People with diabetes who experience drops in their blood sugar can also experience irregular heart rhythms that a new study suggests could be dangerous. The study, though small, demonstrated a possible link between low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) and lowered heart rates coupled with irregular beating.

Though no causal connection has been reliably identified between the two occurrences, researchers suggest that this might account for mortality rates among people with type 2 diabetes who strictly control their glucose levels using insulin and have a high risk for heart disease. This could also account for the phenomena referred to as dead-in-bed-syndrome, which occurs when people with type 1 diabetes die in their sleep despite their lack of cardiovascular disease.

Blood sugar levels are controlled by insulin and individuals with diabetes often cannot produce enough insulin on their own to regulate glucose levels in their body. The result is the need to reduce elevated levels through insulin therapy, which can often lead to low blood sugar. Normally, when a person’s blood sugar gets too low there are physiological reactions that alert them to their danger. Researchers think that the complication lies in the tendency of sleep to dull those survival responses, allowing a person’s blood sugar to remain low for hours at a time.

In addition to the lowering of heart rates, a body with blood sugar rates that are too low will not be able to sustain proper brain functioning. This is because glucose is fuel for the body and the brain needs this fuel to maintain operations.

According to researchers, some of their findings were a bit surprising given the previously held assumption that low blood sugar was relatively rare in people with type 2 diabetes. Their research included monitoring glucose levels 24 hours a day for five days. They also monitored heart rates and collected data from 25 people who were an average of 64 years of age. What they found was that participants experienced low blood sugar about 10 percent of the time but that it often went unnoticed. During the day, the effect of low glucose levels on the heart rate was minimal but that effect was increased eight fold at night.

Researchers suggest the use of glucose monitors with alarms to help offset the potential complications of unrecognized nocturnal plummets in blood sugar levels. They suggest that this, coupled with individualized glucose management plans could help save lives.