Have You Ever Heard Of Dehydration Causing An Elevation In Blood Glucose Levels?

[jump]

Hello all,

So, as I mentioned before, I had a "pre-diabetes" BG reading although I don't have any of the risk factors for diabetes (normal weight, fairly active, my blood pressure may be STRANGE but it's not high, low cholesterol, no family history, plus I'm young). My doctor had me come off my beta blocker because she thought that might be elevating my BG levels. I've only been completely off it (had to taper) for a few days, so it's too soon to know if that's going to do the trick, but in the meantime I've been reading up.

I've read a few articles that say diabetes can cause dehydration, but then I've also read a few articles that say dehydration can cause a temporary elevation of BG levels. Since excessive thirst has been my primary complaint for years, I have been tested for diabetes before and it always came back normal; so I don't think my pre-diabetes is causing my thirst, since my thirst predates the pre-diabetes by about four years. However, I'm wondering if my body's inability to retain water properly could be causing my elevated BG readings. I've noticed that my fasting bg test lately has come back high (I've had it done three times), but it's always done in the morning when I am the most "dry." When my doctor took other bg readings at other times in the day they came back normal. Also, I've noticed that I often crave water even more than usual if I eat anything sweet; sometimes sweet things make me feel kind of sick and slightly woozy, and usually a big drink of water makes the feeling go away.

Well, obviously this is speculation, but I was wondering if anyone had heard of this before. I can't tell by my reading if it's legitimate enough to pursue with my doctor or not.

[firewatcher]

Jump,

Diabetes can cause frequent urination, which in turn will cause thirst AND high blood glucose can increase serum Osm, which will also induce thirst. Why can you not drink water before your test? It won't effect your glucose levels and is allowable during most "fasting." Have you had your serum/urine Osmolalities checked? I don't know if concentrated plasma volume due to dehydration would influence BG levels. Call your Endo's nurse and ask.

[jump]

Jump,

Diabetes can cause frequent urination, which in turn will cause thirst AND high blood glucose can increase serum Osm, which will also induce thirst. Why can you not drink water before your test? It won't effect your glucose levels and is allowable during most "fasting." Have you had your serum/urine Osmolalities checked? I don't know if concentrated plasma volume due to dehydration would influence BG levels. Call your Endo's nurse and ask.

Yeah, I'm starting to think I need to see an endo -- I just have so many things going on and none of them seem to make sense.

But, I just had to see a pulmonary specialist because my chest pain is getting so bad that my doctor was worried it was lung-related... and that appointment cost over $900 which will take me at least four months to pay off. I don't see how I could afford to see an endocrinologist any time soon....

I feel really stuck because I feel like I need a really good doctor and really good health insurance and instead I have really awful health insurance that basically covers nothing I need, and a doctor who doesn't seem to know what she's doing and whom I can't really change easily because of my awful health insurance. I feel so overwhelmed by this sometimes....

I can drink water before the test, just practically speaking I haven't had more than about 8 oz by the time I get to the doctor's office. Next time I go to get tested I will drink a lot more and see if that makes any difference. I was just wondering if anyone had heard of this, since I'm not going to be tested again for a month.

[MomtoGiuliana]

jump--maybe I missed a later message. What is your situation now?

My sister (who had gestational diabetes--ultimately lost her baby) is being told she now has type II diabetes (she also has POTS). She's on a beta blocker. She's young (30) and active. It seems a little inconsistent with adult onset diabetes.

Katherine

[jump]

Hey,

In my case, it turned out to be a vitamin D deficiency. Apparently a D deficiency is a relatively common cause for a-typical type II diabetes (ie, the individual is young, eats well, exercises, doesn't have high BP or a family history of early-onset type II). But even my doctor didn't know about this - she caught the D deficiency kind of by accident (because I was also very tired), and then put all the pieces together later. Taking a D supplement has returned my blood glucose levels to normal.

The thing about this that I found kind of weird is that I've been tested for D many times, and it always came back normal. Then this one time I was tested it came back EXTREMELY low. My doc speculates that I always used to have physicals in the spring or summer (true) when a D deficiency would be less likely to show up, and when she looked at my history all my D tests were always in the low end of normal... so probably every winter I was dipping into deficiency, and over time this was affecting my body's ability to regulate insulin, etc.

I hope your sister finds some answers! If she hasn't had it tested all ready, she should definitely get her D tested, just in case it's something as simple as that.

[MomtoGiuliana]

That is excellent news! Thanks so much for responding. I am sending this info to my very depressed and upset sister immediately. I hope she finds a similar answer. It's just not making sense in her case either.

[jump]

Here are some articles about D and Calcium and how they influence insulin:

http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/92/6/2017

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m088...16/ai_19913495/

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/500874_9

I can understand why your sister feels upset! I felt the same way -- everything I read about type II diabetes just talked about weight, age, lack of exercise, etc. Nothing described me. I even eliminated all sugar from my diet and lost ten pounds (when I wasn't overweight to begin with), and this had no impact on my blood glucose levels. At first, my doctors just looked at my BG levels and said, "Oh, you must be eating too much sugar, you must not be exercising enough" etc because that's what they're used to seeing. I had to really pipe up and say, "Look, I'm only 28 with no family history! Even if I lived on jelly beans I shouldn't be having this problem!" But diabetes type II is one of those "guilty" illnesses - people, including doctors, are quick to assume you're doing something wrong if you have it, rather than assuming something unusual must be going on.

Good luck!

[MomtoGiuliana]

Thanks for the links and the information. I hope the issue continues to be resolved by simply ensuring you aren't Vit D deficient.

It's strange that this link isn't better recognized b/c I imagine many people (not just the elderly) are Vit D deficient, particularly in the winter as you say.

[Dizzysillyak]

I thought you all might be interested in this. I started taking fish oil and E 2 times a day last week and I think it's already helping my constant dehydration. I stopped salt loading and my hands aren't all wrinkled ... this is my way of knowing if I'm dehydrated ..

http://www.brighthub.com/health/diet-nutri...cles/21562.aspx

Interesting that we have to watch D too though ... My D was fine when it was tested last but I live in Fl and get out in the sun regularly.

[lthomas521]

Even before the discovery of insulin, doctors knew that there were at least two types of diabetes. They were originally called diab?te gras and diab?te maigre, which is French for fat diabetes and thin diabetes. Fat diabetes went away if people ate less and exercised more. Thin diabetes was virtually untreatable, and it seemed to have something to do with disease of the pancreas. The patients rapidly wasted away, went into a coma, and died, regardless of the treatment. Eventually, doctors figured out that if you kept all of the sugar and starch out of the diet, the people with thin diabetes could starve to death slowly over a period of maybe a year, instead of dying within a couple of weeks.

With their discovery of insulin in the early 1920s, it became clear that thin diabetes, now called type 1 diabetes, resulted from failure of the pancreas to secrete insulin. However, fat diabetes, now called type 2, didn't respond as well to insulin. By the 1960s, when doctors started to be able to measure blood insulin levels, it became clear that people with type 2 diabetes often had abnormally high levels of insulin in the bloodstream to begin with. Their problem wasn't failure to produce insulin, it was refusal of the body to respond to insulin.

What could cause this insulin resistance? Lately, a lot of people with no real training in nutrition have been trying to tell us that eating a high-carbohydrate diet causes insulin resistance. Yet if you look around the world, you'll see that the populations who eat a high-carbohydrate diet based on unrefined plant foods are slender and free of type 2 diabetes. By 1927, it was suspected that a high-fat diet was causing insulin resistance. In the early 1930s, a British doctor named H. P. Himsworth ran some experiments in which he produced a surprising degree of glucose intolerance in healthy male volunteers by feeding them a high-fat diet for only a week. As he replaced more and more of the fat in the diet with starch in subsequent weeks, the volunteers' glucose tolerance improved. It was the highest on the diet with the highest amount of carbohydrate tested, 80% of total calories.

Clinical studies have shown that people with type 2 diabetes improve rapidly when they eat a low-fat, high-fiber diet based on unrefined plant foods, including some sort of starchy staple. Even people with type 1 diabetes need less insulin and have fewer episodes of hypoglycemia on diets like that.

If you are having any sort of health problem that is undiagnosed or that just might have some sort of connection to diet, it makes sense to correct the diet first. Following a strict elimination diet protocol for a few weeks can be a painless and cost-free way to find the root cause of many different illnesses. http://www.drmcdougall.com/med_allergic.html

Since so many of us either have celiac disease or are taking drugs that deplete our potassium levels or both, potatoes are our friend. They're cheap, and all you have to do is poke holes in them and stick them in the microwave. Very POTS-friendly. Sweet potatoes work well, too, for people who can't eat potatoes for whatever reason.

[Kyler]

Jump,

The "fasting" part of checking your glucose level is done mainly so that food doesn't affect the level but I do know that serum blood sugar levels are affected by the amopunt of fluid that you take in. I work as a medic on an an ambulance and one of the treatments that we give for people with high blood sugars is we flood them with normal saline to dilute their sugar level-it changes fairly quickly when you add fluid-the same as drinking fluid would. Not all of them have signs of dehydration. I have also learned and seen first hand that the body reacts to traumatic events by dramatically increasing or decreasing blood sugar levels.

My Dad is a diabetic and his endicrinologist says that the most definitive way to check for diabetes is to do an A-1C test which without fasting is able to get an average blood sugar level over the period of several months? Don't quote me on that time period -You may want to look that up. That 1 test could save you from more fasting glucose tests.

Another thing that because i have had problems with low sugar is I bought a glucometer for $5.00 at sams club (they are not all expensive-the strips cost the most ,about $1 each)no perscription required, and I check my sugar every now and then at different times of day. Now that i am pregnant i do it about 1/week to make sure it's not high either. Just some suggestions. Hope this helps.

[tinkerbella]

hi everyone, here's what happens to me, my bp crashes and i fall in the middle of the night all while struggling to get to the kitchen to eat everything i can find. the sweeter the better. that's when i was given a meter and strips. the PS said all her POTS patients have problems with blood sugars and they keep an eye on my ac1 test. i was told to test when i feel these feelings come on. i have been low to high but ac1 is fine. i need to eat small meals with protein. no carbs or sugar after 3pm, even fruit.

wrinkled hands is a sign to me that i'm dehydrated. I just came home from hospital after being there last night and today. USUALLY MY HANDS ARE PLUMPED RIGHT UP. Not today, and this morning it took 3 tries to find my veins. Er's just don't get it when it comes to POTS. we'll see what happens this weekend when the whole cycle starts again. hope all are well here.

[Dizzysillyak]

More great info on dehydration ..