Usually yes. I might not count a single hard candy (5 to 15 calories), which can bring my blood sugar back into a normal enough range that I have time to eat a regular meal, which I also count.
Blood sugar really has nothing, or very little to do with how many calories you burn, so I'm not sure what you mean by
Quote:
Originally Posted by dirtybluebird
food taken when your hypoglycemic to bring you back up within your daily calorie count?
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I assume you mean food taken to bring your blood sugar back into a safe range.
Your blood sugar can drop from eating too little, but eating only raises your blood sugar, it doesn't negate the calories. They still count, but there's a bigger issue here, and that's the hypoglycemia itself.
If you're experiencing hypoglycemic episodes more than once or twice a month, you probably should talk to your doctor or diabetes educator about it (if you haven't already).
I know it can be more difficult to manage blood sugar control if you're insulin dependent (I'm type II and only on metformin - so I usually only get hypoglycemic episodes if I skip or greatly delay meals, and exercise can make me more susceptible if I'm eating smaller meals), but preventing low blood sugar, is much safer than treating it.
I know I'm probably stating the obvious, and you probably know this and are taking the sensible precautions. However, it's easy to get careless about blood sugar control. I fell into a habit of skipping and delaying meals and snacks as long as I could, and then would find myself in an emergency situation, and I'd panic. I'd also use the hypoglycemic episode as justification to eat something with far more carbs than necessary, when a more sensible meal would have done just as well.
Often the "emergency" was entirely preventable. My husband sat me down one day, and told me he was worried that I was "setting myself up" for these emergencies, in order to justify eating things I usually avoided.
He may have been right, or maybe I just fell into a bad habit. Either way, I had to plan better to avoid the hypoglycemic episodes.
Lack of planning, still is sometimes an issue - but I've learned to recognize the symptoms earlier so that I don't have to eat a very high-carb food to address the problem, I just have to eat something sensible (which I do count).
Most of the time, even with a hypoglycemic episode, I don't have to eat anything "off plan" I just have to eat from my normal food budget (I use an exchange plan. So I can use one of my fruits or starches, for example).
I do try to pair higher carb exchanges with protein and/or fat, because eating that way seems to control blood sugar levels longer. Eating high sugar or high starch foods alone tends to make me more vulnerable to blood sugar control problems.