Diet taboos for patients with hypoglycemia

First, you must not drink alcohol on an empty stomach. Second, you must not rely on simple sugars such as glucose and concentrated sugar water as a daily means of raising blood sugar for a long time. Third, you must not fast for long periods of time, diet or deliberately skip meals. Let’s talk about the remaining details slowly.

Last month, while I was squeezing in the subway during the morning rush hour, I saw a little girl in Lolita falling straight to the side. Her face was so pale that she couldn't even cover her lipstick. After she recovered, she said that she had been hungry for three days for a photo shoot. She only drank boiled water and didn't even bring a snack. The man next to her brought rock candy to her rescue. To be honest, this kind of deliberate starvation in order to lose weight is the most common reason why young girls suffer from hypoglycemia nowadays. Don't think "I'll just be hungry for a few meals and it'll be fine." If you're really dizzy and knock yourself on the steps or the subway door, the consequences will be much more serious than gaining weight.

When it comes to fasting, many people think that it is only when you wake up in the morning that it is called fasting. In fact, if you have not eaten solid food for four or five hours in a row, it is basically a fasting state. Do not drink alcohol at this time, not even any alcohol. When alcohol enters the body, it will directly suppress the liver and prevent it from decomposing the glycogen stored in it. It is equivalent to having saved half a box of emergency fuel, but someone directly pinches the fuel pipe, and the blood sugar drops faster than you run five kilometers. Don’t believe in the idea of ​​“a small amount of red wine to maintain health”. Last year, I met a person with type 2 diabetes. His blood sugar was usually under stable control. He drank two cans of cold beer on an empty stomach at a dinner party with friends and was sent to the emergency room. His blood sugar dropped to 2.1mmol/L, which almost caused a serious accident.

Let’s talk about the issue of “eating sugar” that everyone is most concerned about. There are currently two different views in the nutrition field. There is no absolute right or wrong. It depends on which situation you belong to: one is the mainstream clinical emergency response idea. To be honest, when hypoglycemia attacks - that is, when you have started to shake your hands, feel flustered, break out in cold sweats, and feel weak when you look at things, don’t worry about whether it is healthy or not. First, take supplements. 15-20g of fast-absorbing simple sugars, such as half a cup of ordinary Coke, 4 sugar cubes, or two hard candies, will do. Check your blood sugar again after 15 minutes. If it rises to the normal range, eat two more bites of bread, soda crackers and other complex carbohydrates to cushion the blood sugar from falling again. This is a life-saving principle. Whether you are a diabetic or an ordinary person with low blood sugar, you should follow this when an attack occurs. The other is the idea of ​​daily prevention, which is more suitable for people with reactive hypoglycemia who do not have diabetes but often get panicked when they are hungry. If there is no attack at ordinary times, just take out a candy and eat it. Otherwise, it will stimulate a large amount of insulin secretion, which will easily cause subsequent blood sugar to drop even lower, and fall into a vicious cycle of "eating sugar - raising blood sugar - lowering blood sugar - making you hungrier". For daily snacks, try to choose foods such as oats, nuts, and whole-wheat bread that slowly raise blood sugar to ensure stability.

Oh, by the way, a pitfall that many people have stepped on: don’t use more than 70% dark chocolate as emergency candy. That thing has a high cocoa content, and sugar accounts for less than 10%. If you put half a piece in it, it won't rise for a long time, so you might as well use two bags of QQ candy. Don't fool yourself for the "low sugar and healthy" gimmick.

There is another small detail that is easily overlooked: don’t drink too strong coffee or tea on an empty stomach. Many office workers are in a hurry in the morning and drink a cup of double-concentrated Americano on an empty stomach. Halfway through the drink, they begin to feel flustered and their hands shake. They think the coffee is too refreshing. In fact, caffeine stimulates adrenaline secretion and accelerates blood sugar consumption. For people who are prone to hypoglycemia, it is best to drink it with steamed buns or bread.

The recently hyped ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting are still controversial for ordinary people, and they are definitely a minefield for people with hypoglycemia. The body's sugar reserves are originally smaller than others, but if you completely cut off carbohydrate intake and go without meals for a long time, isn't it just forcing your blood sugar to hit the bottom line? A fan left a message to me before, saying that he fainted twice after following the ketogenic trend for half a month. He thought it was because he didn't adapt. This is not a lack of adaptability. It's because his body is screaming for help.

In fact, after all, these taboos are not complicated in nature. Just don't mess with your blood sugar and don't let it go up and down like a roller coaster. Anyone who has ever suffered from hypoglycemia knows that the feeling of being weak and unable to stand is much more uncomfortable than missing a sip of wine or missing two bites of a diet meal. I really can't remember so much, so I just put two hard candies and a small bag of soda crackers in my bag, take them out and take a few bites when I'm rushing to get to eight in the morning, take the subway, or work overtime late. It's more effective than any health secrets.

Oh yes, a final professional reminder: The standard for judging hypoglycemia for diabetic patients is that blood sugar is lower than 3.9mmol/L, and for ordinary healthy people, it is lower than 2.8mmol/L. If hypoglycemia occurs frequently, don’t just rely on sugar to cope with it. Go to the hospital to check the cause first and rule out the possibility of organic disease.