How to Keep a Hypo Diary Your Diabetes Team Can Use
A hypo is usually over in twenty minutes, and by the evening it is half remembered. Yet hypos are one of the first things a diabetes team reviews: how often they happen, how bad they get, at what time of day, and what came before them. Your meter or CGM records the glucose number, which is essential, but it does not record that you were halfway up a hill, had skipped lunch, or could not read your phone screen. A short entry after each hypo, and a daily record of meals, activity, alcohol and medication, turns scattered lows into a pattern that can be fixed, whether you live with type 1 diabetes, type 2 treated with insulin or sulfonylureas, or reactive hypoglycemia.
What to record after each hypo
Treat first, log afterwards. Once you feel steady, record when it started, how you noticed it (shaking, sweating, hunger, a CGM alarm, or someone else spotting it), and how bad it got on a consistent scale: mild if you recognized and treated it yourself, moderate if you were confused, weak or struggling to act, severe if you needed someone else's help or glucagon, or passed out. Note what you treated it with and whether one round was enough or you went low again within the hour. Record how long it took to feel yourself again, because a headache, tiredness or low mood can linger for hours after the number recovers. Then the context: when you last ate and roughly what, when you last took your insulin or tablets, any exercise in the previous 24 hours, alcohol the evening before, and whether you were ill, stressed, very hot or short of sleep. Keep the glucose readings in your meter or CGM, where your clinic will look for them.
Patterns worth logging every day
Hypos are rarely random, but their causes are spread across the day, so they only show up if ordinary days are logged too. Trace Health lets you log daily factors in one tap each, on the same timeline as your hypos: a skipped or late meal, a meal heavy in starches, sugary food, alcohol, walks and other exercise, stress, poor sleep, and your medications or injections. After four to eight weeks, look at what came before your lows. Typical findings are a late afternoon low on days with a lunchtime walk, a night low after evening exercise or a few drinks, a low two or three hours after a correction dose, or a run of lows after weight loss or a change in routine that has made a familiar dose too strong. In reactive hypoglycemia the pattern usually sits in the meal itself: a large, refined carbohydrate meal followed by shakiness two to four hours later. These are concrete patterns to bring to your clinician, not reasons to change a dose on your own.
When a hypo is an emergency
Call emergency services if the person is unconscious, having a seizure, or too drowsy or confused to swallow safely. Do not give food or drink by mouth in that situation; put them on their side in the recovery position and give glucagon if it has been prescribed and you have been shown how. Call for help too if they are not improving after treatment. For a hypo you can treat yourself, NHS and ADA guidance commonly describe about 15 to 20 grams of fast-acting carbohydrate, a recheck after 15 minutes, a repeat if you are still below 4 mmol/L (70 mg/dL), and then a longer-acting carbohydrate snack if a meal is not due. Your own care team's plan comes first. Do not drive until you have fully recovered; UK guidance asks drivers to wait 45 minutes after glucose is back in range. Contact your diabetes team after any severe hypo, if hypos are becoming frequent or happen at night, if you notice them later than before, or after a new medication. Anyone with hypo symptoms who does not take glucose-lowering medication should be assessed by a doctor.
How Trace Health helps you keep the record
Logging Low Blood Sugar takes one tap, with a severity that mirrors how clinicians grade hypos, and you mark it Gone once you have recovered, so each episode has a start, an end and a length. A note on the entry holds what you treated it with and what you were doing. High-Carb Meal, Skipped Meal, Sugar, Alcohol, Walking / Hiking, Physical Activity, Stress, Poor Sleep, Daily Medications and Injection / Infusion sit on the same timeline, and Insights show which of them tend to come before your hypos. Fatigue, Shakiness, Night Sweats and Brain Fog can be logged alongside. With Premium, widgets and the Apple Watch app let you log without opening the app. The doctor-ready PDF puts the episodes and the factors around them into a few pages for your diabetes nurse, GP or endocrinologist. Trace Health does not record glucose, insulin doses or carbohydrates; it adds how you felt and what happened to the numbers your meter or CGM keeps. Your data stays on your iPhone, and no account is needed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I check my glucose before logging a hypo?
If you have a meter or CGM and it is safe to do so, yes: checking confirms the low, and the reading belongs in your meter's record for your clinic. But never delay treatment to check or to log. If you feel a hypo coming and cannot test, treat it first. Trace Health does not store glucose values, so your meter or CGM remains the record of the numbers, and your diabetes team will review that data directly. What Trace adds is the other half: how the hypo felt, how severe it was in practice, how long recovery took, and what you had eaten, drunk or done beforehand. Together, the two records explain a low far better than either does alone.
Can a hypo diary help with fear of hypos?
Often, yes. Fear of hypoglycemia is common, especially after a severe or night-time episode, and it can lead people to keep their glucose higher than their team recommends, or to avoid exercise, driving or sleeping alone. A record helps in two ways. It replaces a general sense of danger with specifics: how many hypos you actually had this month, at what times, and after what. And it gives your diabetes team the material to remove the cause, whether by moving a dose, changing a medicine, adding CGM alarms or planning exercise differently. If fear of hypos is shaping your days, say so at your review. Diabetes teams see this often, and psychological support exists for it.
Can tracking meals, exercise and alcohol help me prevent hypos?
It is one of the most useful things a log can do. Log a skipped or late meal, a high-carb meal, sugary food, alcohol, walks or workouts, poor sleep and stress in Trace Health in one tap each, every day rather than only on hypo days, so the comparison is fair. Exercise lowers glucose during activity and for up to 24 hours afterwards, which is why lows appear the night after a long walk or a match. Alcohol slows the liver's release of glucose, so the risk runs into the night and the next morning. A meal smaller than your dose expected, or one skipped after a sulfonylurea, is a classic trigger. After a few weeks, Insights show which factors keep lining up with your lows, and you can take those patterns to your clinician.
Your health data stays on your iPhone.
No account. Private. No personal information is ever requested. Your health data stays on your iPhone by default. A backup option to your private iCloud is available. Trace Health never collects or sells your health data.
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