Low levels of blood sugar may occur if your child:

* Takes too many doses of a sulfonylurea in a day or takes doses too close together.

* Continue taking the full dose of sulfonylurea, but not eat the quantities of food than usual.

* Does strenuous exercise without eating enough.

Your child may have symptoms of low blood sugar if your blood sugar in the blood falls below normal. For example, if your child’s level was about 300 for a week and suddenly decreases to 100, your child may have symptoms of low blood sugar. After your child has had diabetes for many years, it may no longer have symptoms of hypoglycemia until the level of sugar in the blood is very low. This is called lack of awareness of hypoglycemia.

Usually not produced very low levels of blood sugar in children taking oral medications other than sulfonylureas. These medicines include metformin (Glucophage), acarbose (Precose), rosiglitazone (Avandia) and pioglitazone (Actos). Most often, there are very low levels of blood sugar in children receiving insulin injections.

Sulfonylureas such as glipizide (Glucotrol), glimepiride (Amaryl) and glyburide (diabetes) and insulin injections can cause low blood sugar. Generally, low levels due to sulphonylurea drugs cause only slight symptoms of low blood sugar level in blood, unless a child also inject insulin.

Sometimes, people with diabetes develop low blood sugar during the night. There is little chance of this happening, unless your child gets insulin injections. If so, your child may wake up with cold sweat and feel weak. However, it is possible that your child continues to sleep in spite of this, because the body uses stored sugar to rise again in the blood sugar to safe levels. If this happens, chances are your child wakes up in the morning with headache and, possibly, with a high level of blood sugar.

The regulation of glucose in the body is complex and varies according to blood glucose:

• The secretion of insulin.
• Food that provides glucose, mostly from carbohydrates, to replenish energy reserves.
• Physical activity that is going to consume sugar in muscle and mobilize reserves.

Without insulin, blood glucose rises: is hyperglycemia. The excess glucose will be partially eliminated in the urine, resulting in an increased need to urinate and increased thirst. If these signs are ignored several days, hyperglycemia can become very dangerous. In the very long term, hyperglycemia can have serious health consequences. The low rate of glucose or ‘hypo’ is the consequence of excess insulin, most often due to a processing error in children with diabetes. Hypoglycemia may also be the consequence of consumption of glucose more than expected for example in case of unexpected prolonged physical effort. It can occur suddenly with symptoms reflecting the reaction of the nervous system at the lack of glucose as paleness, sweating and trembling, but also behavioral problems, aggression or apathy, or even loss of consciousness, which reflect the lack of glucose level brain. Severe hypoglycemia is exceptional in school.