way involved pricking a finger several times a day to draw a drop of blood and test with a machine. In addition to this, they had to wear continuous glucose monitors for about 85% of the time, although they could not see the data from the monitors that they were putting on.

After that, there was random assignment for the participants to either continue with calculating their insulin doses and the amount of food to be consumed based on the result of finger prick (the control group), or to switch to the use of continuous monitoring devices.

To the group that used the continuous monitoring devices, a change was realized in the average number of hypoglycemic episodes. The average fell from approximately 11 monthly to 3.5 per month whereas there is no significant improvement in the control group in terms of the average number.