You searched for: “hypoglycemia
hypoglycemia
An abnormally low level of glucose (sugar) in the blood; usually resulting from excessive insulin or a poor diet.

Hypoglycemia may be tolerated by normally healthy people for short periods of time, but if the blood sugar level remains very low for a long time, there are often effects on the brain, with development of mental confusion, hallucinations, convulsions, and eventually deep coma as the nervous system is deprived of the glucose needed for its normal metabolic activities.

Additional conditions can cause hypoglycemia; such as, overproduction of insulin by the pancreas, an overdose of therapeutic insulin, certain types of abdominal or pancreatic tumors, and the deficient production of adrenocortical hormones, especially the glucocorticoids (a steroid hormone that is produced by the adrenal cortex of animals which affects the functioning of the gonads and has an anti-inflammatory activity).

This entry is located in the following units: glyco-, glyc- + (page 4) hypo-, hyp- (page 7)
hypoglycemia, hypoglycaemia
1. An abnormally low blood sugar usually resulting from excessive insulin or a poor diet.
2. An abnormally low level of glucose in the blood.

The symptoms of hypoglycemia may include anxiety, sweating, tremor, palpitations, nausea, and pallor.

Hypoglycemia also starves the brain of glucose energy, which is essential for proper brain function. Lack of glucose energy to the brain can cause symptoms ranging from headache, mild confusion, and abnormal behavior, to the loss of consciousness, seizure, and coma. Severe hypoglycemia can cause death.

This entry is located in the following unit: -emia, -aemia + (page 2)