HOW DO I TREAT A HYPO?

If you experience a hypo, it is important to treat this immediately by eating or drinking some quickly absorbed carbohydrate. If you don’t take action at this stage, your blood glucose level can continue to drop and result in confusion, loss of coordination and, eventually, loss of consciousness. You can avoid this by being aware of your symptoms and always having some food on hand. The recommended treatment for adults is 15g of rapidacting carbohydrate, but young children will need less.

Good choices for treating a hypo include:

■ glucose tablets or gels

■ jelly beans or other easy to chew confectionery (hard lollies can take too long to eat)

■ ordinary (sugarsweetened) soft drink or cordial

■ fruit juice

■ honey, glucose syrup, or rice malt syrup

If blood glucose levels remain low (below 3.9 mmol/L) after 15 minutes, treatment should be repeated.

While any form of carbohydrate will increase blood glucose levels, foods that are also high in fat, such as chocolate or ice-cream, will be absorbed more slowly, so are not the best forms of hypo treatment. If you are taking a medication called acarbose (Glucobay) it is important that you only use glucose to treat your hypos, as other forms of carbs will be absorbed too slowly. While the medication doesn’t cause hypos on its own, you may have hypos if you take it along with insulin or a sulphonylurea.

Once you have treated a hypo, if it’s a while until your next meal, you may need to follow this with a snack providing another serve of slower acting carbs, to prevent your blood glucose level dropping again. This could be a piece of fruit, a slice of grainy bread or some yoghurt. However, you may not need this extra snack if you are using an insulin pump. Your doctor or diabetes educator can advise you on this.