What makes you go hypo?

[Annette A]

Other than the obvious! We’ve had putting the washing out ( @ckoei), entering Lewis’s ( @Tim) and doing the weekly shopping in Tesco’s (me) just recently. I’ve also discovered that cutting the grass (but no other garden type activity) and changing the tube on my pump (but not if I only change the insertion head – only if I change both head and tube) make me go low.
Anyone else got any non-obvious hypo starters?

[Hairy Gnome]

Nuffink! Nada! Zilch! Zero! I couldn’t have a hypo if hell had me, my lowest recorded Bg level since I started keeping computer records is 2.4 mmol/L, and all that did was make me feel a bit shaky. To be absolutely honest, I don’t really fancy overdosing on Novorapid to try it either!

[Cecile]

@teloz: In your capacity as gnome, you could move into a Maitake mushroom by eating your way in…just make sure it’s well ventilated

@annette: Does “cutting the grass” involve lugging a lawnmower or wielding scissors? Anyway, it involves your upper body – along with laundry-levitation, I’ve found that “army” exercise (like vacuuming etc.) tips me under much quicker than the leggy stuff; maybe we should ask Sir Redgrave if he experiences the same when rowing vs cycling/jogging?

[Annette A]

@ckoei – oddly though, cutting the hedge and digging the veggie plot have very little effect! Exercising the area where you’ve done your injection just recently is supposed to get the insulin into the body more quickly, but that doesn’t count here, as my infusion site is my stomach, and gets about the same amount of work for each case (I reckon).

[Anonymous]

Pretty much any DIY (http://www.everydayupsanddowns.co.uk/2010/02/chapters.html).

Even a little gentle flatpack furniture tinkering can drop me like a stone.

[Anonymous]

PE on a wednesday afternoon at school, expecially rugby in the middle of winter, used to make me go hypo, pretty much without fail. Or thats what i told the PE teacher anyway

[Alison]

@andyg – I used to have similarly strategic hypos in the middle of winter cross country runs which I hated with a passion.

@mike – DIY gets me too, especially wallpaper stripping which always takes me by surprise as it doens’t feel that energetic but somehow sucks all the sugar out of you (along with the will to live when you’re only halfway through and there’s still a lot of walls to go!)

[Stephen]

Ah the strategic hypo … a formidable weapon in the arsenal of the pancreatically challenged!
Of course I’ve never *cough* ever *ahem* strategically *cough* had one of those

(And if my wife’s reading this, Xmas shopping last year was a real one! Honest!)

[Annette A]

@alison – yes, wallpaper stripping gets me too. It must be another of those arm things – lots of stretching and gentle movements – I have read that gentle exercise is much more efficient at reducing blood sugar than strenuous exercise because of the way the body demands glucose when under stress – it produces it from fat rather than using up what’s freely available as glucose, or something?

[Alison]

@Annette – I read a really good explanation once of the way the body uses glucose during different types of exercise and I’ve never been able to find it again since, but it did basically say what you’re saying – long, gentle exercise is more efficient at using glucose than intense exercise. It put it far more eloquently than that though!

[Tim]

Gentle exercise sends me much further down than anything wildly energetic – Katie and I refer to it as easy walk syndrome. Quite often we go for a walk round the block of an evening and that’s when I have horrific hypos – not when doing heavy DIY, gardening, etc.

[Author]

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