June 4, 2002
Daily Care
Question from Las Vegas, Nevada, USA:
! have just spent almost an hour reading about numerous children with the same symptoms (headaches, lethargy, vomiting) as my daughter has had since right before she was diagnosed. We went through the gamut of food allergies, etc., and of course her doctor is adamant that it is not caused by the diabetes.
My daughter feels great when her sugars run 180-250 mg/dl [10-13.9 mmol/L], but if she’s lower, she is symptomatic of hypoglycemia. which has been documented at the school nurse’s office as well as at home.
After two years of torment, my theory is that this is caused when my daughter’s body runs out of fuel. (She is very active.) When I can get her to eat a good rounded meal she has very few problems. When she does not want to eat or eats very little and is active, she usually gets sick. How can we get a study done on this? It seems to be more common then I was led to believe.
Answer:
When one gets used to high glucose readings, changes closer to the normal range make you feel miserable. The only way to “fix” this problem seems to be to feel “unwell” for a few days and then get used to what normal blood glucose values are like.
The dangers of acclimatizing to high sugar levels reflect the long term risks of blindness, kidney failure, hypertension, nerve damage, heart attacks, etc. The DCCT confirmed what many of us believed and allowed excellent science to answer such risk questions. You should talk to your daughter’s diabetes team quite frankly about these symptoms and work closely with them to get the hyperglycemic values downward if your goal is to minimize or prevent these types of very real complications.
Insulin-Dependent Diabetes in Children, Adolescents and Adults – How to become an expert on your own diabetes, by Dr Ragnar Hanas, is an excellent manual that you also may want to review.
SB
