Fairly Ordinary

For about a week I have had a blur of horrible headaches, exhaustion, drowsiness (lots of yawning), insomnia and ITCHING (I beg Daniel to scratch my back constantly).

My fight against depression has been going really well and then suddenly, within days, I feel back at square one. I am having trouble making simple decisions about whether to wash the silverware, switch the laundry, put all the pillows back on the couch, or what to eat and when.

This morning the headaches were so bad that I started feeling panicky about experiencing all the helplessness that I had before I got on anti-depressants. I do not want to increase my dosage and to be honest, I don’t think what I’m experiencing is based on the depression.

The reason is because one evening last week when I was fighting a HORRIBLE headache and all those other symptoms, I begged Daniel to swing through Wendy’s. I ate a cheeseburger and fries and drank a massive sweet tea immediately and within MINUTES every single one of my symptoms disappeared. It sort of scared me.

It’s been extremely hard not to turn to that sort of meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But all of this has been a reminder that perhaps I needed to get back to reading about low blood sugar. I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia when I was a child and through my teen years, college years, and even within the past five years, I’ve had a few flare ups with it. But nothing this severe in a long time.

So, while fighting this panicky feeling all morning, I decided I needed to read New Low Blood Sugar and You which my mother-in-law had recommended almost a year ago. I’d purchased it used on Amazon last year and just plopped it right on the shelf. I’ve read the first few chapters and even though I’m in a fog right now and am having trouble thinking, I feel like a light just went on in my head.

“Perhaps more than any other disorder, low blood sugar has been responsible for many patients being horizontal on psychiatric couches when they should be vertical at lunch counters.”

“Low blood sugar causes an unbelievable array of symptoms. It can make a psychiatric wreck out of a normally well-adjusted individual.”

“With low blood sugar, the pancreas is over-responsive to sugar. Sweets make it produce more insulin than it should, and it may be so exquisitely reactive to a rise in blood sugar that it may be fooled, literally, into responding - by the sweet taste of saccharin in the mouth, for instance. (Don’t be astonished by the hair-trigger mechanism. Did you know that for some people the odor of bacon frying is enough to trigger a gallbladder reaction, and that for others, the thought of a favorite food may cause the stomach valve to open?) All of this means that a person with low blood sugar of the type I am describing can be helped only by a diet low in sugar, low in starch (which the body can convert into sugar), and high in the foods that do not “yank” the insulin trigger. These are fats and proteins. It isn’t only the composition of the diet that matters, but also the timing of the meals.

This book offers a perspective on the blindness of American medicine to hypoglycemia, its prevalence, and what it does to its victims.

The following is a list of symptoms that hypoglycemic patients often complain of:

1. Nervousness
2. Irritability
3. Exhaustion
4. Faintness, dizziness, tremor, cold sweats, weak spells
5. Depression
6. Vertigo, dizziness
7. Drowsiness
8. Headaches
9. Digestive disturbances
10. Forgetfulness
11. Insomnia (awakening and inability to return to sleep)
12. Constant worrying, unprovoked anxieties
13. Mental confusion
14. Internal trembling
15. Palpitation of heart, rapid pulse
16. Muscle pains
17. Numbness
18. Indecisiveness
19. Unsocial, asocial, antisocial behavior
20. Crying spells
21. Lack of sex drive (females)
22. Allergies
23. Incoordination
24. Leg cramps
25. Lack of concentration
26. Blurred vision
27. Twitching and jerking of muscles
28. Itching and crawling sensations on skin
29. Gasping for breath
30. Smothering spells
31. Staggering
32. Sighing and yawning
33. Impotence (males)
34. Unconsciousness
35. Night terrors, nightmares
36. Rheumatoid arthritis
37. Phobias, fears
38. Neurodermatitis
39. Suicidal intent
40. Nervous breakdown
41. Conculsions

And here are the mistaken diagnoses that these patients often are given by the medical community:

Mental retardation
Neurosis
“Slightly nervous”
Chronic urticaria (hives)
Nerodermatitis (itching, rash, from “nervous” causes)
Meniere’s syndrome (loss of hearing, dizziness associated with it, and noises in the ears)
Cerebral arteriosclerosis
Cephalagia, hemicrania (pain in the head or in half the head)
Psychoneuroticism
Chronic bronchial asthma
Rheumatoid arthritis
Parkinson’s syndrome (senile palsy)
Paroxysmal tachyrcardia (rapid beating of the heart)
“Imaginary sickness”
Menopause
Alcoholism
Diabetes
Hyperinsulinism (the correct diagnosis - but treated with candy bars!)

I have a lot more to read. And even more to comprehend. But I’m certain that I’ve stumbled onto a huge part of my problems. I’ve been attempting to eat more healthy but I still hadn’t cut out all sugar much less starchy food. And eating six small meals will probably do me a world of good.

I hope you didn’t mind reading through all of the food and medical jargon but I just wanted to include it in case anyone else is suffering from similar symptoms.

Tags: hypoglycemia

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