Two Types of Non-Diabetic Hypoglycemia, Causes, Symptoms and Diet

Hypoglycemia is the term used to describe when your blood sugar (glucose) level drops below your body’s energy requirement needs. Glucose fuels your body, and carbohydrates are its main dietary source.

There are two types of hypoglycemia that can occur even if you don’t have diabetes. They are reactive and fasting hypoglycemia, and their symptoms are essentially the same as diabetic medication induced hypoglycemia, which include:

These two types of hypoglycemia may share common symptoms, but they part ways on when they present and their underlining causes.

Reactive Hypoglycemia
If you have reactive hypoglycemia, your symptoms will appear within the first 4 hours after you eat. Two unproven causes relate to the normal release of epinephrine hormone and glucagon secretion deficiencies. The jury is still out on these.

However, a few certain uncommon causes are gastric surgery and some rare enzyme deficiencies. Both of which apply in very few cases.

Even though the cause is not really known, these are the recommended diet and lifestyle changes involved with your management of reactive hypoglycemia:

  • exercise regularly
  • eat a variety of foods
  • eat about every 3 hours
  • choose high-fiber foods
  • avoid/limit high sugar foods, especially on an empty stomach

Studies have not proven the effectiveness of a “high protein, low carbohydrate” diet for reactive hypoglycemia.

Fasting Hypoglycemia
The causes associated with fasting hypoglycemia include:

  • alcohol
  • critical illnesses
  • certain medications
  • hormonal deficiencies
  • some kinds of tumors
  • certain infant/childhood conditions

Medications are the most common cause of fasting hypoglycemia, such as:

  • quinine used to treat malaria
  • sulfa medicines used to treat infections
  • salicylates, such as large doses of aspirin
  • pentamidine treats a very serious type of pneumonia

Drinking alcohol, especially binge drinking, can cause hypoglycemia because alcohol breakdown alcohol interferes with your liver’s efforts to raise blood glucose.

Some illnesses that affect the liver, heart, or kidneys can also cause fasting type hypoglycemia. Sepsis and starvation are other causes.

Hormonal deficiencies may cause hypoglycemia in very young children, but not adults. Hormone replacement therapy may help with this cause.

Very rare insulin-producing tumors can raise insulin levels too high, resulting in hypoglycemia in relation to your blood glucose level.

For fasting hypoglycemia cases, treatment of the underlying cause usually corrects the low blood sugar level issue.

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