Replace four hours of drinking with 2 glasses of wine and you’ve pretty much nailed it. As my 30th birthday approaches, feeling the effects of a couple drinks the next day isn’t the only change I’ve begun to notice. When I get out of bed each morning, things crack and creak. I have more than just an occasional grey hair on my head. I get random back aches. Anything past 10 pm I want nothing to do with.

But the other change I’ve noticed is my low blood sugars. I have no idea if this has anything to do with getting older, but when I used to get low, I’d start to feel badly, I’d treat the low, and within 10 minutes I’d be back to feeling normal. A lot of the times I was able to power through and continue what I was doing, even if I was low.

Lately when I get low, the lows are more intense. They hit me head on and I often have to stop what I’m doing. But more than that, that low, awful feeling lingers! Even when my blood sugar is heading back to normal, I still feel awful- shaky, light headed, weak, and just generally out of it. It’s like the recovery from a low is taking much longer. And I’m stuck with a hypo hangover. It sucks! And a quick google search showed that I’m not the only one to have these hypo hangovers. There are forums full of diabetes talking about a similar phenomenon. Luckily, it doesn’t seem to be the case for all my lows.

There are so many factors that could have affected this longer recovery from my low. How much food I had eaten previously, the amount of active insulin I had, how quickly my blood sugar dropped, what I used to treat the low, how recently I had exercised, how many other lows and highs I’ve had recently, the amount of time I’ve had diabetes, my age, the frickin weather for all I know!

I’m looking forward to my 30’s, all the exciting changes, and even the not so exciting ones. And hopefully I can keep the hypo hangovers to a minimum. Cheers!