Healthy Blood Sugar Levels and High Blood Sugar Treatments
It’s fair to say there’s no measured level of anything in the body that fluctuates quite as wildly as your blood sugar. As long as you continue to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day, your blood sugar levels are going to move up and down. That’s perfectly normal, but when the fluctuations are more severe than that then the individual becomes at risk of prediabetes due to a high blood sugar level. As common as diabetes is, it is preventable and smarter diet and lifestyle choices can be strengthened with a high blood sugar treatment. Let’s take a look at what is a healthy blood sugar level today, and what you can do maintain blood sugar levels if you’re one of the many people at risk of becoming a prediabetic.
Blood sugar is more accurately referred to as glucose, and these are the parameters for what is normal blood glucose level.
- Normal levels are less than 100mg /dL after not eating for at least 8 hours, or 140mg /dL 2 hours after eating
It’s normal for levels to be at their lowest right before meals. It’s also true that while high blood sugar (hypertension) is a real concern, low blood sugar can also be problematic for people. While high blood sugar leads to prediabetes, low blood sugar creates a condition called hypoglycaemia. As you can see, having your blood sugar being at one extreme or the other is harmful. Fortunately, a low blood pressure treatment is much simpler in what it requires of the individual.
High Blood Sugar Symptoms and Prediabetes Plus Other Risks
The first thing to understand about high blood sugar symptoms is that there’s not many of them that are easily identified. This is unfortunate, because the risks of hypertension are quite pronounced if the individual does not take measures to lower their blood pressure. Once a person has become prediabetic, the lengths they must go to rectify their health situation are much greater than if they would have been proactive in lowering their blood sugar levels with a high blood pressure treatment.
It is true that when your blood pressure is extremely high, you may see these symptoms. Be aware that if they are resulting from your blood sugar levels then it is imperative that you see a physician for consultation on a high blood sugar treatment as soon as possible. These symptoms include:
- Severe headache
- Fatigue or confusion
- Vision problems
- Chest pain
- Blood in urine
- Difficulty breathing
- Irregular heartbeat
- Pounding in neck, chest, or ears
In addition to development of prediabetes, untreated high blood pressure can lead to serious diseases like stroke, heart disease, kidney failure, permanent damage to the pancreas, atherosclerosis (hardening of arteries) and eye problems too. Lesser concerns but ones that may still be a cause for alarm for some are erectile dysfunction, neuropathy, poor circulation, and slow healing of wounds.
If you have any reason to suspect you have high blood pressure, speak to your doctor regarding a high blood sugar treatment.
Low Blood Sugar Symptoms and Risks
Eating regularly and adhering to smart diet choices are all that’s required for most people to avoid hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). However, a low blood sugar treatment may be needed for those that fail to have enough sugar needed to fuel the body. Low blood sugar can be a result of diet choice, medications, health condition, and exercise.
Low blood pressure is defined by being at 70mg /dL or lower, and low blood sugar symptoms are much more readily identifiable as compared to high blood pressure. They are also not usually seen when the situation becomes extreme, as is the case with hypertension. They include:
- Confusion
- Shakiness
- Headaches
- Hunger
- Irritability
- Pale skin
- Racing heart rate
- Sweating
- Trembling
- Anxiety
- Weakness
Not treating hypoglycemia can also result in more severe symptoms of low blood sugar, and include struggling to concentrate or have coordination, mouth or tongue numbness, and fainting. See the low blood sugar treatment guidelines below to see how easy it is to remedy this situation.
High Blood Sugar Treatment
For most people, diet and lifestyle changes will make up the entirety of what they need as their high blood sugar treatment. This can also be true for individuals who have moved to being prediabetic, but typically the diet and lifestyle changes that will be required are more drastic.
Insulin is the standard treatment course for individuals who have type 1 diabetes, but high blood sugar levels nearly always result in type 2 diabetes. Insulin may be part of the high blood sugar treatment for these people, but more commonly they will be prescribed a combination of different oral and injectable medications. Metformin is the drug most commonly prescribed to lower blood pressure, but there’s a consensus among the medical community that for most people it’s hardly effective at all.
Instead, most people with high blood pressure are encouraged to promote the changes needed on their own without medication. How does such a high blood sugar treatment work? By cutting back on carbohydrates, getting more of healthy fats, fasting intermittently, regulating portion sizes, increasing fiber BIG time, ensuring proper vitamin supplementation, adding probiotics for gut health, and losing body weight, among other suggestions.
Low Blood Sugar Treatment
The most common approach for a low blood sugar treatment is – quite simply – to provide your blood with the glucose needed via ingested foods and liquids. When your blood sugar levels are less than 70mg /dL the general guideline is that you’ll need 15 to 30 grams of some type of quickly absorbed carbohydrate. Then you wait 15 minutes and check your blood sugar levels again.
This time if they come back as being less than 100mg /dL then you repeat with another 15 grams of carbohydrates and test them again. Repeat as necessary. Good choices that contain 15 grams of carbs within a low blood sugar treatment are:
- ½ cup of natural fruit juice
- ½ banana
- 1 small apple or orange
- ½ cup of applesauce
- 2 tablespoons of raisins
- 15 grapes