Acute or short-term complications can catch you of guard if you don’t know what can affect your blood glucose levels and how to treat them. To learn more about the two main classifications of short-term complications, hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia, please read on.

Hyperglycemia: (hyper = high, glyc = sugar, emia = blood)

Symptoms are caused by excess sugar and your body working to get rid of it. Not everyone experiences all of these symptoms or complications, but here are a few to look out for:

• Going to the bathroom/urinating often: When blood glucose is high, your kidneys will try to filter out the glucose. This causes increased urination and for sugar to appear in your urine. The higher your blood glucose; the more your kidneys will make urine.
• Thirsty: When you urinate a lot, your body needs more water. This will cause you to be thirsty.
• Hunger: Since the cells are not getting glucose, they will think they are starving. The cells will signal the brain that they need more food.
• Blurred vision: Glucose in your blood may accumulate on the lens of your eye causing blurriness. Getting your glucose at normal levels will make this go away. For this reason, do not test your vision for glasses if your blood glucose is not controlled. Wait for 6-8 weeks after your blood glucose is back to normal. This blurred vision is not the same as the potential long-term eye complications from diabetes.
• Itching: This occurs due to dryness from dehydration.
• Confusion: Your brain cannot function as well when glucose levels are low. Dehydration may also cause confusion.

 Hypoglycemia: (hypo = high, glyc = sugar, emia = blood)

Hypoglycemia occurs when the things that lower blood glucose are not in balance with the things that raise blood glucose. For example, too much medication or exercise with too little food.

Some people will detect hypoglycemia symptoms at blood glucose levels higher than 70mg/dL. Others will not detect symptoms of hypoglycemia until their blood glucose is very low. People who have frequent episodes of hypoglycemia are more likely to be unaware of their hypoglycemia. This can be a very dangerous situation.

Whatever your symptoms, they will usually be the same each time you have low blood glucose. A few of the potential symptoms you may feel are included below:

• Blood glucose less than 70mg/dL
• Sweating
• Weakness
• Hunger
• Anxiety
• Trembling
• Fast heartbeat
• Irritability
• Not thinking clearly or confusion
• Headache
• Drowsiness
• Numbness or tingling around your lips

To treat hypoglycemia, use a fast-acting carbohydrate like sugar packets, glucose tablets or orange juice. Glucagon, available by prescription, can also be given to you by a friend or family member as an emergency medication if you are having hypoglycemia, are in a coma, unable to swallow anything or are at high-risk of choking. Glucagon is a hormone that causes your liver to release glucose.

Copyright 2006 Medicine Shoppe International, a Cardinal Health company. All rights reserved.

These materials were adapted from Life with Diabetes: A Series of Teaching Outlines, American Diabetes Association, 2000, Diabetes Care, Volume 27, Supplement 1, January 2004 and Diabetes Forecast, January 2006. Byetta package label. http://www.fda.gov/cder/foi/label/2005/021773lbl.pdf, and Symlin package label. http://www.fda.gov/cder/foi/label/2005/021332lbl.pdf