Every month, I’ll be highlighting breast cancer research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you.
Occasionally, I've decided to highlight other kinds of things I discover…
Today: Cortisone Injections and Blood Sugar surges
“Steroids are being used effectively for the treatment of a variety of musculoskeletal disorders, including osteoarthritis, tendonitis, myofascial pain syndrome, and trigger fingers. They are especially useful for shoulder or spinal diseases, mainly for the treatment of shoulder pain caused by rotator cuff disease or adhesive capsulitis and spinal pain caused by herniated nucleus pulposus (HNP) and spinal stenosis. Steroids are useful for treating severe pain that requires surgical treatment in patients who cannot undergo surgery due to medical complications or other problems. However, steroid use is accompanied by various side effects such as fever, facial flushing, nausea, and fatigue. One typical side effect of steroid injection is an increase in blood glucose level.”
WHOA! Was this a surprise to us!
My wife’s doctor, thinking (didn’t she read my wife’s file???) that she was just giving a normal shot to a normal person to take care of a case of normal tendonitis, didn’t tell her to expect anything other than the relief of pain…
As I said, the end result has been a startling surprise to us!
Blood sugars that are normally controlled about 127 were over 500 a few hours ago after a moderate Friday Night-Pre-Blizzard-Celebration with grandkids, their mom, and her mom…(two grandmas and a grandpa)…
Whoa! For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a brief lesson: “When you have diabetes, your body isn’t able to get the sugar from blood into cells, or make enough, or any, insulin. This causes high levels of blood sugar, or high glucose levels. The carbohydrates in food cause blood sugar levels to go up after meals. When you eat foods that contain carbohydrates, the digestion process turns them into sugars. These sugars are released into the blood and transported to the cells. The pancreas, a small organ in the abdomen, releases a hormone called insulin to meet the sugar at the cell. Insulin acts as a ‘bridge’, allowing the sugar to go from the blood into the cell. When the cell uses the sugar for energy, blood sugar levels go down.”
So, the levels of sugar in the blood – are measured as the number of milligrams of sugar / (= “per”) deciliter of blood. If you’re fasting and before meals it should be less than110 mg/dL and less than 140 mg/dL two hours after eating a meal…my wife’s was 527 mg/dL two hours after supper…
That doesn’t sound like a big change, but consider this: “Severely high blood sugar turns your blood thick and syrupy. The excess sugar passes from your blood into your urine, which triggers a filtering process that draws tremendous amounts of fluid from your body. Left untreated, this can lead to life-threatening dehydration and a diabetic coma.”
To continue then, she brought the levels down to 400 fairly quickly, but that was only after feeling really horrible! Not sure what the night will bring, but I’ll be updating this before posting it…
To continue with the spark for this post – the cortisone shot started to affect her almost immediately in a negative way with her normal blood sugars elevated but not to a worrisome level. Throw on top of that our little party, and there was near panic in the house.
“The aim of this study was to investigate the duration of blood glucose level elevation after steroid injection in patients with type 2 DM and whether associated factors and poor blood glucose control play a role in the elevation of blood glucose levels.” The result was that it was only supposed to last for a couple of days…
But, that wasn’t so. It’s been five days now and she was having trouble getting stable blood sugars even before the party.
Postscript: After talking to the doctor’s office Physician’s Assistant – who talked to both doctors (left hand and right hand no knowing what the other was doing) and confirming that taking extra Metformin was a reasonable response in her case and after several bottles of protein drink and a night’s sleep, sugars came down. But she has to be careful…
Resources: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7214140/, https://www.healthline.com/health/type-2-diabetes/understanding-glucose-levels, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetic-coma/symptoms-causes/syc-20371475
Image: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQBGIUb2zrP2p1hvhZUTYmZ4etlaRN8SuBY-A&usqp=CAU
Today: Cortisone Injections and Blood Sugar surges
“Steroids are being used effectively for the treatment of a variety of musculoskeletal disorders, including osteoarthritis, tendonitis, myofascial pain syndrome, and trigger fingers. They are especially useful for shoulder or spinal diseases, mainly for the treatment of shoulder pain caused by rotator cuff disease or adhesive capsulitis and spinal pain caused by herniated nucleus pulposus (HNP) and spinal stenosis. Steroids are useful for treating severe pain that requires surgical treatment in patients who cannot undergo surgery due to medical complications or other problems. However, steroid use is accompanied by various side effects such as fever, facial flushing, nausea, and fatigue. One typical side effect of steroid injection is an increase in blood glucose level.”
WHOA! Was this a surprise to us!
My wife’s doctor, thinking (didn’t she read my wife’s file???) that she was just giving a normal shot to a normal person to take care of a case of normal tendonitis, didn’t tell her to expect anything other than the relief of pain…
As I said, the end result has been a startling surprise to us!
Blood sugars that are normally controlled about 127 were over 500 a few hours ago after a moderate Friday Night-Pre-Blizzard-Celebration with grandkids, their mom, and her mom…(two grandmas and a grandpa)…
Whoa! For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a brief lesson: “When you have diabetes, your body isn’t able to get the sugar from blood into cells, or make enough, or any, insulin. This causes high levels of blood sugar, or high glucose levels. The carbohydrates in food cause blood sugar levels to go up after meals. When you eat foods that contain carbohydrates, the digestion process turns them into sugars. These sugars are released into the blood and transported to the cells. The pancreas, a small organ in the abdomen, releases a hormone called insulin to meet the sugar at the cell. Insulin acts as a ‘bridge’, allowing the sugar to go from the blood into the cell. When the cell uses the sugar for energy, blood sugar levels go down.”
So, the levels of sugar in the blood – are measured as the number of milligrams of sugar / (= “per”) deciliter of blood. If you’re fasting and before meals it should be less than110 mg/dL and less than 140 mg/dL two hours after eating a meal…my wife’s was 527 mg/dL two hours after supper…
That doesn’t sound like a big change, but consider this: “Severely high blood sugar turns your blood thick and syrupy. The excess sugar passes from your blood into your urine, which triggers a filtering process that draws tremendous amounts of fluid from your body. Left untreated, this can lead to life-threatening dehydration and a diabetic coma.”
To continue then, she brought the levels down to 400 fairly quickly, but that was only after feeling really horrible! Not sure what the night will bring, but I’ll be updating this before posting it…
To continue with the spark for this post – the cortisone shot started to affect her almost immediately in a negative way with her normal blood sugars elevated but not to a worrisome level. Throw on top of that our little party, and there was near panic in the house.
“The aim of this study was to investigate the duration of blood glucose level elevation after steroid injection in patients with type 2 DM and whether associated factors and poor blood glucose control play a role in the elevation of blood glucose levels.” The result was that it was only supposed to last for a couple of days…
But, that wasn’t so. It’s been five days now and she was having trouble getting stable blood sugars even before the party.
Postscript: After talking to the doctor’s office Physician’s Assistant – who talked to both doctors (left hand and right hand no knowing what the other was doing) and confirming that taking extra Metformin was a reasonable response in her case and after several bottles of protein drink and a night’s sleep, sugars came down. But she has to be careful…
Resources: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7214140/, https://www.healthline.com/health/type-2-diabetes/understanding-glucose-levels, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetic-coma/symptoms-causes/syc-20371475
Image: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQBGIUb2zrP2p1hvhZUTYmZ4etlaRN8SuBY-A&usqp=CAU
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