Thursday, May 24, 2012

I just saw a blurb on nocturnal hypoglycemia in type 1 diabetics recently. The study it describes had thirty seven type 1 adults wear CGMs and heart monitors for three nights. During those three nights, a total of 18 hypoglycemic episodes were recorded, where hypoglycemia means a blood sugar of less than 63 mg/dl. For each episode of hypoglycemia, they took data from a period from the same time of night and same patient when blood sugar was at least 72 mg/dl. Then they compared data between the hypo periods and the non hypo. I was interested to see that heart rate was essentially the same. The average heart rate during hypoglycemia was 62 bpm, and for non-hypoglyemia, 63 bpm, with a standard deviation much larger than 1. This was interesting to me because I like to lie in bed, waiting to fall asleep, watching my clock, with my Dexcom receiver over my heart, and counting my heart beats. The receiver acts a little like a stethoscope; it really magnifies the sound of my heart. Also I can feel it through the Dexcom. When I go hypo, my pulse tends to feel faster, but I count the same number of beats, which I think says something interesting about my perception of time when I'm hypo. On an unrelated note, all of my labwork from Monday's visit came back normal. My blood sugar on the labwork was 129 mg/dl; my Dexcom at that moment was showing 108 with an up arrow, and I didn't test my blood sugar on my meter because I'd treated a hypo about an hour earlier and suspected my blood sugar was moving fast.

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