What it means if your glucose test comes back HYPOGLYCEMIC
Well after much or some drama anyways in terms of me doing my glucose test with my midwives, I did get to stay with my group, and they DID let me bring in my own source of sugar! I brought in organic orange juice and wow - when they poured that 16 oz cup, it was huge. I nearly gagged it down, so much at once!
And then I waited an hour for my blood draw. I didn’t hear anything back until almost 5pm that night when they left me a message saying my results were 49 mg/dL, that is LOW baby. The point of this test is to screen out women who may need to go on and take a 3 hour glucose test to tell them if they are at risk for gestational diabetes. While I wasn’t worried a lick that my results would be HIGH, it didn’t even sink in right away what it meant that they were so low. The results needed to be under 130/140 mg/dL depending on your practitioner’s statistics, and if they are over that and under 200 mg/dL, then you would have to do the additional screening. But what about these LOW numbers?
FYI the reason I wanted an alternative was because these are the ingredients in glucola:
Water, dextrose (D-glucose from corn), citric acid, natural flavoring, food starch modified, glycerol ester of wood rosin, brominated soybean oil, food dye and coloring: Yellow #6, Sodium Hexametaphosphate, BHA, and .10% Sodium Benzoate
Ah yeah no thanks. I live on purpose not eating that stuff and me changing how I ate and took care of myself was the reason I am even pregnant naturally right now, so I just couldn’t get behind it.
On the message my midwive mentioned being dizzy, light headed etc and that for the rest of my pregnancy I needed to cut out simple sugars (ahhh done. I already do that, hence a HUGE reason I didn’t want to drink sugar syrup). I did feel a little light headed after downing that huge mug of OJ but it was also around 10:30am at that time and I had only had a green juice before I got there and yes it was a ton of sugar (I eat fruit all morning long but fruit has FIBER in it so it is more balanced).
And to eat more protein snacks. hmmmm. Right after they took my blood it was recommended to me that I have a ‘snack’ and what a perfect ‘snack’ would a breakfast sandwich be. You know - the ones with eggs, cheese and HAM. omg I almost threw up in my mouth when she said that. And I nicely said, well maybe but since I don’t eat gluten, refined flour, eggs, cheese, pork or much meat at all…..and she said, ok I think you can figure this one out :) And I did.
After sharing my results in my private Facebook group, one of my concerned members posted something about hypoglycemia and at first I thought nothing of it, oh i’ts just me, I have low blood pressure too, no big deal. But then I started to put things together.
I have not been sleeping, and this started maybe a week before my test, just not able to fall asleep, and stay asleep any of it. My mind won’t turn off, definitely feeling a load of anxiety and even what I would call panic attacks. I know the baby pushes up on everyone’s lungs and I have definitely felt like I cannot breathe and more than a few times I have gone outside in my winter coat and slippers to sit on my front step in the COLD night air because I felt trapped in my own body.
Then I realized I was also laying there in bed or waking up super thirsty. Super thirsty and drinking water all night long, feeding into more needs to run to the bathroom to pee made this all very very fun.
So - not sleeping, hypoglycemic, thirsty, frequent urination (beyond what I would guess is even normal for pregnancy), anxiety, panic and then it did flip into feeling depressed too, maybe because i’m not sleeping and/or because I feel like I can’t imagine 10 more weeks of this.
What did I do? I dug out my Medical Medium books and realized I have adrenal fatigue. OMG. My poor adrenals are sooo tired. And I know that stress is the number one thing that impacts them, so I’m making conscious decisions to take better care of my mind, and meditate and journal and doing tapping, but it’s all hard when you don’t sleep and feel on edge. Everything seems amplified.
I recommend reading the chapter on hypoglycemia in the MM first book but basically, my adrenals are so tired, they cannot keep up with the need for glucose my body has. And it makes sense, the baby is taking most of what I eat, and I eat mostly fruits and veggies but it’s still not enough for my stressors and my pregnancy demands and maybe they just haven’t been super strong for awhile. The excess urination is from glucose being dumped in the urine because it’s not being let into the cells due to some insulin resistance.
And what do you do with this information? You ACT FAST.
Why?
Because my adrenals are the number one thing I need healthy in order to deliver this baby. Delivering a baby is a HUGE taxing event on a woman’s adrenals. And if they are already compromised or weak or over and underactive, then it’s not good. Not good for strength to deliver and not good for after. I’ve worked with so many women whose health tanked or crashed post kids, maybe not baby #1 but 2 or 3 or beyond, why? because pregnancy is hard work. And eating while pregnant needs to have intention. And even my best intentions weren’t hitting it at this point.
My dominant priority right now is to nourish my adrenals, to get them strong, to replenish my glucose stores in my body and stop asking my adrenals to find glucuose and when they cana’t to have them pumping out adrenaline and cortisol.
That means it’s my job to feed them all day long. Here’s what you can do if you think or know you have adrenal issues OR if you are going to be delivering soon and just want to make sure your body is ready:
Eat every 90 minutes to 2 hours
Have combination snacks of fruits and veggies (also from MM, a good source of glucose (fruit), mineral salts and potassium
Lots of water with lemons/limes
Celery juice in the morning
Calm yourself down! Meditate more consistently
Let go, trust and believe