If you are like most sufferers of hypoglycemia, you have at this point seen at least two or three doctors and all of them tell you that nothing is wrong with you, that you are in perfect health. You feel like telling your doctor, "If I am so healthy, why do I feel so bad?" The basic problem is that the medical establishment does not recognize all of the manifestations of hypoglycemia. The generally accepted definition is that your blood glucose level has to drop below 50 mg per 100 ml in order for you to be deemed to have hypoglycemia. I was once told by an endocrinologist that I did not have hypoglycemia. He told me that he saw a lot of people like me, and that they did not have hypoglycemia either. I asked him that if so many people had similar symptoms, didn't that show that there was something there that needed to be investigated. That was about the point that he quit listening to me.
That's the bad news. The good news is that if you have reactive
hypoglycemia, that is if your body has the same reactions as someone
who has what the doctors
classify as hypoglycemia (50mg per 100 ml blood glucose), the same
treatment
will help you. Let me give you some resources first and then give a
thumbnail
sketch of the treatment.
The first basic treatment is to avoid all foods that contain elemental sugar. This includes almost all desserts and junk foods. (Actually that wouldn't be so bad for a "healthy" person would it?) It also includes all non diet soft drinks. A lot of people find that caffeine also stimulates the release of blood glucose and precipitates a reaction. That is the reason why caffeine helps keep people awake and "gives" them energy, it's really the increase in blood glucose giving them the extra energy. Beware of anything that comes in a box from the supermarket. The food industry loves to add sugar to things to entice you to eat their products. The worst offender you can think of are breakfast cereals. They not only put sugar in their product, but on their product. The cereal that I have ended up with is Shredded Wheat, which has no added sugar.
The second basic treatment is to give your body small doses of food at more frequent times during the day (the frequency people use varies from 6 times a day up to 11 or 12 times a day). These snacks should, of course, be smaller portions of things which are digested slowly. Things that are digested slowly include protein and complex carbohydrates. For comparison, simple carbohydrates are include things like sugar. Complex carbohydrates include whole grains and fresh vegetables. Beware of everything that has ingredients that end in -ose, which denotes a sugar. These include dextrose, glucose, maltose, sucrose, sorbital. Fruits are sort of in a gray area, with their fructose. If you have a fruit drink, such as apple juice, then the sugars can be absorbed quickly. If you have applesauce, then the body has to do some breaking down of the applesauce before it can get to the sugar. If you have a whole apple, then the body has a lot of breaking down to do. You have to read labels to see if the products have sugar in them.
To help me keep my weight down, a dietician prescribed non fat
proteins for me to eat. These include nonfat string cheese, cream
cheese, and bean dip. Surprisingly, if you cut out the simple
carbohydrates, you probably won't gain weight eating all those snacks.
In fact, you might even lose weight!
Once again my links to the hypo chat group went out of date.
The last time I had contact with them they had the group in with
the Yahoo groups. You might want to do a search there for
the hypo chat group. ComputServe
used to have a group, but I do not know at all even if CompuServe is
still
serving.