Also, did they do a 3 hour fasting glucose tolerance test? You can easily have normal morning, fasting glucose but also hypoglycemia. Mine was normal in the a.m. but on the 3 hour test, it dropped to 40!
Sushi
I'm sorry for the late response. I was hoping to put everything into one long post.
Here are all the symptoms I could think of that I associated with hypoglycemia: weakness, shakiness, anxiety, heart palpitations, nausea, lightheadedness, dizziness, difficulty concentrating, irritability, loss of appetite
The doctor who diagnosed me with hypoglycemia 15 years ago didn't have me tested. I got tested a few years later after I stopped seeing that doctor, but they never ran a 3 hour GTT. Later, a psychiatrist put me on Zyprexa for a separate issue and took me off Prozac at the same time. My symptoms improved. I thought this was because Zyprexa has a side effect of raising blood sugar and Prozac has a side effect of lowering blood sugar. This might have been part of it, but I think there were other components as well.
A few years later after I was off the Zyprexa I noticed that when I woke up early in the morning and felt nauseous (which I associated with hypoglycemia) that if I was able to fall back asleep the nausea would usually be gone when I reawoke. I remembered that when I was on Zyprexa which I took at bedtime I was sleeping much better so I think that sleep plays a part in the symptoms. Also, I've read that getting a lot of sleep is a treatment for adrenals and my cortisol was tested a few years ago and it was out of normal range. I don't know what any of these numbers mean, but here's the results: (lab test by Sanesco)
CORTISOL - (1140) 5.5 (L) 13-24 nM (reference range)
CORTISOL - (1610) 24.0 (H) 5-8 nM (reference range)
CORTISOL - (2010) 1.9 (L) 1.9- nM (reference range)
DHEA-s 1140 and 2010 were both in the normal range
Around the same time that I first started experiencing the hypoglycemic symptoms I was also experiencing anxiety and heart palpitation. I just read a few days ago that hypoglycemic symptoms and also nausea and loss of appetite were possibly caused by adrenals
http://www.drpodell.org/hypoglycemia_symptoms.shtml
Scientific studies show that there’s much more to hypoglycemia symptoms and hypoglycemia treatments than just low blood sugar. The adrenal stress hormones, adrenalin, and cortisol, are critically involved. In fact, most hypoglycemia symptoms are caused not by low blood sugar per se, but by an over-reaction of adrenalin and cortisol discharge—part of the body’s defense against blood sugar falling too low.
Also, for about a year I switched to Elavil from Trazadone and also started taking Risperdal during the day for depression because I started to get heartburn/acid reflux from SSRIs (both Prozac and Zoloft). After those changes I started sleeping well again (10+ hours a night) and my symptoms slowly decreased. Then 6 months ago (summer 2012) I went off Risperdal because I had gained weight and had high cholesterol which are both side effects of Risperdal. I decided to go on SSRIs again and take Prilosec for the reflux. For some reason both Zoloft and Prozac caused insomnia even though I was taking them in the morning and I had taken both at bedtime in the past. I decided to stay on Prozac because my depression was much better compared to the Risperdal even though I was getting 4 hours less sleep than before.
I had also started working out at the gym almost every day because along with the hypoglycemic symptoms my chronic pain had decreased a lot. I should point out that I was still too disabled to work and after I got back from the gym I spent the rest of the day either in bed or at the computer. I would only shower on days that I didn't work out because that was too exhausting and my mom did my laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, and cooking. I did ok for the first few months, but then I started to get more and more exhausted after workouts. I also was having back pain so I went to a chiropractor for adjustments on my back and neck. The pain in my hands and feet started getting worse and my mood also got worse. I think working out too hard and not getting enough sleep were beginning to take it's toll.
I've also read that chiropractic adjustments release toxins which is actually promoted by chiropractors as a good thing, but for me it might have made me worse especially combined by the toxins released by exercise and sweating a lot during the summer. I've read that some people with fibromyalgia could get worse by chiropractic adjustments. I've also read of people with Lyme disease infections having a reemergence of symptoms after seing a chiropractor. I was bitten by a tick a few years before I started having hypoglycemic symptoms, but I was never diagnosed with Lyme. A few months ago I had a rash on my ankle. 3 years ago I had the exact same rash on my ankle and that's where I was bitten by a tick. The only commonality I could think of is that both rashes happened a few months after seeing a chiropractor.
To complicate things further a few months ago one of my teeth cracked that had a mercury amalgam filling. The tooth was probably damaged for quite awhile because it cracked while eating almonds and I've been eating them every day for the past 2 years. A year leading up to that, each day I had also been taking 1200 mg NAC, 1200 mg Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA), 100 mg Glutathione sublingual, 300-400 mcg of both Selenium and Molybdenum, 4000 mg MSM, 4000 mg Taurine so I believe that because I had a detox protocol in place that prevented trouble with the damaged tooth until it cracked. Also, the weeks leading up to the cracked tooth by pure coincidence I had stopped taking most of those supplements. After my tooth was removed I started taking NAC and ALA again. I did this because I thought it would help me heal since I had infections the previous times my teeth removed. I wasn't even thinking about doing it because of the mercury. Around the time my tooth was removed I started taking a new bottle of Jarrow's B Right which I had been taking without problems for the past year. I vaguely noticed that on the front of the bottle it said "Now with methylfolate". For the next month or two I experienced severe anxiety, overstimulation, and heart palpitations. Even after I stopped taking ALA and NAC these symptoms continued. I still still taking the B Right twice a day and it wasn't until after reading about methylation that I made the connection. My symptoms improved after I stopped the B Right and started taking a regular B Complex. I don't know how much methylfolate was in the vitamin because it also had folic acid it just said this on the label:
Folate (from folic acid and Quatrefolic (6S)-5-methyltetrahydrofolate glucosamine salt)
I assume it was a small amount of active folate otherwise they would have listed the amounts of each because B Right also has 2 types of B6 (P5P and Pyrodoxince HCL, B5 (Pantethine and Calcium D-pantothenate), B3 (Niacin and Niacinamide) and it lists how much of each of these the. I know Pantethine and Methylcobalamin are also active B, but they were low doses and I was taking B Right for over a year and didn't have any problems.
Back to the nausea and loss of appetite. Those only started happening in the past few months (at least a month after my heart palpitations/anxiety/overstimulation begun.) I was also doing things to speed up my metabolism. I was eating a lot of small meals, drinking hot ginger tea between meals, and taking cayenne capsules with every meal. I stopped doing those things because I thought that was making things worse. Even after stopping those things the nausea and loss of appetite have continued. Part of the reason I was wondering about hypoglycemia is that I started having reactions to Branch Chained Amino Acids (BCAA) and I've read that they are insulinogenic which can cause hypoglycemia.
I've also been taking coconut oil (which is high in caprylic acid) and a different kind of probiotics and also prebiotics so some of my symptoms might be candida die-off. In the past month I've still been experiencing overstimulation, but the heart palpitations have improved a lot. However, the nausea and loss of appetite have not improved.
Also, I posted some of my symptoms in another thread about mercury. I didn't mention the hypoglycemic symptoms or nausea and loss of appetite because those hadn't started yet. Two people suggested possible thyroid issues. I've had my thyroid tested a few times, but I've heard that those aren't always accurate.