Compression lows are one of those diabetes experiences that can feel frightening, disruptive, and deeply unsettling - yet are rarely explained clearly at diagnosis.
In this episode of The Diabetic Mammy Podcast, Catherine explores what compression lows actually are, why they happen most often at night, and why they can so easily shake confidence in both the technology and ourselves.
Through a real-life endocrinology appointment moment, this episode gently unpacks how pressure on a continuous glucose monitor during sleep can mimic falling glucose levels, triggering alarms that feel urgent - even when blood glucose is actually stable. These false alarms can lead to repeated night-time wakings, unnecessary treatments, broken sleep, and the familiar morning spiral of highs, frustration, and self-doubt.
This episode is not about “doing better” or reacting perfectly at 3am.
It’s about understanding what you’re seeing, reducing panic, and naming the invisible emotional load that compression lows carry - especially for parents and long-term carers who feel they “should know better by now.”
Listeners are invited to reflect on the tension between trusting diabetes technology and trusting lived experience, and to recognise that there is no flawless decision-making in the middle of the night - only human decisions made with the best information we have available to us.
Above all, this episode offers reassurance:
Not all hypos are real.
But the fear around them absolutely is.
This conversation is part of The Things We Were Not Taught series - created to give families language, context, and permission where education may have left gaps short.
A grounding listen for parents of children with Type 1 diabetes, adults living with diabetes themselves, and anyone who has ever been jolted awake by an alarm and left questioning their judgement.
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