Hypoglycemia unawareness?

[adamcerious]

I am a 24-year-old with type 2 diabetes. Tonight while playing a video game I suddenly started to feel warm inside, became nervous and started shaking a bit. I thought it might be my blood sugar and sure enough my meter read mine as 58. I ate some food and got it back up to around 113, and the symptoms went away. Some research leads me to believe I had an episode of hypoglycemia unawareness. Does this sound correct? Should I be worried about this happening again? I usually keep my blood sugar very steady, and am startled and scared by what happened.

[KevinHarney]

You sound like you are completely correct to me.  No need to really worry about it unless it starts happening more fequently.  This does happen occassionally with diabetics and is just part of life.  You reacted and treated it properly and quickly and that is the key.  It can be startling and scary when it happens especially at night in bed.  As you can see it can come on VERY fast so it needs to be treated fast as well.  If you delay it is possible that you could go unconscience and will not be able to treat it.  At 24 this could possibly be related to some hormone thing going on in your body but I think that most of that should be over by now.  Though these changes occur through your life at various ages and most people do not notice them sometimes having an illness can emphasize them and that could be the case here.  If symptoms persist you might want to see a Dr.

[Pete919usa]

I agree with Kevin... sounds like a sudden drop in blood sugar ...or maybe a slow one... how involved in that video game did you get?  If you get really distracted by a project or task for a few hours, especially if sitting / not moving around, you might not notice the symptoms for a while.  Especially if you haven't eaten in a while...

Just remember that it's important to stick to a schedule of eating (preferably small meals every few hours) to keep your blood sugars in control.  Also, it's a little unusual for Type 2 diabetics to "go hypo" and it's usually caused by the meds taken to control blood glucose; so if you are on meds, your eating schedule is even more important.  

Just as general info, in Type 2 diabetics, alcohol can also cause hypoglycemic episodes and then cause rebound high sugars that can take days to get back under control, so be cautious about that, too.

Overall, it's a good idea to always have some sugar source with you at all times (a piece of hard candy or an energy bar) just in case...  And yes, if you have more episodes talk to your doc about it and maybe adjusting your meds.