I wanted to post in here that Rebecca's story was greatly helpful to diagnosing my own low blood sugar problem that was causing me to have seizures over the past 3 years.
I always felt that my seizures were triggered and not random. It took keeping a food/medication/sleep journal and having enough seizures to compare similarities between them to figure out what was happening.
My seizures happened:
1) During high-intensity weight workouts, always towards the end of the workout or immediately after
2) When I skip meals. Especially if the previous meal had high sugar (think: Fast food meal with large sweet tea). Eat Burger King for lunch then skip dinner = Seizure
3) Once when I drank a beer on an empty stomach. This is a bad idea in general, but I came to learn this is absolutely AWFUL for hypoglycemics. The seizure happened within ten minutes after the drink.
I had a seizure at the gym during a workout and the paramedics that showed up took my blood sugar and said it was low (68 when they got there and took it). I also did a Glucose Tolerance Test where they make you fast for 8 hours beforehand and then give you a high glucose drink (78G of sugar) and then measure your blood sugar over 3 hours. I had a seizure right at the end of hour 3. When the paramedics came, blood sugar was at 58. They gave me orange juice to drink and read my blood sugar again, it had dropped to 47. It took two tubes of glucose paste after that to get me back to acceptable ranges.
My neuro is not confident that my seizures were being triggered by low-blood sugar, and wants to raise my medication level despite being seizure free for 3 months now. The signs of having hypoglycemia were always there for me, I just had never put two and two together that my fatigue, dizziness, and seizures that I always have trouble with were connected to blood sugar levels. The medication made it hard to diagnose that my troubles were being caused by blood sugar, since if you go down the list of side effects for Keppra they are very similar to the effects I feel when my blood sugar drops (dizzy, lightheaded, off balance).
I always felt that my seizures were triggered and not random. It took keeping a food/medication/sleep journal and having enough seizures to compare similarities between them to figure out what was happening.
My seizures happened:
1) During high-intensity weight workouts, always towards the end of the workout or immediately after
2) When I skip meals. Especially if the previous meal had high sugar (think: Fast food meal with large sweet tea). Eat Burger King for lunch then skip dinner = Seizure
3) Once when I drank a beer on an empty stomach. This is a bad idea in general, but I came to learn this is absolutely AWFUL for hypoglycemics. The seizure happened within ten minutes after the drink.
I had a seizure at the gym during a workout and the paramedics that showed up took my blood sugar and said it was low (68 when they got there and took it). I also did a Glucose Tolerance Test where they make you fast for 8 hours beforehand and then give you a high glucose drink (78G of sugar) and then measure your blood sugar over 3 hours. I had a seizure right at the end of hour 3. When the paramedics came, blood sugar was at 58. They gave me orange juice to drink and read my blood sugar again, it had dropped to 47. It took two tubes of glucose paste after that to get me back to acceptable ranges.
My neuro is not confident that my seizures were being triggered by low-blood sugar, and wants to raise my medication level despite being seizure free for 3 months now. The signs of having hypoglycemia were always there for me, I just had never put two and two together that my fatigue, dizziness, and seizures that I always have trouble with were connected to blood sugar levels. The medication made it hard to diagnose that my troubles were being caused by blood sugar, since if you go down the list of side effects for Keppra they are very similar to the effects I feel when my blood sugar drops (dizzy, lightheaded, off balance).