Hungry Thoughts
Wednesday, November 3, 2010 at 7:00AM One thing people without diabetes ask me is what low bg's and high bg's feel like. This is something I always find difficult since when you are very low or very high your brain is not working so well. It makes for weird thoughts.
I typically feel like my head is in a vice when I am high. My eyes feel like they are going to pop out of my head and I want to find the nearest McDonalds for a large diet coke, since their diet coke is the best (which should be it's own blog post).
Lows are difficult. I have always talked about feeling shaky, sweaty, and almost like I am drunk. I get silly when I am low typically unless I get very low and then I get really sad. Like a "poor me" thing happens and I have no access to my internal safe full of hope. It is pathetic but I cannot beat myself up since I am not in my right mind.
For me, highs are when I get irritable, not lows.
But last night I had a weird thought. I was lying in bed with the covers off of me. Covered in sweat I thought to myself, "this feels like I am hungry in my head!" It felt like my head was empty like your stomach does when you haven't eaten all day and want to chow down on everything in site.
It was hunger, no question, but in my head! It was weird because the whole time I am thinking about this in my famished head, I was going lower and lower. My brain was hungry, for GLUCOSE and here I am thinking about how cool it is that I found a new way to describe my low.
Is this some kind of trick by diabetes to get me to think about something else so I don't treat my low and it can finally get the best of me? That thought crossed my mind as I was chomping down some glucose tabs.
Do you get the hungry head thing? How do you describe what your lows and highs feel like when you talk to people without diabetes?
Reader Comments (9)
YES. Absolutely I get hungry in my head when I'm low. Especially when I'm lying in bed, for some reason when lying down I feel it more the way you've described. Lol...funny but true!
George...funny how you described "not being in your right mind" . This is how I try to explain it to school personnel when educating them about diabetes and lows...and WHY it is important more than one person in the school be trained to help a low type 1 elementary school aged child. I recently wrote a post on this very topic...about the Brain being Rendered Useless.
At the end of the post I stated:
This is the hardest part of explaining "d" to non"d" peeps for me. The reality of the situation is that the brain can ONLY use sugar as a fuel source. LOW BLOOD SUGAR = DECOMPENSATION of YOUR BRAIN FUNCTION ("neuroglycopenia"). You cut a finger, you put a band aid on it. You get a cold, you take cold medicine. You have high blood pressure, you remember to take your anti-hypertensives. You have asthma, you grab your inhaler. Do you see a theme here? For all of these ailments, you are able to mentally process the next logical step on how to help yourself. That is not the case with a low blood sugar. The brain is rendered useless.
I hope I did it justice...it is hard to know how to explain things when I don't, myself, have "d".
Great post!
I totally get the hungry in my head. For me, when I'm low, it feels like every cell in my body is SCREAMING for food. At night, though, I get incredibly belligerent when I'm low. " I don't WANT to get up and eat. I don't WANT to get out of bed. I'm warm. I'm comfy. I'm NOT getting up!"
I high feels like the super flu. My whole body feels like its in molasses. My eyes hurt and are blurry. My teeth hurt and feel fuzzy. Moving anything just feels like a monumental effort.
And I got to experience the full gamut today! 76 this morning, then couldn't get under 400 from 7am until now.
I tell people that lows are like the slow-motion parts of action movies. I know what I should be doing, it just takes 10 times longer to do it and my speech sounds funny like it does during slow-motion sequences. And I'm never quite sure if I'm going to get that glucose tab container open in time, just like the slow-motion close up of the guy trying to difuse the bomb.
Great post! I also get "Hungry Head" when I'm low, and I sweat, get a sort of spacy, start too shake & my lips go numb!
When I have high bloodsugars, I get grumpy, tired, & my head hurts. I literally feel like I'm walking through a world filled with J-e-l-l-o instead of air.
Ahhhh, life with "The Betes," it's an adventure!
kelly k
Sooo... the zombies that keep saying "More brains!" are just hypo? poor zombies
But seriously, that is a fantastic way to describe it
Not sure that I've ever been "hungry in the head," but I think I know what you're trying to get at. When I'm low I feel like my eyes and brain are trying to change places with each other. I've tried to explain what it's like to drive the magic bus before. I'm not sure my sense of terror really comes across, though.
OMGsh!!!!
I KID YOU NOT....my daughter told me during a low the other day that her head needed more marbles like "that hippo game"!!!
Whoah.
This post TOTally freaked me out!
Hmmm - I like this description! Hungry in the head. It's good description. I wish there was some way to accentuate it though - to describe the sheer instinctual need to eat everything in the house!