Since I've had this 4 year long hypoglycemia rollercoaster going on in my life, I thought I would actually see if other people noticed personality changes when they go long enough without eating or experience a sugar crash. Or maybe a change when they experience a sugar high?
First off, you don't need to be hypoglycemic to respond to this.
hypoglycemia is, in a general sense, just an extreme version of what already happens with people's normal blood sugar cycles.
If a healthy person doesn't eat for a while, their blood sugar will slowly drop. If they eat a ton of sugar, their blood sugar will spike and then fall before eventually regulating itself. Like making waves in a pool of water.
For hypoglyemics, it is much more drastic and unstable. Their blood sugar levels drop much more quickly without food intake and it takes a far smaller amount of sugar to send them into a crash and when they do crash they crash very hard to the point of mental incapacitation.
I've read in the past that one of the potential side effects is personality change.
For me, these drastic shifts i've had to learn how to deal with have given me plenty of opportunity to see how my blood sugar affects me.
Here is the theory I have fleshed out for myself
normal blood sugar: normal INFP function usage, dominant Fi and logical Ne usage. ability to talk out thoughts is easy especially with some caffeine in my system. socialization is easy. being in crowds doesn't affect me. most importantly, the ability to be happy is present.
low blood sugar: Fi disappears almost entirely as well as any Fe. Ti takes over the decision making department and all S functions diminish as well. ability to talk coherently is severely diminished. talking seems like staring at a 50 floor staircase and being told you have to walk up it. socialization becomes a chore. crowds become unbearable (probably because i lack the brain capacity to utilize my coping mechanisms). being happy even when I have reason to be becomes an enormous pain in the ass.
I call this my ENTP alternate personality because I do in fact act very much like an ENTP, but a drunk ENTP with a stick up his ass. All decisions I make I see as completely valid and legitimate. I can be a total ass to my best friends and family (which implies that my Fi is not present anymore since I am not utilizing my internal values system anymore at that point) and not once will I question that behavior until I regulate my blood sugar again.
I say ENTP rather than INTP because I talk far more when i'm in "bigot mode". And just because my Fi is seemingly gone doesn't mean it has been replaced with dominant Ti. My Ne takes control at that point and my Fi takes a backseat.
This doesn't mean I become an ENTP though, I am still an INFP, I am just using functions at the time that would resemble the function usage of an ENTP, but badly because I don't normally use them in that way.
As i've said in the past, it's like the incredible hulk if he was drunk and mentally retarded. In a worst case scenario of course, there are varying levels of severity depending on how much sugar i've eaten or how long I've gone without food.
So that's just me. I am a very extreme example of what most people go through on a smaller scale.
So how does blood sugar affect your personality? Have you ever done something when you were really hungry or sugar high and than looked back at it and thought "wtf was i thinking?" Have you ever identified different cognitive functions coming out in you that normally don't?
