When reactive hypoglycemia was discovered it was called "disglycemia" or in other words unstable blood sugar. Reactive Hypoglycemia was discovered when Insulin for diabetics was invented. Diabetic people who used too much insulin had terrible symptoms (spaciness, dizzyness, anxiety, sweating, fainting, aggressivity, blurred vision and speech, headache, panick, nausea and more) that were similar to symptoms observed of non-diabetic people which lamented fatigue and confusion and who appeared to be otherwise healthy.

This demonstrated that these people had an excessive production of insulin. This excessive production of insulin is seen on people with insulin resistance and glucose intolerance. Your cells don't admit the sugar and 10 times more insulin is secreted by your pancreas to counteract the cellular resistance. This amount of excessive insulin brings your blood sugar down. Adrenalin is then released to bring sugar up. Adrenalin is what causes the anxiety, fear, panick, phobia, irritability, aggressivity, sweating episodes.

Since the blood glucose metabolism is made to maintain balanced blood sugar, unstable blood sugar is the expression of an impaired blood glucose metabolism just like diabetes is. Even when a normal person eats something sugar their blood glucose never spike above 150. Then one hour later it is 130, then two hours later it is 110 and eventually three or four hour later it is back to fasting levels (80 or 90)

A person with reactive hypoglycemia eats carbs, the blood sugar spike even above 200. After an hour it is still high. This is when the pancreas releases a lot of insulin. Suddenly two hours or more later (after the excessive insulin has done its job) it quickly and suddenly plummet to 40 or even 30 where anything below 70 is hypoglycemia.

The graph looks like high stylized mountains or roller coaster. The graph of a normal person looks like a flat line with a small hill curve at the beginning.

Notice that the initial response to the carbs the person ate (blood sugar spiking above 200 and being still high after 1 hour) is exactly the same exact thing that happens in diabetes.

But in diabetes the pancreas can't produce the insulin so the sugar is still high many hours later. In Reactive Hypoglycemia (or I should say at this point pre-diabetes) the pancreas is still able to produce enough insulin, actually too much of it.

That's why the discovered of Reactive Hypoglycemia said that the low blood sugar of today is the diabetes of tomorrow. Not only hypoglycemia is basically diabetes without the insulin shortage, but a pancreas which many times a day produce 10 times for insulin, eventually will stop producing insulin.

It has been known for many years that mostly young people (like us) have Reactive Hypoglycemia because as people reached their 40's hypoglycemia "goes away". Unfortunately this is not because they're getting better, but because the body no longer can produce enough insulin to cope with the high blood sugar. So at this point they have fasting hyperglycemia and probably are diagnosed with diabetes. I know a lot of people who was diagnosed with reactive hypoglycemia (which they never managed properly) and eventually became diabetics. Most diabetics suffered from pre-diabetes and unstable blood sugar symptoms, the same you and I suffer from.

Since your pancreas secretions are not impaired yet you won't sign an evidence of the big mess that happens when you eat in a fasting test. The only way to see what really happens (sugar going up, then down, excessive insulin being released, adrenalin surge) is to see what happens in your blood after you've eaten carbs. This test is called Glucose Tolerace Test and check what happens in your blood every 30 minutes after you've drunk a glucose drink.

Thank you for your information Niklas89. It's greatly appreciated. Just to be certain that I understand, the reason why my fasting blood results came back normal is likely because I was fasting and hadn't eaten any carbs to cause my insulin to spike which would presumably have then caused my sugars to drop after the 3rd or 4th hour to levels below normal (as in a glucose tolerance test)?

I only want to clarify so I know what to tell my doctor. The receptionist seemed surprised after she told me that the blood tests came back normal and I asked for another appointment. I plan on bringing my list of possible symptoms but what else should I tell her?

On a side note, why do the eye sockets ache like they do? I generally have no problems falling asleep except for when I am experiencing this symptom. I notice the symptom much more when I close my eyes to go to sleep.

Exactly, you can't see the reaction (as in Reacting Hypoglycemia) unless you don't measure what happens after you eat the reactive agent. That would be like determining whether you sugger from a flu by measuring your temperature on a normal random day rather than when you have symptoms and can feel fever.



Tell her you've reason to believe that your tolerance to glucose is reduced as you noticed your symptoms aggravating when you eat sugary stuff and also that you think you might not have a normal glycemic curve after a meal. Tell her your symptoms are very debilitating and might begin to make you less able to do things, work, take care of yourself and live your life. Tell her that since you understand how body balance and sugar balance works you believe that a lack of balance in your sugar metabolism is something that scares you and that is potentially very serious.



High insulin causes inflamatory like problems expecially of the nerves.
When insulin is high you might suffer from tendonitis, ringin in the years, feeling of numbness and needles in the fingers, arms, legs and feet, damage to the eyes vessels and blurred vision, blackouts, flies in sight, flashes, hardened artheries and heart diseases.

High adrenaling instead cause muscle tension, if you have several adrenalin surge a day you might feel that it's impossible to remove the tension from your muscle and you're always tight, you might experience clenching of the teeth at night with mandibular pain.

I have alot of those symptoms too,but I think you should get thyroid levels checked also,some of those symptoms could be hyperthyroidism.

I had all of these symptoms too. I was going to the doctors at this same time in may 2009. I took a glucose test. My results were 39 at the third hour. Just wondered if you ever got your test and what it came out as. Are you doing better? If yes what have you been doing? Still trying to figure mine out but I am doing better, just not great. It's interesting you said you feelt faint in the shower. That is where i first felt it too.