What Can Happen If You Don’t Control Your Blood Glucose Levels You may have heard or been told that monitoring your blood glucose (sugar) level is an essential part of managing your diabetes but why is it so important?
Well, if you blood sugar levels are not controlled and they become too high, over a long period of time, it could result in a range of complications from sight loss to kidney problems and even heart problems. If on the other hand they become too low then this could result in a lose of consciousness or a seizure.
Good control over your blood sugar levels will help you avoid these extremes and in the long run reduce the likelihood of complications developing. Good control can be achieved by monitoring blood sugar as well understanding the causes and symptoms of too high blood sugar (hyperglycaemia) and too low blood sugar (hypoglycaemia).
Too high blood sugar (when greater then 180mg/dl or 10mmol/L) is called hyperglycaemia. Often this is occurs when food, activity and medications are not balanced. The common reasons for this include: too much food, not enough medication, stress and an increase in weight.
The problem with hyperglycaemia is that in …