Question: What is a normal blood sugar level? What is considered a critical blood sugar level? And under what circumstances would a blood sugar range constitutes a real emergency?
Answer:
Even as an individual, blood sugar measurements are to be taken under different circumstances for it to become truly meaningful. Let’s start with the so-called fasting blood sugar (or blood glucose) levels. This is measured usually 6 to 8 hours after the last meal. Naturally the best time to conduct this measurement is obviously before your breakfast in the morning; and a normal blood sugar level would fall somewhere within 70 to 100 milligrams per deciliter range.
During your first meal , blood sugar is understood to have risen after your first gulp. Assuming you have stayed healthy and responsible in your choice and portion of your breakfast, the reading for blood suger lever would not exceed a 135 to 140 milligrams per deciliter range. So I hope that gives you an indication of where a fairly normal range of blood sugar lies (it should not swing wildly), across a typical day.
Normal Blood Sugar Level, Hypoglycemia & Hyperglycemia
Let us now switch our attention to diabetic patients. There are low blood sugar levels (otherwise also called hypoglycemia), and then there are elevated blood sugar levels (also known as hyperglycemia).
Hypoglycemia
In the case of hypoglycemia, when the blood sugar range falls to a region of approximately 60 or 65 milligrams per deciliter range, symptoms would very likely start to set in; these can be a suspicion of hunger, maybe some shakiness, or perhaps a sense of desire or urge (accompanied by pounding heart) and if they get to eat something, it blows up straight away. But should the blood sugar level have a chance to drop beyond 50 and go further down to as low as 40, or 30, or even 20, the patient would suffer a progressive loss of mental capability and function and he or she will eventually be rendered unconscious, and seizure starts to set in. When this happens, it sure is very dangerous and the victim should be treated as a medical emergency.
Hyperglycemia
On the flip side, when blood suger lever is anything between 180 to 200(or even more), then even an overworked kidney would not be able to handle the load to reabsorb the glucose from the blood stream and excessive glucose in the blood has to be passed into the urine. To further perpetuate this situation, let’s say the sugar level gets way up high, say in the 400s or even 500s range, we will start to notice some fundamental changes in mental processing at some odd times of the day. If this situation is not given enough medical attention, a prolonged duration means that a severe and irreversible change in mental process can be expected.
So I hope it is clear to you now why our blood sugar level has to be kept at an optimal range. Overly low and exceedingly high blood sugar levels are both detrimental to our mental processing capability.