Quality of life is pretty important to me, and hopefully that’s an obvious statement. I just read an article about severe hypoglycemia (low blood glucose) and it’s effect on quality of life in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
If you are experiencing severe hypoglycemia – or frequent hypoglycemia of any level – you can benefit from discussing some options with your health care provider. Insulin pumps, still sometimes thought of for handling high blood glucose, are just as much for limiting low blood glucose. At any rate, the point of insulin pump therapy is to close the gap between highs and lows and maintain target blood glucose levels as much of the time as possible.
Another tool that can help limit or eliminate severe hypoglycemia is continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). CGM systems help people look at trends in order to make adjustments to insulin doses. They have trending arrows which help people detect when their blood glucose is rising or falling, and they have alerts that warn people when their blood glucose level is heading out of target (high or low).
If your health insurance doesn’t cover CGM or insulin pumps and you are experiencing severe low blood glucose events, ask about getting a letter of medical necessity from your health care provider. If this is something that interests you and might help you, give it a try! There are countless resources available (a simple Google search will lead you to most of them – ask your health care provider for more) to support you once you do.