First of all i just wanted to say Hi to everybody here.
I joined this forum after reading the following article here and found that a lot fo the symptoms seemed very familiar..
http://www.fibromyalgiatreatment.com/hypog
lycemia.htm
It all started roughly four months ago. I went to bed at my usual 11pm and 30-45mins later i suddenly jolted awake and noticed that i felt like i was shaking like crazy and my heart was beating really heavily. After the initial shock i went to the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water to fully wake myself and then stood in front of the mirror. I took a long hard look at myself and couldn't see myself shaking at all, even though i could feel it in my arms, hands, chest, neck and face. After a few minutes of my mind racing i calmed down and decided i should just try to get to go back to sleep and call my GP in the morning. After an hour (it's not easy trying to sleep feeling like you shaking) i managed to drift off. When i woke in the morning i noticed that i still felt like my body was shaking however it didn't appear to be as bad. Had my morning coffee, cigarette, called my GP and headed off to work. During the day i started to notice myself feeling agitated by the smallest things. Like dropping a pen for example. I found myself once or twice thinking 'get a grip!' The inner shaking and heavy than usual heartbeat continued throughout the day and night. 3 days later of continuous sypmtoms my GP appointment arrived and within a few minutes he came to the conclusion i was suffering from anxeity. Even though i was having a few agitated moments every other day i felt completely fine. But i've always known that the Doctor knows best. So i took his advice and a prescription for some low strength anti-depressants. It was about this time that started to suffer from a lot of pains in my legs when walking. I've always been an active person and walk to work daily. Which is a 4 mile round trip. After 15 minutes or so my the backs of my legs from the top of my hamstring to mid way down my calf muscle started to become painful and tight, as if they were running out of energy and cramping, and eventually my usual fast paced walk turn into a slow crawl. The best way i can describe it, is if it's the day after running a marathon that i didn't train for. I started to use a heat rub and took paracetamol but the pain continued. However once i stop walking the pain and tightness seems to drop away within minutes but come back again if i needed to walk a mile or so.
After a few of weeks of inner shaking, heavy heart beating, painful legs muscles i decided a trip back to the GP was in order. I told him that my symptoms were no better than before, even though i was feeling less agitated, i had picked up a new strange problem with my legs. So he quickly gave me a new prescription. A muscle relaxant. Which didn't work at all.
I had now been suffering with the above for a little over a month and no relief or answers as to why it was happening. Then it took a turn for the worst.
It was a Saturday night and i decided to have a relaxing night in with my girlfriend and watch some TV after visiting her parents in the evening for a BBQ. At 11pm as we were watching a movie i suddenly felt myself go extremely light headed and flushed. I told my girlfriend and calmly stood up and walked to the kitchen for a glass of water and sat down on the kitchen floor (tiled floor so it was nice and cold). After a few minutes the light headedness went away and we both went back to watching TV. 5 or so minutes later i felt myself becoming lightheaded again however it was worse than before and borderlining on dizzy. My heart and inner shaking also kicked up a notch or two. Again i went to the kitchen and grabbed a second glass of water, sat on the floor and waited for it to pass, which it did after a few minutes, and went back to watch TV. Less than a minute later i became extremely dizzy for the third time and my heart started to pound as if were trying to burst through my chest. It was then that i noticed that my left forearm and hand became numb and tingley like pins and needles. My girlfriend decided that was enough and rang for an ambulance. While waiting for the ambulance i suddenly had a massive urge to urinate that came out of knowhere and my right ear started to ring loudly. By the time the ambulance arrived the peak of my dizzy spell had subsided and my heart had calmed down a little. They popped my on a heart monitor, which was fine, and checked my pupils, which they said were very dialated. I was then shipped off to the hospital, and on the way had another dizzy spell that resembled much like the first one. At the hospital they took a bunch of bloods and a urine sample and an hour later the doctor returned to tell me everything was fine. He asked my of my recent health and decided that it may well have been a panic attack. I wasn't fully trusting of his opinion as i didn't feel panicked at all apart from worrying about the dizzy spells getting progressively worse. He told me to report back to my GP asap. I went home feeling exhausted and slept for 12 hours straight. When i finally awoke in the morning my inner shaking, heavy heartbeat and ear ringing were still there, aswell as a really dull fuzzy headache which lasted for the next two days.
Back to my GP and he looked through the report and instantly decided that it was a panic attack. I also told him that during the time at the hospital and this appointment i had been hit with very brief and small dizzy spells around mid afternoon, but they seem to be clearing up. he told me to cut down on caffiene and rest (i used to drink 4-5 mugs of coffee daily which i dropped to one in the morning and eventually made that one decaf) It had now been 6 weeks since it all started.
Into the second month i started to notice more seemingly strange problems. I would get suddenly hit with random patches of tiredness in the late afternoon which were sometimes accompanied with dull headaches. These headaches cleared up after a hour or so but left my head feeling a little spacey and fuzzy. It was also around this time that i noticed i was going to the toilet a little too frequently, at least once a day and that my stool was sometimes loose. It was about this time that i found the link at the top of this post, and it all seemed very familiar. I noted the big no no's like glucose, dextrose, potatoes, bread etc and looked at my daily diet and noticed that i was eating a lot of meals that contained the above. So i dropped a few meals here and there, like pre cooked meat sandwiches that contain dextrose to something else, apart from this my diet stayed pretty much the same, but i decided to eat less snacks like cakes, chocolate.
Into the third month and i noticed a change in my sypmtoms. Instead of being at a constantly bad level, i noticed a lot more highs and lows where my inner shaking and heart pounding would drop but then pick back up. And it was during this time where i had my first symptom free day since it all began. The next evening however it was back to square one. During this time my nose became very congested and i instantly put it down to being a cold. However my opinion on this changed when it had been 3 weeks and not cleared up or turned into a cold (i hadn't sneezed once. No sore throat or chesty cough as i get with every cold).
Now i'm into month four. Inner shaking, heavy heart beating, ear ringing, blocked nose, legs painful, tired patches and fuzzy head still here but less frequent, and two patches diarrhea in the last week, and no sign of it ending and no idea what's going on.
Here's a quick recap of todays events. Woke up with minimal shaking and heart pounding. Decaf coffee and a cigarette for breakfast (bad i know, but i've never really taken to eating at breakfast). Off to work. Legs feeling quite good today with minimal pain and muslce tightness. Shaking and heart still feeling pretty good. Probably a 2-3 out of 10 (10 being worst). Had lunch pretty late at about 4pm. Fresh chicken sandwich on two round of wholemeal bread. Still feeling pretty good. Walk home. Little more pain than before but more uncomfortable than actual pain. Get home. Random home jobs. Still feeling good. Evening meal at 8:30pm. 2 Salmon En Croute (salmon in a cheese and chive sauce wrapped in pastry). 9pm, shaking picking up, heart beat feeling slower and heavy, litterally feel the veins in my neck throbbing. 10pm still feeling pretty bad. 11pm shaking dying off a little. 11:15pm off to bed for another non symptom free nights sleep and day tomorrow.
I've had many blood tests, an EKG, doplar test and they're all saying i'm completely healthy. Yet i'm not.
I'm 26, 5'9 and the last time i was weighed i was just under 11st (not sure how much this is in lbs). I smoke a little under 15 cigarettes a day. I hardly ever drink alcohol, and i eat pretty healthily.
Not sure if this matters, but my Mother is diabetic.
If anybody has any suggestions i'm all ears.