Best low treatment

but is it a vodka martini or a gin martini; this would be the deciding factor for me :wink:

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This is so funny, in so many ways. The olive is a really nice touch

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Currently it’s honey. I have smarties in jars but am tired of those. Also I like Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Bars. I have those in my bedroom along with honey. As a strategy, if I wake with a low at 3am (70 or below) I am way too tired to make my way downstairs to the kitchen. So, I go with a spoonful of honey followed by a Nut Crunch Bar (15 grams of carbs) which keeps my bg’s above 99 till breakfast which is around 9 am.
I know those bars raise my bg by 60 points so I’m good with 120-140 while sleeping. By morning I expect or hope to be down around 90.

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We also use honey at night for our son. We pre-load 5 mL oral feeding syringes with honey and then just inject them into his mouth when he’s low. He sucks on instinct. I’ve heard people can also drink juice in their sleep but he doesn’t need that many carbs to bring up a low most of the time.

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Interesting, we have never used honey, but our go to at night is swedish fish, because the big ones are easy to count the carbs for in the dark.

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Another option we sometimes use is maple syrup. Also, unfiltered honey takes longer to process than pasteurized filtered honey, for some reason. No idea why.

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I like applesauce pouches (12 carbs) or Costco brand organic fruit gummis (also 12 carbs/pouch) for minor lows. Anything south of 55 gets Dextrose. My go to is Walmart Relion glucose shots ($1.48/ea) in store at 15 carbs each. For some silly reason, the dextrose shots are one of the few items I have been able to reliably open every time when I am low. I have tried cake frosting (ended up gnawing through the tube), dex tabs (can’t figure out how to open the tube, even with the safety seal off), Cliff Gel shots (the plastic pouch is beyond my skill set when low). Guess my motor coordination leaves something to be desired when low.

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Juice box when I’m out and about. I don’t jones for juice like I do other sweet things. If I routinely carry stuff around that I like, I’m tempted to eat it when I’m not low. Bad move.

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This is intriguing. I’ve always understood honey works so quickly because the bees have already separated its glucose and fructose molecules – they’re what’s called “unlinked,” versus “bound” together as sucrose as in table sugar and candies and so on – and therefore the glucose is immediately available for absorption. Although a small amount of carb absorption takes place in the mouth, sucrose mostly has to wait until it can be broken down in the small intestine.

Filtering is done to remove pollen granules, air bubbles and other impurities consumers don’t want to see. Pasteurization kills some enzymes and damages minerals and so on. But neither process should affect the molecular structure.

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@Beacher, maybe it has something to do with the physical texture…the unfiltered is just much thicker, so perhaps it’s just not diffusing through his mouth into his bloodstream, or being broken down by the gut, as fast? He’s quite small so maybe all the stuff inside his body to convert food into sugar is also quite small…

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For me the decision depends on how low I am. If I’m falling fast or I’m below 65 I invariably take glucose, because it is fastest. (I’m always carrying a tube of 10.) Other sugars need a certain amount of digestion to release the glucose or convert some other kind of sugar into glucose. If I’m not in a big hurry, then all kinds of tasty alternatives are a better choice than glucose tabs.

There are lots of different kinds of glucose tabs. Some are like the original orange-flavored ones from decades ago, which were intentionally engineered to be unpalatable so they would only be used as emergency medicine and not be scarfed down as tasty candy snacks (hence become unavailable for emergency use.) More recently, some of the glucose tab manufacturers seem to be starting to figure out that their product sells better if people actually want to use it. But finding a good glucose tab does seem to be a continuing problem.

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I know I’ve said it on here before, but smarties (US type) and sweettarts are dextrose, basically the same as glucose/dextrose tabs, and are way easier to open when low, as well as much much cheaper, if you ever do want a solid option for that. I also tend to use those for severe or quickly falling lows, but for mild or drifting lows, as I like to call them, I’ll use whatever I have that’s high carb on hand, like good dried fruit (which I enjoy but otherwise can’t easily eat) or some snack I might otherwise avoid.

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Thanks, I’ll check them out! I’m always looking for an alternative. :slight_smile:

In Canada they are Rockets :laughing: Here is the picture from the Canada-US dictionary.

image

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I keep a large bottles of glucose tabs in my desk drawer as well as a small tupperware tub full of Good-N-Plenty and one of Swedish Fish. I also keep a 16oz bottle of OJ in the work fridge (and keep an eye on the expiration date).

I have two large bottles of glucose tabs in my apartment that I use to refill the tubes that I keep in my purse, my car and my tack cabinet at the farm. I also keep GnP and SF in my car in baggies.

I like the glucose tabs because they are easy and fast and I’m not inclined to overindulge like I often do with my “candy treats.” Of course I like my candy better!

I keep applesauce and OJ in the fridge at home.

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I was just rereading this thread and it struck me as funny that on a diabetes forum we are discussing our favorite candy :joy:.

Forty years ago this would have given any doctor a heart attack. How times have changed!

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:joy::joy::joy::joy:

You are so RIGHT!!

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Thanks for the tip about Smarties being made from dextrose, cardamom. I never knew that. I agree with those who find glucose tablets unpalatable as well as overpriced. The tropical flavor glucose tablets you get at CVS are, to my taste, spectacularly bad! Just thinking about them makes me a little ill.

By the by, I was on vacation in England and bought some of the glucose tablets they have there which have a “juicy” middle. They’re are much better tasting than any of the tablets, gels and shots I have bought here over the years. We deserve better!

Does anyone know if there is any significant difference in speed between say dextrose, glucose and sucrose? Are all oses similar --including lactose and fructose? I was a little surprised to read that some people use milk to bring up a low blood sugar.

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Don’t know about the glycemic index of all the -oses, but O.J. (fructose) brings me up faster than anything else I’ve tried. It’s my sub 40 go to, and it tastes pretty darned good to boot😊

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Same thing—dextrose is just specifying the right-handed glucose molecule (which is what glucose generally is anyway).

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