Thursday, July 5, 2012

Bad Blood sugar


For the 4th of July my husband and I went for a walk along the river. It was a great walk, totaling about 3 miles. I love him so much, and he makes this all feel so easy. I don’t think I could do this without him. We talked and joked, and he really motivated me to keep this all up.

“I support this a million %!” He told me

“That’s a lot of %” I said

“As long as you keep this up, I’m willing to encourage you and help give you the tools you need to make it work.” He told me

Well he also gets to help me when things start to crash. At the half-way point I started to feel my blood sugar drop. I am one of the “less common” people that have hypoglycemia (an abnormally diminished content of glucose in the blood, the term literally means "low sugar blood" and effects can range from mild dysphoria to more serious issues such as seizures, unconsciousness, and (rarely) permanent brain damage or death) without being a diabetic. So 12 blocks from the finish of our walk I was shaking and we had to stop to eat. I kept thinking “this is why I’m fat” and “how will I ever loss weight if every time I push myself I have to stop and eat?” 

However I know that’s not the truth. My hypoglycemia is just something I need to work with, and its one of the reasons I need to do this. I had oatmeal and tea before the walk, like 3-4 hours before. Not bad, but I should have had more protein to keep me going. I don’t eat a lot, but I don’t eat the best either.

We stopped at a place that was just about on the trail, a Mexican food place with the giant burritos. Now they didn’t tell us how big they were, so I got one with stake, and he got one with shredded beef. They had rice, beans, cheese, sour cream, and guacamole, covered in red sauce, 2 burritos the size of my forearms! I had to get my blood sugar up fast so I also had some horchata (a sweet rice drink). No we did not sit there and eat all of our food. We ate just over half of our burritos (we could have split one easy), and packed up the rest for later. Refilled our water bottles, and set off to finish our walk.

Shaun wants me to keep a granola bar or something like that on me at all times when I’m away from home. I think this is a good idea, but it sucks at the same time. Growing up I had points where I would feel shaky and panic eat. I didn’t know what it was; I just knew that eating fixed it. When I was pregnant with my little girl it happened and I had nothing to eat, I was walking. Well I ended up passing out and having 911 called and it was just bad. Now I know more about it, but it still feels like I have an umbilical core to food.

Yes we all need food to live, but I need food more than most. If I miss a meal and do anything my body freaks out. Then I have to eat or I could die. So I eat until I feel better, I have to drink sweet crap so that it gets into my blood and brain fast. Then I need to have real food so that I don’t just crash again. On top of that the body will block off energy from burning fat for a few hours after a low blood sugar spell. So I have to eat for energy, but most of the time I just feel like sleeping. Anytime this happens it feels like I had the hardest workout of my life, and my body needs to rest to recover. I hate it.

Yes this can be controlled, and we are working on that. That is one of the reasons I’m making the changes I am. Sadly having hypoglycemia means my pancreas is working in over drive all the time. That means it will wear down, and in older age hypoglycemia becomes diabetes. I don’t want that to happen sooner than it has to. I just wish I had known 10 years ago what I know now. 

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