This is a hormone produced by the pancreas that helps regulate blood sugar. Conditions other than hypoglycemia can have some of the same symptoms, including dizziness, weakness, sweating, and rapid heartbeat.

These include a wide variety of conditions, such as:. To decide if your symptoms are due to hypoglycemia, your healthcare provider will look for signs of the "Whipple Triad. This includes:. Without these three indications, your healthcare provider will likely evaluate you for other conditions that have similar symptoms.

Triggers for reactive hypoglycemia can include eating high-carbohydrate meals or snacks. One theory as to why it occurs is that when a person eats carbs with a high glycemic index, the body produces enough insulin to combat hyperglycemia. However, the body is not prepared for a crash because glucagon, which can counteract the action of insulin, is not adequately produced.

Therefore, when blood sugar does go down, the body does not bring up the sugar by gluconeogenesis or glycogenolysis, which are processes that produce blood glucose from stored materials In the body. There are several other conditions that are known to cause non-diabetic hypoglycemia.

Among them:. The amount of time an episode of hypoglycemia lasts will depend on how low the glucose level has dropped. If the glucose levels are extremely low and left untreated, fainting and even seizures can occur. If treated with fast-acting carbohydrates, a person may recover within 15 minutes.

An episode of reactive hypoglycemia may correct itself on its own and most of the time, people don't need medical treatment. However, if the symptoms are recurring, they may be the result of an underlying condition that needs treatment.

For an underlying medical condition, the treatment will focus on resolving or managing the condition. This may include the surgical removal of an insulinoma or, in the case of NIPHS, the partial removal of the pancreas itself.

For all other cases, there are two aspects of treatment. The first is knowing how to respond to hypoglycemic episodes. The second is making changes to prevent future episodes. If you have an episode of reactive hypoglycemia, you can use food to help restore normal blood sugar levels.

This is accomplished with the " Rule," which involves eating 15 grams of fast-acting carbohydrates and checking your blood sugar 15 minutes later to see if the levels have normalized.

Carbohydrates "carbs" are essentially sugar molecules. Fast-acting carbohydrates are certain types of foods or beverages that can quickly raise the blood sugar level. When treating a low, the choice of carbohydrate source is important.

Limit high glycemic index GI foods that cause blood sugar levels to rise and then fall quickly, such as white bread, white rice, or sweetened yogurt. In addition, foods that contain fats along with carbs like chips, cookies, or a candy bar can slow the absorption of glucose and should not be used to treat an emergency low.

Once your symptoms have eased, have a snack if your next meal is more than 1 hour away to prevent your blood sugar from dropping again. Some healthy options include:.

The cause of reactive hypoglycemia in most cases is unknown. Even so, certain dietary and lifestyle changes may reduce the odds of it happening again. Reactive Hypoglycemia Diet. Among the diet recommendations your healthcare provider may give you:.

Physical Activity. In addition, you should exercise regularly. Physical activity increases the amount of glucose taken up from the blood. This, in turn, helps stabilize insulin levels. If you're just starting to get active, remember to work your way up to increasing your activity.

It's also worth consulting with your healthcare provider before beginning. Reactive hypoglycemia is a drop in blood glucose sugar that occurs after eating.

Symptoms usually develop within four hours of consuming food and may include shakiness, dizziness, nausea, rapid heartbeat, and sweating.

Severe cases can lead to fainting or seizures. Reactive hypoglycemia is not related to diabetes, and the cause of most episodes is unknown. The treatment typically involves eating fast-acting carbohydrates that can quickly bring blood sugar levels back to normal.

American Diabetes Association. Hypoglycemia low blood sugar. Bansai N, Weinstock RS. Non-diabetic hypoglycemia. Glucagon initiates uptake of the stored glycogen in the liver into the bloodstream so as to increase glucose levels in the blood. More insulin than is actually needed is produced in response to the large, rapid ingestion of sugary foods.

Reactive hypoglycemia can usually be relieved by dietary changes: [20]. The first important point is to add small meals at the middle of the morning and of the afternoon, when glycemia would start to decrease. If adequate composition of the meal is found, the fall in blood glucose is thus prevented.

Patients should avoid rapidly absorbed sugars and thus avoid popular soft drinks rich in glucose or sucrose. They should also be cautious with drinks associating sugar and alcohol, mainly in the fasting state. As it is a short-term ailment, a sugar crash that was not caused by injecting too much insulin does not usually require medical intervention in most people.

The most important factors to consider when addressing this issue are the composition and timing of foods.

Acute short-term low blood sugar symptoms are best treated by consuming small amounts of sweet foods, so as to regain balance in the body's carbohydrate metabolism. Suggestions include sugary foods that are quickly digested, such as:.

The anti-hypertensive class of medication known as calcium channel blockers could be useful for reactive hypoglycemia as inhibition of the calcium channels on beta islet cells can help prevent an overproduction of insulin after a meal is eaten. If there is no hypoglycemia at the time of the symptoms, this condition is called idiopathic postprandial syndrome.

It might be an " adrenergic postprandial syndrome" — blood glucose levels are normal, but the symptoms are caused through autonomic adrenergic counterregulation. Dietary recommendations for reactive hypoglycemia can help to relieve symptoms of postprandial syndrome.

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For the song, see SugarCrash! Main article: Idiopathic postprandial syndrome. Retrieved September 8, Demand Media, Inc. Retrieved November 8, J R Soc Interface. doi : PMC PMID National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse.

Department of Health and Human Services. Archived from the original on February 8, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. There are several reasons why this can happen. The most common reason for low blood sugar is a side effect of medications used to treat diabetes.

When you eat, your body breaks down foods into glucose. Glucose, the main energy source for your body, enters the cells with the help of insulin — a hormone produced by your pancreas. Insulin allows the glucose to enter the cells and provide the fuel your cells need.

Extra glucose is stored in your liver and muscles in the form of glycogen. When you haven't eaten for several hours and your blood sugar level drops, you will stop producing insulin.

Another hormone from your pancreas called glucagon signals your liver to break down the stored glycogen and release glucose into your bloodstream. This keeps your blood sugar within a standard range until you eat again. Your body also has the ability to make glucose.

This process occurs mainly in your liver, but also in your kidneys. With prolonged fasting, the body can break down fat stores and use products of fat breakdown as an alternative fuel.

If you have diabetes, you might not make insulin type 1 diabetes or you might be less responsive to it type 2 diabetes. As a result, glucose builds up in the bloodstream and can reach dangerously high levels. To correct this problem, you might take insulin or other medications to lower blood sugar levels.

But too much insulin or other diabetes medications may cause your blood sugar level to drop too much, causing hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia can also occur if you eat less than usual after taking your regular dose of diabetes medication, or if you exercise more than you typically do.

Hypoglycemia usually occurs when you haven't eaten, but not always. Sometimes hypoglycemia symptoms occur after certain meals, but exactly why this happens is uncertain.

This type of hypoglycemia, called reactive hypoglycemia or postprandial hypoglycemia, can occur in people who have had surgeries that interfere with the usual function of the stomach. The surgery most commonly associated with this is stomach bypass surgery, but it can also occur in people who have had other surgeries.

Over time, repeated episodes of hypoglycemia can lead to hypoglycemia unawareness. The body and brain no longer produce signs and symptoms that warn of a low blood sugar, such as shakiness or irregular heartbeats palpitations. When this happens, the risk of severe, life-threatening hypoglycemia increases.

If you have diabetes, recurring episodes of hypoglycemia and hypoglycemia unawareness, your health care provider might modify your treatment, raise your blood sugar level goals and recommend blood glucose awareness training.

A continuous glucose monitor CGM is an option for some people with hypoglycemia unawareness. The device can alert you when your blood sugar is too low. If you have diabetes, episodes of low blood sugar are uncomfortable and can be frightening.

Fear of hypoglycemia can cause you to take less insulin to ensure that your blood sugar level doesn't go too low. This can lead to uncontrolled diabetes. Talk to your health care provider about your fear, and don't change your diabetes medication dose without discussing changes with your health care provider.

A continuous glucose monitor, on the left, is a device that measures your blood sugar every few minutes using a sensor inserted under the skin. An insulin pump, attached to the pocket, is a device that's worn outside of the body with a tube that connects the reservoir of insulin to a catheter inserted under the skin of the abdomen.

Insulin pumps are programmed to deliver specific amounts of insulin automatically and when you eat. Follow the diabetes management plan you and your health care provider have developed.

If you're taking new medications, changing your eating or medication schedules, or adding new exercise, talk to your health care provider about how these changes might affect your diabetes management and your risk of low blood sugar.

Learn the signs and symptoms you experience with low blood sugar. This can help you identify and treat hypoglycemia before it gets too low. Frequently checking your blood sugar level lets you know when your blood sugar is getting low. A continuous glucose monitor CGM is a good option for some people.

A CGM has a tiny wire that's inserted under the skin that can send blood glucose readings to a receiver. If blood sugar levels are dropping too low, some CGM models will alert you with an alarm. Some insulin pumps are now integrated with CGMs and can shut off insulin delivery when blood sugar levels are dropping too quickly to help prevent hypoglycemia.

Be sure to always have a fast-acting carbohydrate with you, such as juice, hard candy or glucose tablets so that you can treat a falling blood sugar level before it dips dangerously low. For recurring episodes of hypoglycemia, eating frequent small meals throughout the day is a stopgap measure to help prevent blood sugar levels from getting too low.

Your body breaks down the carbohydrates in your food into its glucose sugar building blocks, which pass into your bloodstream. Your blood sugar levels begin to rise, prompting your body to release insulin.

In turn, this triggers your cells to take up the glucose to use for generating energy, swiftly returning your blood sugar levels to normal.

This is a perfectly normal process that happens in all of us, whatever we eat, and protects your body from the harmful effects of high blood sugar hyperglycaemia. But when your blood sugar increases very steeply after eating, your body can release too much insulin, making your blood sugar plummet below normal levels.

The glucose in our blood is the primary source of energy for our body and brain. This causes tell-tale symptoms including hunger, irritability, fatigue, anxiety, headaches, difficulty concentrating, shakiness, and dizziness.

Our PREDICT study showed that blood sugar dips after eating were linked to increased hunger, suggesting that curbing sugar crashes might be a good weight control strategy but cutting the urge to snack.

Besides making you feel lousy and hungry, unhealthy blood sugar responses after eating, such as spikes and crashes, have been linked to a myriad of health problems , including chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

Repeated reactive hypoglycemia frequent blood sugar crashes can lead to prediabetes and eventually type 2 diabetes if left untreated. We saw blood sugar crashes in plenty of our PREDICT participants , who underwent continuous glucose monitoring for two weeks. But they were more common in some people than others.

And even identical twins, who share all their genes, could have different glucose responses after eating the same foods. One theory is that if your blood sugar levels are not well controlled, the insulin-secreting cells in your pancreas can become damaged and don't produce enough insulin as your blood sugar begins to rise after eating.

Another idea is that your blood sugar responses depend on the microbes that live in your gut. We all have a unique set of microbes, so we all process our food differently, causing unique responses to food, even when we've eaten precisely the same thing.

The best way to dodge a sugar slump is to avoid the foods that cause them. Sorry something went wrong with your subscription Please, try again in a couple of minutes Retry. Show references Low blood glucose hypoglycemia. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Accessed Feb. Gardner DG, et al. Hypoglycemic disorders. McGraw-Hill; Loscalzo J, et al. In: Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine. McGraw Hill; Vella A. Evaluation of postprandial hypoglycemia in adults without diabetes. Merck Manual Professional Version.

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Retrieved September 8, Demand Media, Inc. Retrieved November 8, J R Soc Interface. doi : PMC PMID National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse. Department of Health and Human Services. Archived from the original on February 8, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. Mayo Clinic.

Demand Media. American Dietetic Association. Retrieved November 11, November 1, S2CID Diabetes Metab. WebMD LLC. Retrieved July 6, The Hypoglycemic states - Hypoglycemia.

Armenian Medical Network. Web MD Diabetes. Healthwise Incorporated. Hormonal and Metabolic Disorders. National Health Service 3rd ed. NHS Trust Docs ID: Review date: The Reactive Hypoglycemia Sourcebook, Patrick; Edgerton, Dale S.

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