That is indeed a good quote by Doc.
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@Eric @Chris There is no reason why diabetes canât be fun. Heck, in my office even a root canal is fun.
âAn attitude of gratitude gives you altitude.â
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When I am sick with a stomach virus, I apply @John58âs gel in my mouth around by jaws an tongue rather than swallowing it. I still swallow some because I canât help it, but I know it works well, and it is fast: I can see my BG go up.
At night, I almost always drink carb liquids through a straw so that it does not touch my teeth. @docslotnick also wrote in another thread that you could wash your mouth with water after eating carbs.
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Never really cared for Little Debbieâs stuff. I was more into the Hostess mini donuts and cupcakes.
BTW, I donât think you will find another #DOC on which they discuss the merits of Little Debbie and Hostess. Just proves that there is no topic off limits here.
And for you younger T1âs, you should notice that the two longest âsufferingâ T1âs around here are the ones talking about donuts, Little Debbieâs, and Hostess cupcakes 
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I am glad you put suffering in quotes. I am not suffering. In fact, itâs not something I usually tell people, but I am not really a diabetic. I am just somebody that takes insulin and tests BG.
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You mean the two wickedest 
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I stand corrected. As usual, you are right!
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I put suffering in quotes because we donât have a â/sarcâ tag.
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I agree with not wasting a low, but I love fruit so Iâll reach for whatever fresh or dried fruit I have around (and I almost always have fruit around), unless my BG is critically low enough that I want the fastest possible response from pure glucose. I will go to glucose very rarely, so I tend to use smarties since they are readily available, easy to carry, cheap, and last virtually forever.
BTW, the cheapest source of pure liquid glucose is corn syrup (NOT high-fructose corn syrup), but it is inconvenient to carry so I donât bother.
Also, I have read that we do NOT absorb glucose in our mouth or stomach, but only in our intestines. I researched this a couple years ago so donât have my references handy, but will look them up if someone is interested. Because of this, to get the glucose into my blood as quickly as possible I will chew quickly so the smarties are immediately dissolved in saliva and swallow. Washing it down with liquid (water) helps too.
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Yes, please post if you can find something.
Do you find that taking more is faster? Like drinking 10 ounces of OJ is faster than 4 ounces? I think that is true. Of course you spike later, but at least your low goes away faster. At least it seems that way to me.
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A healthier alternative to donuts, but equally effective. Fresh cherries seem to do the trick for me. Summertime is wonderful!
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Here it is: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/691147
âThe efficacy of instant glucose as a potential treatment for hypoglycemia was studied in normal volunteers, with therapeutic doses administered in the buccal cavity. 2-Tritiated glucose (50 mu Ci) was homogenized into each dose before use. Mean blood glucose and serum insulin concentrations were unaltered by instant glucose. Glucose absorption was less than 0.05 mg at any time, and total glucose absorbed was less than 0.1 mg. For comparison purposes, volunteers swallowed a dose of instant glucose. Approximately 88% of the dose was absorbed during a 30-minute interval. Blood glucose and insulin levels increased. Instant glucose appears to be of therapeutic value only if swallowed by fully conscious, hypoglycemic patients. It should not benefit unconscious patients because of its poor absorption through the buccal mucosa.â
Is it faster to take more than you need? It certainly FEELS better, but it seems to me that the only reason it would be faster is that you are pushing a greater volume into your system so it could get to your intestines a bit faster. An alternative would be to drink more water with the correct dose of glucose. That said, if I get to the point that Iâm no longer eating fruit but going to glucose, it is VERY hard to stop at the correct dose. We are all human, after all 
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I havenât seen any research on it. But I am just basing it on personal experience.
So even though I know I am taking more than I actually need, it seems faster. So I will sometimes pour in the big volume, and then take insulin to cover what will be âmore than neededâ. So it ends up being a double rule breaker - taking more than you need and taking insulin at the same time while you are low. I was wondering if anyone else had ever done that. Maybe not. I know it sounds crazy.
Iâve overtreated and taken insulin at the same time. I donât think it works faster. Iâve done it because either lack of self-control (I mean, when youâre low and faced with OMG DELICIOUS SUGAR itâs roughâthis is one of the reasons I tend to use smarties these days actually) or because I want to eat something thatâs overkill for a low (like, ooh Iâll get a frappuccino). So I think itâs a reasonable approach to avoid rebound highs, but not to treat lows faster, at least for me.
That said, it could be that if youâre treating with donuts or the like, which have a lot of fat, it may work differently than with things predominantly sugar. My experience is that while the different sugars etc have only small differences in timing, adding fat in the mix does substantially slow things down. Maybe having more of the fatty sugar matters more, since less of it is available right away?
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I had to look up buccal cavity, and was amused when I found out it is just the mouth. I canât wait to tell someone to shut their buccal cavity.
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Hi @jag1.
I did this experiment at home with my dad over Xmas with sugar water to drink, and with Transcend gel in my mouth.
I went up with a sugared water in 35 minutes. We used 15 grams of sugar in 4 oz of water, and I drank it. I went up 75 units in 35 minutes, more or less in a straight line, then all of it was absorbed.
For the gel, I put the gel around my mouth without swallowing it. The gel pack is 15 grams. I kept it in my mouth for 15 minutes (because thatâs already a long time), I went up 30 units. So I did go up. Then I went up another 55 units after I swallowed the rest.
But itâs really hard to avoid swallowing some of the gel when itâs in your mouth. Some of it did drip in.
But itâs really hard to avoid swallowing some of the gel when itâs in your mouth. Some of it did drip in.
I think that must be what happened. You are naturally producing saliva so that would build up in your mouth unless you were able to completely disable your swallow reflex - Iâm pretty sure I couldnât do that for 15 minutes (especially if I had a low blood sugar at the time!). I donât know how they dealt with it in the paper I cited, but I assume they did somehow.
We find a 6 ounce juice box (100% juice) with 21 carbs can realistically be grabbed from the shelf, opened and consumed in less than 3 minutes. Within 20 minutes a low of 55 can be up to 90 (and rising). (BG finger stick)
I consider that easy and fast. Especially at 2 AM.
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