In fact, people go for many years coping with the symptoms of hypoglycemia - dizziness, mood swings, food cravings and lack of concentration. They ignore these symptoms as they come and go.

The episodes pass and the individual feels things are back to normal. After all, he justifies, we all have family, work and more pressing worries. Male or female, we probably don't know enough about the course of ill health. Besides, what do we know about the affects of blood sugar - low or high?

Until one day it hits us hard and we think the disease has come out of the blue. Hypoglycemic symptoms build slowly and after many years we might be struck down with one of the more serious illnesses like heart disease, diabetes or kidney problems.

Before this happens we attend a doctor's surgery. But we don't seem to be successful in explaining our everyday symptoms: "A fuzzy feeling in the head," "can't concentrate".

It's a part of ageing and is not a separate disease, the doctor says. He ends by saying take an aspirin, see if it gets worse, and rest.

The last point you certainly hope for since one of the symptoms of low blood sugar is insomnia. If you could rest you'd feel better.

The symptoms that took you to the doctor are no longer causing problems. No wonder doctors can't put their fingers on a diagnosis.

But then it returns. This is how hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) works as it is not a steady state.

In fact it is the food you eat. What you ate last night and for breakfast affects the mood swings and irritableness.

What is happening is that through eating refined foods, pastries and chocolate and drinking caffeine your blood sugar levels periodically crash. These lows demand instant relief and we indulge our food cravings, often with more doughnuts and sweets.

The cycle is endless and we soon think it is normal to lack memory and concentration. We daydream about the day we will retire because it is easier to cope with hypoglycemic effects when we don't have to work.

With no help from anyone, we're alone. Even our family begins to doubt our eternal jibber-jabber.

But it doesn't have to be like this. With careful planning and research we can investigate our own symptoms. There is now a lot of research on the effects of low blood sugar.

Because you are not likely to get a lot of help formally, you should see it as your responsibility to understand pre-diabetes or hypoglycemia before the more serious illnesses take hold.