Reducing the risk of hypoglycaemia is a multifaceted challenge. For starters, health providers need to understand which behaviours raise and decrease the risk, so they can communicate this information to individuals with diabetes and the people who care for them.
An awareness of hunger prompts people to open the refrigerator. The same process alows people to limit the damage of hypoglycaemia: a mental awareness of symptoms gives people a chance to take corrective action.
There is a line in the sand between mild and severe hypoglycaemia (SH). While mild hypoglycaemia is not trivial, it does not threaten life and health as SH does. For people who depend on insulin and other glucose-lowering drugs associated with hypoglycaemia, clinicians often consider a degree of SH “the cost of doing business” in diabetes management—in other words, an unwanted but unavoidable corollary of treatment.