When people with diabetes find that their blood sugar is always high or fluctuates, they always wonder, what causes blood sugar to rise?
Based on clinical experience, the author summarized the 20 most common reasons for high blood sugar to see if any of them occur to you frequently.
1.Have you controlled your diet?
Diet therapy is the basis of diabetes treatment. Whether it is type 1 diabetes or type 2 diabetes, regardless of the severity of the disease, whether or not you use anti-diabetic drugs, you need to control your diet.
·Sugar patients with mildly elevated blood sugar can return their blood sugar to normal simply by relying on diet control; on the contrary, if they do not pay attention to diet control and eat and drink indiscriminately, the efficacy of no matter how good the medicine is will be greatly reduced.
·People with diabetes should moderately control their energy intake according to their weight and activity intensity, while ensuring a balanced diet and nutritional balance.
2. Have you continued to exercise?
Exercise itself is an energy-consuming process.
·Regular aerobic exercise (such as jogging, brisk walking, swimming, etc.) can promote the decomposition of muscle glycogen and the utilization of glucose by peripheral tissues;
·Exercise can also help reduce weight, improve insulin resistance, and enhance the efficacy of hypoglycemic drugs;
·Exercise can also help relieve tension, maintain mental balance, and reduce blood sugar fluctuations.
·You must exercise consistently and avoid "three days of fishing and two days of drying the net."
In addition, do not do high-intensity anaerobic exercise, which will increase blood sugar.
3. Is the drug selection appropriate?
Diabetes patients should pay attention to individualized medication, and use medication rationally according to the type of diabetes, pancreatic islet function, blood sugar spectrum characteristics, age, fatness and weight, and the presence of complications.
4. Is the dosage of medication appropriate?
It is easy to understand that insufficient dosage of medicine causes blood sugar to remain high. In fact, excessive dosage of medicine can also cause blood sugar to remain high.
This is because too much medication can lead to rebound hyperglycemia after hypoglycemia. At this time, if you continue to increase the dose, the blood sugar will be higher. As the saying goes, overcorrecting will lead to the opposite.
People with diabetes who have elevated fasting blood sugar must first find out whether it is "insufficient dosage of anti-diabetic drugs" or "rebound hyperglycemia after hypoglycemia". If it is the latter situation, the amount of anti-diabetic drugs in the evening should be appropriately reduced. rather than increase.
5. Is the medication used correctly?
There are many types of antidiabetic drugs with different usage methods. Improper use will result in half the result with half the effort. For example:
Long-acting insulin: usually injected once a day, or twice a day, and needs to be injected at the same time every day.
Intermediate-acting insulin: usually injected twice a day, and needs to be injected at the same time every day.
Rapid-acting insulin: needs to be injected before meals, about 15 minutes before meals.
Short-acting insulin: needs to be injected before meals, about 30 minutes before meals.
Premixed insulin: Inject before breakfast and before dinner. If using premixed human insulin, give the injection approximately 30 minutes before a meal; if using premixed insulin analogues, give the injection approximately 15 minutes before a meal.
6. Is the combination of drugs reasonable?
When single drug treatment is not effective, combination therapy should be adopted in a timely manner. The so-called "combination" should be the combination of two or more drugs with different mechanisms of action.
7. How is treatment compliance?
Some patients are worried that long-term medication is not good for the liver and kidneys, so they stop taking the medication as soon as their blood sugar drops; other patients are careless and often forget or omit to take their medication, resulting in repeated fluctuations in blood sugar or remaining high.
People with diabetes must know that diabetes cannot be cured yet, and long-term treatment must be maintained. You must not stop eating or stop eating when you see it is better.
8. Is the pancreatic islet function failing?
As the disease progresses, the pancreatic islet function of patients with type 2 diabetes will gradually decrease and even fail completely.
The premise for some drugs (such as insulin secretagogues) to be effective is that the patient still retains a certain degree of pancreatic islet function, because these drugs mainly exert hypoglycemic effects by stimulating pancreatic islet B cells to secrete insulin.
When a patient's pancreatic islet function is severely reduced, the effect of such drugs will be greatly reduced or even completely ineffective, causing blood sugar to remain high.
9. Is there insulin resistance?
Insulin resistance is the body's insensitivity to insulin and is more common in obese patients with type 2 diabetes.
If people with diabetes have insulin resistance, they must use drugs to improve insulin resistance.
10. Are you taking any drugs that have an impact on hypoglycemic effects?
Some people with diabetes take other drugs that have a certain effect on raising blood sugar, such as glucocorticoids, beta-blockers, thiazide diuretics, estrogen, thyroid hormones, etc., which can easily cause blood sugar to rise.
11. Whether other endocrine diseases coexist
Some patients with diabetes are also complicated by other endocrine diseases, such as hyperthyroidism, acromegaly (excessive secretion of growth hormone), Cushing's disease (excessive secretion of cortisol), etc. These endocrine diseases can also cause elevated blood sugar.
12. Is there any stress?
Stress factors such as infection, trauma, surgery, tooth extraction, acute stroke, and pregnancy can increase the secretion of blood sugar-raising hormones such as epinephrine, glucocorticoids, and progesterone, weakening the hypoglycemic effect of insulin, resulting in high blood sugar levels.
13. Do you have bad emotions?
Emotional changes such as tension, anxiety, anger, overjoyment, overexcitement, etc. can cause sympathetic nerve excitement, increase the secretion of catecholamines and other glucagon hormones, and cause blood sugar to rise.
Therefore, it is important to maintain emotional stability. In addition, irregular life and excessive fatigue can also cause blood sugar fluctuations.
14.Do you sleep well?
People with diabetes need to ensure 6 to 8 hours of sleep every day. Long-term insomnia or staying up late can lead to over-excitation of the sympathetic nerve, inhibit insulin secretion, increase the secretion of glucagon hormones such as epinephrine, and thereby increase blood sugar.
15. Whether it is affected by climate factors
Blood sugar in diabetics often fluctuates due to seasonal changes. Whenever winter comes, people with diabetes eat more and do less outdoor activities. In addition, cold stimulation increases the secretion of insulin-resistant hormones such as epinephrine, which can lead to elevated blood sugar.
16. Is there any missed diagnosis or mistreatment?
Type 1 diabetes is mainly seen in children, but it seems that adult-onset type 1 diabetes (LADA type diabetes) is not uncommon and is often misdiagnosed as type 2 diabetes.
For patients with this type of diabetes, oral hypoglycemic drugs are effective in the early stages of the disease, but due to the rapid failure of pancreatic islet function, the oral hypoglycemic drugs will fail secondary to failure soon, leading to a rebound in blood sugar.
17. Are you neglecting blood sugar monitoring?
Regular blood glucose monitoring can help understand the condition and guide medication adjustments. Some people with diabetes do not pay attention to blood sugar monitoring and take medicine based on their feelings, which makes it difficult to control blood sugar well.
18. Is it inappropriate to inject insulin?
Some people with diabetes do not pay attention to rotating the injection site when injecting insulin. They always inject at the same site. Over time, it is easy to cause skin induration, which affects the absorption of insulin and thus affects the efficacy of the drug.
19. Whether the medicine has expired or expired
Antidiabetic drugs should be stored in a cool, dark, and sealed place. Unopened insulin should be stored in the refrigerator. Improper storage of medicines or their expiry dates will affect their efficacy.
20. Whether to use folk remedies and health products instead of medicines
Many people with diabetes blindly believe in false advertisements or folk remedies, secret recipes, and even use health supplements instead of anti-diabetic drugs. As a result, their blood sugar levels naturally remain high.
If none of the above reasons exist, or if blood sugar is still poorly controlled after adjusting, it is recommended to seek medical treatment in time.
