If blood sugar levels fall or rise abnormally in someone with diabetes, they’ll experience a variety of symptoms.

Hypoglycaemia
Hypoglycaemia is when the blood sugar levels fall below normal. Glycaemia measures is the level of sugar in blood.

Hypoglycaemia may occur:
- after an insulin injection
- after taking oral diabetes medication
- if a meal is missed or delayed
- after strenuous exercise
- if alcohol is drunk on an empty stomach

The symptoms of hypoglycaemia vary from person to person. Mild hypoglycaemia may cause:
- weakness
- dizziness
- sweating
- hunger
- shaking
- irritability
- mood swings

A mild hypoglycaemia can usually be treated with some form of sugar. Types of sugar to use during mild crisis :
- dextrose tablets (carry these if you have diabetes)
- three sugar lumps
- two teaspoons of sugar
- chocolate or sweet biscuits
- a sweet drink

When the blood glucose level falls even lower, then the person may behave strangely and become confused (often mistakenly interpreted as drunkenness). Under these circumstances it may be easier and quicker to give sugar in liquid form, such as a sweet drink.

In severe hypoglycaemia, the person loses consciousness. Under these circumstances an injection of glucagon is given, which temporarily raises the level of blood glucose. Once the person is conscious they can be given some sugar and a snack to prevent the hypo from recurring.

Always have sugar tablets or another form of sugar available

People with diabetes and those close to them are taught to look out for signs that their sugar level may be low, and are advised to always have sugar tablets or another form of sugar available to raise the level quickly. This solves the problem quickly and prevents serious consequences.

People with diabetes are advised to carry some form of identification saying that they have diabetes, so that people will realise their condition should they get into difficulty and need help.

Hyperglycaemia
Hyperglycaemia is when the blood glucose level is too high. When it’s mildly raised then symptoms of uncontrolled diabetes occur, namely excessive thirst, passing urine frequently, tiredness, weakness and lethargy.
If the blood glucose level becomes dangerously high then the person becomes dehydrated and may become comatose. This is a medical emergency that requires hospital treatment.

A child’s never-ending “why’s” aren’t meant to exasperate parents, scientists say. Rather, the kiddy queries are genuine attempts at getting at the truth, and tots respond better to some answers than others.
This new finding, based on a two-part study involving children ages 2 to 5, also suggests they are much more active about their knowledge-gathering than previously thought.

Kids are good at fact finding
“Even from really early on when they start asking these how and why questions, they are asking them in order to get explanations,” lead researcher Brandy Frazier of the University of Michigan told LiveScience.
When explanations came their way, the little ones probed further, they found. “Kids are playing more of an active role in learning about the world around them than we may have expected,” Frazier said.
The new findings, which are detailed in the November/December issue of the journal Child Development, can’t be generalized to all children since the sample sizes were small.

Curious chatter
Past research from the early to mid 1900s on child development had suggested that young children were only aware of temporal relationships between two events and couldn’t differentiate cause from effect until about 7 or 8 years of age. More recent work has suggested otherwise, that as early as age 3 children get causality.
Lacking from such studies are kids’ reactions to the information they get to their causal questions.
To figure out kids’ responses to different questions, Frazier and her colleagues examined transcripts from everyday conversations of six kids, ages 2 to 4, who were speaking with parents, siblings and visitors at home. With just six kids, the researchers analyzed the transcripts, more than 580 of them, as their unit of analysis. Overall, there were more than 3,100 causal how and why questions such as, “Why my tummy so big, mom?” “Why not keep a light on?” and “How can snakes hear if they don’t have ears?”

Fact seeking
Results showed kids were more than twice as likely to re-ask their question after a non-explanation compared with a real answer. And when they did get an explanation, which was about 37 percent of the time, they were more than four times as likely to reply with a follow-up inquiry as if they had received a non-explanatory response.
Preliminary results from a separate new study of Frazier’s suggest there is such a thing as too much information in a response. “It seems like kids might have an optimal level of detail they’re interested in,” Frazier said.

Odd items
The next part of the new study was lab-based and involved 42 preschoolers, ages 3 to 5, who chatted when prompted with toys, storybooks and videos. The items were designed to create surprising, question-provoking situations. For instance, kids were shown a box of all-red crayons, a puzzle with a piece that didn’t fit, and a storybook describing a child who poured orange juice on his cereal.
The adults who showed kids each item had certain explanatory and non-explanatory responses. So as expected, kids asked about the orange-juice scenario: “Why did he do that?” The adult would then respond with the explanation, “He thought it was milk in the pitcher,” or the non-explanation, “I like to put milk on my cereal.”
They found significant differences in types of reactions to the explanatory answers versus the non-explanatory ones. Nearly 30 percent of the time kids would agree, nod or say “oh” after getting a true explanation, compared with just under 13 percent of the time for non-explanations.
For such non-answers, more than 20 percent of the time kids re-asked the original question. Just 1 percent of kids receiving an explanation did the same.
The newly published study was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Conclusion
If you want your kids to learn you have to make a genuine effort to explain them how the world is.

There was this piece of news yesterday from AFP that was so incredible that i reproduce it here.

A man who emerged from what doctors thought was a vegetative state says he was fully conscious for 23 years but could not respond because he was paralyzed, his mother said Monday.
Rom Houben, 46, had a car crash in 1983 and doctors thought he had sunk into a coma. His family continued to believe their son was conscious and sought further medical advice.
Professor Steven Laureys of Belgium’s Coma Science Group realized that the diagnosis was wrong and taught Houben how to communicate through a special keyboard, said Dr. Audrey Vanhaudenhuyse, who is on Laureys’ team.
Rom used the device to tell a reporter for the German magazine Der Spiegel that: “I screamed but there was nothing to hear.”
Belgian doctors who treated him early on said that Rom had gone from a coma into a vegetative condition.
Coma is a state of unconsciousness in which the eyes are closed and the patient can’t be roused, as if simply asleep. A vegetative state is a condition in which the eyes are open and can move, and the patient has periods of sleep and periods of wakefulness, but remains unconscious and unaware of him or herself or others. The patient can’t think, reason, respond, do anything on purpose, chew or swallow.
But Rom’s parents would not accept that he was comatose or vegetative.
His mother, Fina Houben, said in a telephone interview that they took him five times to the United States for tests.
More searching finally got her in touch with Laureys, who put Houben through a PET scan that indicated he was conscious. The family and doctors then began trying to establish communication.
A breakthrough came when he was able to indicate yes or no by slightly moving his foot to push a computer device placed there by Laureys’ team.
Then came the spelling of words using his finger and a touch-screen attached to his wheelchair.
“You have to imagine yourself lying in bed wanting to speak and move but unable to do so — while in your head you are OK,” Vanhaudenhuyse said. “It was extremely difficult for him and he showed a lot of anger, which is normal since he was very frustrated,” she said.
The case came to light after Laureys published a study in the journal BMC Neurology this year showing that about four out of ten patients with consciousness disorders are wrongly diagnosed as being a vegetative state. Houben, although not specifically mentioned, was part of the study.
Houben has started writing a book on his experiences.

More of us are leaving it later to start a family than ever before. Figures from National Statistics for England and Wales show that, since the 1980s, the rates for women giving birth at age 30 or over have gone up, while the rates for women giving birth aged under 30 have fallen.

There are many factors which make having babies less important or more difficult for young couples than it used to be, including going on to higher education, developing a career, and financial pressures to stay in the job market. Also, many people don’t find a partner they want to have children with until later in life or just don’t feel ready to become parents when they’re younger.

The availability and range of effective contraception has also played a significant part in the trend. This has an impact not only on couples delaying starting a family until they are older, but also on having smaller families.

Age and fertility
Putting off starting a family until your career is established or your debts cleared can have its problems. Fertility falls more sharply for women as they age than for men.

As you can see from the chart below, women are most fertile between the ages of 20 and 24. As women grow older the likelihood of getting pregnant falls steeply while the likelihood of infertility rises sharply. Men can remain fertile for much longer but male fertility still declines with age, albeit less dramatically.

Chart: How Pregnancy rates decline with time

Both of the line graphs are for women who do not have any specific fertility problems.

Source: Management of the Infertile Woman by Helen A. Carcio and The Fertility Sourcebook by M. Sara Rosenthal

Chart: How Pregnancy rates decline with time compared with other body fuctions

How long does it take to conceive?
According to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, “At 35 you’re half as fertile as when you were at 25; at 40 you’re half as fertile as when you were 35″. This means that it can suddenly take much longer to get pregnant when you hit your late thirties or early forties and you may have problems conceiving at all.

Most couples (92 per cent) will conceive within two years if they do not use contraception and have regular sex. Regular sex means making love every two to three days throughout your cycle; this optimises your chances of conceiving.

That leaves 8 per cent of couples in the general population who do not conceive within two years. If you are over 35 and keep on trying for another year you may still get pregnant but in the next few years your chances of conceiving start to fall rapidly; 6 per cent of women aged 35 years and 23 per cent of those aged 38 years will not have conceived after three years of regular unprotected sex.

This is why it is so important to seek help for infertility treatment sooner rather than later if you are over 35 and finding that positive pregnancy test elusive. It is recommended that most couples try for at least a year before seeking help but if you are over 35 and having problems conceiving you should seek help earlier.

Why does fertility decline so rapidly?
As women get older, there are a number of factors that can make it more difficult to conceive. In addition, as we age, our general health can decline. Existing conditions may worsen or new illnesses may develop, which can impact on fertility too.

Fertility factors that change, as we grow older, include:
• Ovarian reserve – this is the number of functioning follicles left on the ovaries. As you get older you have fewer viable eggs left; in cases of early menopause, the eggs run out much sooner than usual.

• Menstrual cycle – as women approach the menopause their menstrual cycles can become irregular and shorter.

• Lining of the womb – the endometrium may become thinner and less hospitable to a fertilised egg.

• Mucus secretions – vaginal secretions can become less fluid and more hostile to sperm.

• Diseases affecting the reproductive system – some conditions can damage the reproductive organs as time passes, or worsen if not treated properly, including endometriosis, PCOS, and chlamydia.

• Chronic illnesses – some illnesses can have a negative impact on fertility.

• Weight problems – Being overweight or obese can make it more difficult to become pregnant.