Hello
Lately I've been wondering a lot more what affects how people are affected by hypoglycemia
I've been T1 for 7 years now, and despite being told multiple times by my doctors how dangerous low blood sugar is, still have never had a low blood sugar so severe that I felt incapable of recognizing it or treating myself. I think the lowest I've been at was 24 mg/dL and it was obvious my sugar was low and it was easy to fix; didn't have any physical effects beyond slight tremors and had that immediately recognizable mental effect that I can best describe as a vague anxiety. I consistently recognize low blood sugars as soon as I get below 60 just because of that hard to explain effect it has on the way you think and process things around you.
Before going on a pump I used to just basically take a lot more insulin than I needed usually because I could reliably deal with hypoglycemia every time it happened, which resulted in consistently being on the lower end (I don't think I've ever had an A1C above 6.5%; I'm usually within 5.8-6.2). And yet, 7 years later, I still haven't gotten hypoglycemic unawareness, nor have I ever been so low that I felt that taking care of it would be impossible. Pretty much the only time it becomes difficult is when I'm just waking up, and even then every time that's happened, I noticed within 10 minutes that, hey, aimlessly wandering around feeling a persistent sense of foreboding doom PROBABLY means my sugar is low
So I guess what I'm asking is, does anyone know if there is anything that affects how people react to low blood sugar? I know a couple other diabetics, some of whom become completely helpless at like 60 mg/dL, and I've just been thinking what could possibly cause such a high variance in people's ability to notice and deal with hypoglycemia... the first thing I thought was that it's just a matter of time until you develop unawareness, until I heard about an 80 year old who was perfectly fine with blood sugars under 30... then I had no idea where to go from there lol
Has any research ever been done into this, or is the best thing we know right now just "people are different and have different tolerances/reactions/whatever"? Am I lucky for having this ability to deal with it, or is this the norm? My sample size of other diabetics I know is pretty small so I don't feel confident drawing a conclusion from that myself
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