give reason if the sugar level becomes too low for a few minutes then the brain goes into coma state
Answers
It was a morning like any other for Susan Carleton, 47, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 44 years ago. She woke up around 6 a.m. and tested her blood glucose level; a quick glance told her she was at a low 60 mg/dl.
Carleton, a technical director who works from her home in Chandler, Arizona, figured she’d get a bite to eat and then take her short-acting breakfast insulin. “I remember dithering over breakfast, not choosing anything and then sitting down at my desk,” she says. “I kissed my husband goodbye, but my kids were still there. The next thing I remember is waking up at 2:30 in the afternoon with a stuffed animal in my arms.”
Looking back, Carleton says that terrifying day was the worst hypoglycemic episode of her 44 years living with diabetes, topping the hallucinations she had as a child and the bouts of near-paralysis she has experienced as an adult.
Sweet and Low
Hypoglycemia (from the Greek words for “under” and “sweet”) is what happens when the body’s blood glucose levels sink too low. The initial symptoms—shakiness, sweating, a pounding heart, and hunger—are the body’s warning light, an urgent demand for sugar.
When the call for help is ignored and the brain’s fuel runs out completely, the result can be disastrous—as Carleton discovered. “Acute hypoglycemia is pretty simple—you just stop getting fuel, and the brain turns off,” says Ewan McNay, PhD, a neuroscientist at the University at Albany–State University of New York. The result can be unconsciousness and coma, and even death: Surges of the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine during a severe low can cause an abnormal heart rhythm, which can be fatal.