Understanding High Glucose (Hyperglycemia): What It Means and What to Do
If you have diabetes, you've likely heard the word "hyperglycemia." Don't let it sound more complicated than it is; it simply refers to having too much glucose (sugar) in your blood. Keeping blood glucose at healthy levels is the central goal of diabetes management, so understanding high glucose is really important. Let's take the mystery out of what hyperglycemia is, why it happens, how to recognize it, and how you can manage it.
What Exactly is Hyperglycemia?
Your body uses glucose as its main fuel source and gets it from the carbohydrates you eat. For glucose to leave your blood and enter your body cells for energy, it needs the hormone insulin. Insulin is like the key that unlocks cell doors.
With diabetes, there's an issue with insulin:
Type 1 Diabetes: The body fails to produce a lot of insulin altogether.
Type 2 Diabetes: The body does not produce enough insulin, or the cells don't respond properly to insulin (a condition known as insulin resistance).
If there is not enough working insulin, glucose can't get into the cells. It builds up in the blood instead. When blood glucose is too high, that's hyperglycemia.
What Causes High Glucose Levels?
Many things can increase your glucose levels:
-
Food: Eat too much carbohydrate as planned, or more than your insulin dose permits, and it's a frequent reason. Sugar-containing foods and sugar-containing drinks can bring sugars up quickly.
-
Not Enough Insulin: If you take insulin, missing a dose, taking too little, or experiencing an issue with the pump (like a clogged tube or loose site) can produce high glucose.
-
Illness or Infection: When ill, your body releases stress hormones that increase glucose levels, even if you take in less. You usually require more insulin when ill.
-
Stress: Physical stress (such as surgery) and emotional stress (such as exams) can stimulate hormones that raise glucose.
-
Less Physical Activity: Exercise causes your body to use glucose. Being less active than normal can lead to rising glucose levels.
-
Certain Medications: Medications such as steroids or certain diuretics can increase glucose levels.
-
Dawn Phenomenon: Natural surge in hormone levels in early morning hours (around 2 am-8 am) causes glucose to rise in some individuals.
Why is High Glucose a Problem?
While the occasional mild highs are no issue, chronically elevated, or very elevated, levels cause short-term and long-term problems.
Short-Term: High blood glucose can make you feel ill, tired, and thirsty. Very high glucose, particularly Type 1 diabetes, can induce Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA). DKA is an urgent state where the body lacks insulin and starts burning fats, resulting in harmful acids referred to as ketones.
Long-Term: High blood glucose over the years causes repeated damage to the nerves and vessels. This is a major source of serious eye, kidney, nerve (mostly feet/hands) disease and puts the heart attack/stroke risk too high.
Managing and Treating High Glucose
If glucose is high, follow the instructions from your physician or diabetes instructor:
-
Check Your Glucose: Check the high value.
-
Take Correction Insulin: If you have insulin, take your personal plan to take an extra dose to lower your glucose.
-
Drink Water: Drink water to assist in flushing out extra glucose and prevent dehydration. Drink sugar-free fluids.
-
Check for Ketones: If the blood glucose is very high (e.g., over 250 mg/dL or 13.9 mmol/L – know your target) or if you are sick (nausea, vomiting), check for ketones with urine strips or a blood ketone meter. High ketones require seeking medical advice immediately (call your doctor or go to the ER).
-
Carefully Consider Activity: Light exercise can lower glucose if you don't have ketones and levels aren't extremely high. Exercise, however, can aggravate highs if you have ketones or glucose is extremely elevated (e.g., >300 mg/dL or 16.7 mmol/L). Always consult medical opinion.
-
Find the Cause: Try to ascertain what caused your glucose to spike high (food, insulin, illness?) so that you can avoid it in the future.
How the SIBIONICS GS1 CGM Can Assist in Handling Highs
Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs), such as the SIBIONICS GS1, are wonderful tools for managing glucose, including highs:
-
See Trends: The SIBIONICS GS1 tells you if your glucose is going up, down, or staying the same, so you can respond before glucose becomes too high.
-
Get Alerts: Get personalized high glucose notifications on your paired device to get notified sooner.
-
Complete Picture: Continuous data offers patterns (e.g., after meals or at night) that fingersticks might miss, allowing you to make adjustments to your plan.
-
Informed Decisions: Real-time data helps you make better decisions about food, activity, and insulin (based on your doctor's recommendations).
-
Simpler Sick Days: Provides continuous glucose insight on sick days when numbers might be hard to predict.
Working With Your Healthcare Team
Hyperglycemia is a normal aspect of diabetes, but it can be managed. Tight collaboration with your doctor, nurse, or diabetes educator is essential. They help decide your glucose targets, create high and sick day treatment regimens (including ketone monitoring), and review your glucose logs (from meters like the SIBIONICS GS1) in order to modify your treatment.
Understandably, if we know the signs and symptoms, causes of elevated glucose levels, how it could be treated and using products like the SIBIONICS GS1 CGM fully equips you to regulate your glucose more effectively and cut down on risk to health.
Keywords:
