Try Skittles. They are roughly 1g/ carbs per piece, very easy. So far we have found them everywhere in Europe—of course not sure about Egypt!
Yep. Within the first few days, after Juno was diagnosed, I savoured — selfishly, perhaps — the sense of optimism I got from seeing what seemed to be a discernible spur in innovation in these last few years especially. I guess I needed something to hang on to. But in the weeks that have followed, and as I read more on the struggles many face, especially financially, I started to feel the cold realism seep in. Most likely, for example, the iLet, even if it arrives to market in the next 10 years, will be financially out of my reach. And forget regenerative cell therapy, if even that ever is possible.
Nonetheless, the emergence of the WeAreNotWaiting community is doubtless an important event. And I wish I could help. Things have been shaken up a bit, it seems. Usually that’s good.
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Yep, we have them here. I had a sweet tooth since my youth. Of everything I sampled, Skittles are akin to crack cocaine. I have them on hand for near emergencies. Otherwise, pure orange juice seems to act fast on Juno.
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While you will get no argument that the Omnipod is a great pump, any pump will meet your needs, even an older one. Sites aren’t an impediment to doing almost any sports, my son uses a Tslim (is very happy with it) and he has run cross country, participated in Jiu Jitsu, is the starting JV catcher for his high school baseball team, rock climbs, and does all manner of horsing around with his pump sites. Also, one thing you can do with the tubed pumps is disconnect them for extreme sporting events, which you can’t do with the Omnipod.
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Yes, indeed. It’s a good point.
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If you have them Swedish fish are very robust in the pack, i.e. they last a long time and offer a different flavor when the Skittles get old. We change low treatment every 6 months or so because my son gets tired of them.
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Yes, but they aren’t pure glucose. Mostly cane sugar, with added fat, plus they need to be chewed a while to dissolve. Swedish fish need to be chewed even longer to dissolve. Tasty, but not the same as pure glucose if you are looking for optimal speed to treat a low.
I’ve treated enough lows over the years to know that the tens of seconds needed to chew and dissolve various candies can seem like an eternity when you need glucose NOW. Most of the time it doesn’t matter and I’ll eat whatever has a fast carb in it - mostly fruit - but when adrenaline is kicking in and you’re dealing with a dangerous low it is different.
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We have been quite lucky, that with the modern tools we have only seen one of these in 3 years. The problem with that low wasn’t how fast the glucose worked, but trying to estimate how many carbs our whole fridge contained, because that is what he ate. The rebound high + overeating resulting in an epic high and roller-coasted for almost a day before things settled down.
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Let’s agree to disagree on this, @jag1. We think that, for a kid, Skittles are in general a better source of carbs for lows :
- Per our painful personal measurements (we have counted many bags of Skittles to calculate averages) 1 Skittle = roughly 0.93g of carb and 0.04g of fat, which means negligible fat. Some of the carbs are sucrose (slower), some of the carbs (less) are corn syrop (i.e. glucose, faster), and some (even less) are dextrin (i.e. glucose, faster).
- we have never found corn syrup in any of the European countries we have visited—although I am sure it is findable somewhere—just not easy.
- Our son is on the go a good part of the day. There is no way he could use or measure liquid. Even in the US, where we sometimes use corn syrup at night, we never use liquid for general or on-the-go use. The only time we can use liquids is when we have a scale nearby. On the other hand, my son can instantly count grams of sugar by counting the skittles he eats: 1 skittle = about 1 carb. He can even do it without looking, by raising his glucose tube to his mouth and counting with his tongue.
- He has used Skittles for more than 2 years and is very familiar with the kinetics of Skittles: about 3x as fast as table sugar before he sees an upwards move in BG.
My son treats 3-5 lows per day, some of them with multiple doses. Skittles are quasi-instant for him, within a small number of minutes. Table sugar (sucrose) dissolved in liquid (the fastest way to take it) takes 10 minutes for him, plus he has to pour it, weigh it and dissolve it—probably 2 minutes of manipulations. If we were to compare how fast he can get an effect from Skittles, which he carries in tubes with him, to taking corn syrup, where he would need to go down to the kitchen, find the syrup, pour, weigh, dissolve and drink, I am pretty sure the Skittles would win 
So, I think, as always, YDMV—for a kid on the move, I think corn syrup is impractical for most of the day—although for evening and night use by the parents, I think it can be really good if you need super fast speed (which is rare for us). But, even then, at night we prefer to use milk when we don’t need instant effect: much healthier for the boy!
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We have the same problem: we also alternate other things with Skittles…
Sure we can agree to disagree, and I don’t know why you seem annoyed. I was never suggesting that one should carry around corn syrup nor weigh it nor dissolve it in a drink. To me it is a replacement for glucose gels, which I don’t carry around either. I was suggesting it as a cheap and readily available (in the US and should be found in most other countries’ supermarkets since it is needed to make certain types of candy) product that is pre-dissolved pure glucose that can be kept in the house for use when needed. Like waking up a child experiencing a low which was the OP situation that started this thread. When I was growing up we always had a bottle of corn syrup on the shelf anyway, having nothing to do with diabetes. If you don’t, or don’t want to buy it that’s perfectly fine.
I carry around Smarties because hard candies are much easier to carry around than liquids. If I couldn’t find those I would find another pure glucose candy (Warheads, Nerds, etc.).
And even though I carry glucose everywhere I go, these days I only use it maybe a couple times a year, though in the days of NPH/Regular/limited-or-no-glucose-meters I used it a lot more. But just like glucagon (which I have never used) it is nice to have - and since I so rarely use it I always have it available to be used if I need it.
As I said, I will use whatever fast carb is around when it’s not critical. Skittles, swedish fish, jelly beans, sure. I would add dried fruit (raisins or dates, which are surely readily available in Egypt) is also a great and very fast source of very fast carb also, comparable to the candies you list.
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I wouldn’t take any offense Jag, I suspect Michel has had a long night and he wasn’t trying to say anything rude. I have also heard others from the NPH/R days have many more horror stories of lows and doing everything they can to get out of them quickly.
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I certainly did not mean to, sorry if that is how it sounded. I do think that kids often have different needs than others, and different criteria.
In addition, the OP is not in the US and does not have access to all of our products. In the last 5-6 months, we have had to figure out how to replace many of our US diabetes staples with others because they are not available there. We have not been able to find any hard candy that is easily packageable and made of glucose, other than Skittles. I am not sure if that is also true of Egypt, but I am extrapolating from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and North Africa.
I have also not been able to find corn syrup in any supermarket in the countries we visited, although I think we found some on amazon.fr (france). Corn and corn syrup are simply not very popular in any of these countries. So what we used to take for granted in the US is not always true in the rest of the world.
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For me, a glucose tablet is much faster than a date (deglet noor, halawi, or khadrawi.) I don’t know how its speed compares with the various candies. We all seem to value the tradeoffs differently: speed, convenience, taste, ability to be consumed in limited, measured quantities… there’s not much point in arguing which is better since the choice depends on so many factors and preferences.
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It isn’t, I don’t think – trade restrictions, as in Europe – but @ianrobertdouglas will find various brands of golden syrup – Lyle’s and Silver Spoon brands are both available at Gourmet Egypt, which has about 40 stores in Cairo, or online at egypt.souq.com. I often use a spoonful of Lyle’s for serious crashes. There’s also Carbon’s Golden Malted Classic Syrup. Liquid glucose is somewhat similar and can often be purchased from local sweet shops.
But the most accessible replacement is probably honey.
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Is the Hills brand or Kills brand. Not sure I would be downing something that says Kills on the label. /s
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Hopefully your son also has access to juice or some other form of sugar in bigger quantities. Early on, my son had a propensity to overdo the insulin and needed quite a bit to recover from his aggressiveness.
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Classic unfortunate font choice!
Sounds familiar. Thanks to the Dexcom data stream, it’s obvious that Juno needs only a fraction of the bolus insulin he has been taking and was prescribed. I’m making adjustments currently, radically lowing intake and getting much more centre range stability. From 5 bolus units a few days ago, down from 7 bolus units three times daily for a month, he’s now doing very well on 1-2 units.
Maybe this changes tomorrow, but so far his line feels slower to move, is generally flatter, and is fluctuating within a narrower band.
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Your son’s pancreas is still doing it’s thing. Hopefully that lasts quite a while, the longer the better in my book. My 16 year old is currently taking between 60-90 units a day (60% bolus) while eating about 100 carbs spread across 4-5 meals.
The hard part is when he has been sitting at 300 for a couple of hours and is tired of it, and finally just says eff it and gives a 10-15 unit bolus just about the time the last correction starts working and he realizes that there is no way the 10 units he just gave is acting in under 10 minutes and starts eating and/or drinking to compensate. This happens much less these days (3 years in)
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