How Does Hyperglycemia Happen
Insulin is a hormone that lets your body use the sugar in your blood, which comes primarily from carbohydrates in the food that you eat. Hyperglycemia happens when your body has too little insulin to use the sugar in your blood.
People with type 1 diabetes can have episodes of hyperglycemia every day. Although this can be frustrating, it rarely creates a medical emergency. Not taking enough insulin can lead to hyperglycemia .
Other things that can cause hyperglycemia include:
- Having trouble seeing or concentrating
- Experiencing stomach pain, nausea, or vomiting
- Having sweet-smelling or fruity breath
- Cuts or sores that do not heal, infections, and unexplained weight loss may also be signs of long-term hyperglycemia.
If you notice any of these symptoms, you should check your blood sugar. If your blood sugar is very high, you should also test for ketones in either your blood or urine.
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What Are The Signs & Symptoms Of High Blood Sugar Levels
Signs of high blood sugar levels include:
- Peeing a lot: The kidneys respond by flushing out the extra glucose in urine. People with high blood sugar need to pee more often and in larger amounts.
- Drinking a lot: Someone losing so much fluid from peeing that often can get very thirsty.
- Losing weight even though your appetite has stayed the same: If there isnât enough insulin to help the body use glucose, the body breaks down muscle and stored fat instead in an attempt to provide fuel to hungry cells.
- Feeling tired: Because the body canât use glucose for energy properly, a person may feel unusually tired.
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What You Should Do Next
Managing your blood sugar is probably one of the most important aspects to health, longevity and disease prevention.
Unfortunately, it can sometimes get confusing or you might feel overwhelmed with too much information what to DO or NOT do.
Because this is such an important topic, Ive created a special page to help give you proven solutions and options, and eliminate the confusion so you can have healthy blood sugar levels at any age.
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Does High Blood Sugar Cause Fatigue And Tired Feeling
In fact, fatigue & tired feeling are pretty common in people with hyperglycemia or high blood sugar. Hyperglycemia is a condition when the amount of glucose in the bloodstream is higher than normal. It may signal that something goes awry with the glucose metabolism in the body.
How does glucose metabolism work?
The performance of your glucose metabolism is closely associated with the fluctuation of your blood sugar. In most healthy people, their blood glucose levels do not fluctuate widely throughout the day.
Typically, your blood glucose reaches its peak level during eating and after meal. And for the lowest level, it usually occurs between meals. If you are fasting for at least 8 hours, your blood sugar also decreases lower.
The fit status of your hormone insulin is very crucial for your glucose metabolism.
Without good performance of insulin, your body cannot convert the glucose to become energy. To get a specific amount of energy, glucose taken from foods need to be absorbed first by cells and muscles of the body from the bloodstream. And insulin has a significant contribution for the mechanism of this absorption.
Not all glucose is directly converted to become energy. Some may be stored in your liver as glycogen and in your fat cells as fat. They can be converted again into energy when your body needs.
How does high blood sugar cause fatigue, weakness, and tired feeling?
Whats more?
Why Does Having Diabetes Cause Fatigue
Having diabetes changes your blood. Imagine someone without diabetes having blood that flows like water. Now imagine someone with diabetes having blood that flows like maple syrup. When the blood flows much thicker and slower, like syrup, it is harder for cells to flow through the bloodstream to provide energy and oxygen to parts of the body, including the brain.
Diabetes also causes inflammation, which sends messages to the brain that the body needs to take a rest in order to heal. When this happens, fatigue is going to be a problem.
One of the biggest reasons that diabetes causes fatigue is because of its complications. Organs such as the kidneys, eyes, heart, and the nerves can all be damaged because of diabetes. End stage renal disease, which is when the kidneys fail, can lead to low red blood cells. Low red blood cells, which is also known as anemia, can lead to fatigue. Studies have shown that people with diabetic complications such as nerve damage, heart disease, and kidney problems have increased levels of fatigue. The next section of this article discussed more things that can cause fatigue.
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Additional Causes Of Fatigue
Then there are causes that arent entirely medical:
Lack of sleep or poor sleep Some people are too wound up or too busy to sleep. Or theyre up to use the bathroom all night, or they have obstructive sleep apnea , which can wake them up many times an hour. If that is happening to you, you are likely to be fatigued during the day.
Shift work rotating shifts or working nights can cause fatigue directly by messing with your body clock or indirectly by disrupting sleep.
Depression is very common with diabetes. Most depressed people feel fatigued, even if they dont feel sad. Even at low levels, depression can sap your motivation. Why get up? You can take a free test to see if you are depressed here.
Doing too much: If youre ripping and running all day, not taking breaks or even stopping to breathe much, you are courting fatigue. Patti wrote, I think that forcing myself to do everything is just causing the fatigue to worsen. Shes probably right.
Stress: In small doses, psychological or physical stress can give you energy, but if it goes on too long, it will wear you out.
Diet: Too much carbohydrate especially refined carbs can make anyone tired, especially with diabetes. Kat wrote, now that I am eating a higher protein/fat, lower-carbohydrate diet, I have shaken off that really sleepy/extreme fatigue that I used to have every day.
What Can I Do If My Blood Sugar Drops In The Afternoon & I Get Tired
You know the feeling: The clock strikes 2 p.m., and you can barely pick your head up off the desk. Your first instinct may be to reach for a cup of coffee or an energy drink, but slow down. The tiredness youre feeling is likely due to a drop in blood sugar, which cant be corrected with caffeine. Although that cup of Joe may give you a quick energy burst, you have to work on correcting your blood sugar levels.
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Does High Blood Sugar Make You Tired
There would be a unanimous yes to the question does high blood sugar make you sleepy? if you ever happen to ask this to a person with diabetes. Without hesitation, they would be able to list out the high blood sugar symptoms, what it does to their bodies, and how difficult it is to sometimes even keep their eyes open when the sugar level is beyond a certain number. When the sugars are high, the body feels drained and unusually lethargic. Even the daily life tasks seem like a burden and it takes double the amount of energy to be able to complete those. It becomes tough to concentrate as well making the tasks not only longer but also tiresome overall.
If you have been diagnosed with diabetes or know someone who is living with it, you may realize the overall patterns and trends of sleepiness. Since the condition can take a lot out of you mentally and physically in terms of the efficient management of the signs and symptoms, high blood sugar levels can create havoc in the body.
What Is High Blood Sugar
High blood sugar occurs when theres a buildup of excess glucose in the bloodstream. This is more often a concern for someone with diabetes than it is for someone without it. Our bodies are typically pretty great at keeping our blood sugar in perfect balance, Deena Adimoolam, M.D., assistant professor of endocrinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, tells SELF. But in some situations, like when a person has diabetes, high blood sugar can happen.
Blood sugar is measured in milligrams per deciliter , and a fasting blood sugar of greater than 125 mg/dL is considered hyperglycemic, the Cleveland Clinic says. A person can also be considered to have hyperglycemia if their blood glucose level is higher than 180 mg/dL one to two hours after eating, the Cleveland Clinic says.
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Why Does Diabetes Make You Tired
1. Abnormal Blood Sugar Levels
Both high and low blood glucose levels can cause tiredness.
- High blood sugar levels: In type-1 diabetes, your body fails to produce enough insulin to keep blood sugar levels low, while your body fails to utilize insulin properly if you have type-2 diabetes. Insulin transports glucose into your cells to provide you with energy. When insulin is not enough or is not working efficiently, the sugar in your blood cannot be transferred into cells, so cells cant get enough energy to function well, making you feel tired.
- Low blood sugar levels: Your tiredness could be due to hypoglycemia or low blood sugar, which is the result of too much insulin in your body. This may happen when you consume too much insulin or diabetes medications. Besides, eating quickly digestible carbs will make your blood sugar level go up and then crash quickly within a couple of hours. The absence of enough glucose in your blood also makes you feel tired.
2. Diabetes Daily Management and Stress
Daily management of tasks are difficult with diabetes. You need to track your blood sugar levels all the time, take your medications in a timely manner, pay attention to your diet, and do regular exercise. Taking care of all these things can make you feel stressed. When you are under stress, your body triggers the production of glucose in the blood. This can cause regular tiredness, especially in people with type-2 diabetes.
Identifying Blood Sugar Spikes
At times, the signs of high blood sugar levels may not be very clear and prominent. In fact, at times, the same person can experience different symptoms during high blood sugar levels as well. Diabetes and sweating fatigue is one of the major symptoms one can look out for during high blood sugars. Essentially, because the sugar levels are high, a person might feel breathless and tired which may result in heavy breathing and fatigue.
Other symptoms of high blood sugars could be:
- Feeling hungrier than usual
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What Causes High Blood Sugar
Since we want to understand does high blood sugar make you sleepy?, it would first be important to know and identify the causes of high blood sugars. High blood sugar or hyperglycemia can be caused due to several reasons. All of these reasons and factors can also be interconnected at times and can play a role in the dramatic ups and downs of these levels. When there is too much glucose in the body that is unused and not bound by the insulin molecules, a situation of high blood sugar arises.
Here are a few of the Causes of Hyperglycemia
What Are Side Effects Of High Glucose
The most serious effects of blood sugar swings are a higher risk for diabetes-related health complications such as stroke, heart disease, and nerve damage .
When is blood sugar too high?
The recommended fasting glucose range for a person without diabetes is 70 to 130mg/dL. If your blood glucose level after an eight-hour fast is above 130mg/dL, thats called fasting hyperglycemia.
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Fatigue After Eating Sugar Heres What All You Need To Know
Do you feel exhausted and tired every time you eat an ice cream or a muffin? Read the following article to find out the reasons behind your experience of tiredness after eating sugar.
Do you feel exhausted and tired every time you eat an ice cream or a muffin? Read the following article to find out the reasons behind your experience of tiredness after eating sugar.
We all love sweets and often consume them to satisfy our taste buds. Some of us even get sugar cravings, which no other foods can satisfy. Sweets or any other high sugar content food item, for that matter, can alleviate our mood or so we think. In some people however, it has an adverse effect. Following are the causes, certain accompanying symptoms and preventive measures to be taken to alleviate the condition.
Practice Healthy Sleep Habits
Your daytime drowsiness may be worsened by poor nighttime sleep. Make sure to:
- Sleep in a dark room. Use heavy, lined curtains and block out as much light as possible. Get blackout curtains if not feasible.
- Avoid using electronic devices before bed, even the tiny amount of light from a phone or alarm clock can delay your circadian rhythm ! The best way to make sure this happens is to put your device on airplane mode before bed.
- Limit eating at night. Eating too close to bedtime activates the digestive system, which is likely whats keeping you up later than usual anyway! Avoid eating after 7 PM if possible and be aware of how your body feels after eating late at night.
- Exercise regularly, but not too close to bedtime . Exercise helps burn off sugar throughout the day and is shown to improve sleep quality as well!
- Avoid caffeine after 2 PM if possible, caffeine can last in your system longer than youd think! And being awake when it wears off can induce grogginess.
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Sugar And Its Affect On Sleep
The more sugar you consume, the more that it will affect your bodys ability to get in some quality sleep. While you sleep, your body goes through different levels of deep rest, and the most rejuvenating level is called rapid eye movement sleep .
The more sugar you have before bed, the less of a chance you have of staying in deep Rapid Eye movement sleep. Even if you do not fully wake up during the night, it can pull you out of REM sleep, affecting the sensations of feeling well-rested in the morning.
Keep Your Sugars In Check
For morning tiredness, always check fasting blood sugar and 3:00 am blood sugar levels.
As already mentioned above, one of the main causes of tiredness after waking up in the morning might be due to high fasting blood sugar and weakness at around 3:00 am could be due to a drop in blood sugar at that time.
In such cases, follow the guidelines mentioned above, under the first point of diabetes fatigue management.
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A Low Blood Sugar Level And Driving
You may still be allowed to drive if you have diabetes or youre at risk of a low blood sugar level for another reason, but youll need to do things to reduce the chance of this happening while youre driving.
You also need to tell the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and your car insurance company about your condition.
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How Is Hyperglycemia Diagnosed
If you have diabetes and notice a sudden change in your blood sugar levels during your home monitoring, you should alert your doctor of your symptoms. The increase in blood sugar may affect your treatment plan.
Regardless of whether you have diabetes, if you begin experiencing any symptoms of hyperglycemia, you should speak to your doctor. Before going to your appointment, you should note what symptoms youre experiencing. You should also consider these questions:
- Has your diet changed?
- Have you had enough water to drink?
- Are you under a lot of stress?
- Were you just in the hospital for surgery?
- Were you involved in an accident?
Once at your doctors appointment, your doctor will discuss all of your concerns. Theyll perform a brief physical exam and discuss your family history. Your doctor will also discuss your target blood sugar level.
If youre age 59 or younger, a safe blood sugar range is generally between 80 and 120 milligrams per deciliter . This is also the projected range for people who dont have any underlying medical conditions.
People who are age 60 or older and those who have other medical conditions or concerns may have levels between 100 and 140 mg/dL.
Your doctor may conduct an A1C test to determine what your average blood sugar level has been in recent months. This is done by measuring the amount of blood sugar attached to the oxygen-carrying protein hemoglobin in your red blood cells.
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