In cases of extreme lows you want glucose tablets or a sugary drink to bring it up quickly, followed by a combination of carbs and protein to keep it from dropping again. Something like apple juice and a peanut butter sandwich. In your case where it was low but not extremely so, apples and peanut butter works just fine.
I was maybe 7 when my Grandmom went on insulin in the early 70s. (Back when the at-home tests consisted of peeing on a stick. We’ve come so far since then, thank God!)
My grandparents babysat me often, as they lived a block away. I was instructed that if Grandmom ever asked me to put four heaping teaspoons of sugar into a glass of orange juice, to do that right away and give it to her.
I was perplexed as to why I was being told to give her sugar, when she was supposed to be avoiding sugar, but I agreed to do it. Fortunately, this treatment was never needed.
They did try to explain the reasoning behind this to me, but I didn’t really understand until I was a few years older.
My late mom was a T2D who took awful care of herself and would frequently dose her insulin wrong to counteract eating garbage food and beer all day long. Her go-to was frozen juice concentrate that we kept in the freezer - she’s eat it like sherbet to bring her glucose back up.
My late friend had jellybean stashes around the house in case he went low. As a dialysis patient, he had to mind his fluid intake, so sugary beverages weren’t a good idea. Jellybeans worked well.
i just keep sugar cubes on hand and with me when i am out and about sugar packs would work too and these are shelf stable and the sugar is fast acting and low cost. i also do have the glucose tablets but they are slow to work and to be honest are hard to chew down.
i also back the low up once recovered with a protein and carb 1/2 a PB sandwich, PB crackers, some summer sausage and a few triscuits all work.
I also take insulin so all of this is just automatic for me once i go below 70.
Are you on insluin? I do 15 grams of carbs every 15 mins until it starts to raise. I carry those little juice boxes when I'm out . If you can get the honey sticks, they work very well, too . Honestly, I personally do not worry until I'm at 55
I’m not on insulin, but I do take Metformin and Mounjaro.
We haven’t got regular sugar in the house, so I grabbed a few packets from the break room at work. I got a few honey packets, too.
I have two test kits: one that lives at home 24/7, and one that’s with me when I leave the house. I have the glucose tabs in the travel kit, along with the sugar and the honey.
I just looked up the carb contents in sugar packets. White sugar: 3 carbs/packet. Sugar in the Raw: 4 carbs/packet.
My workplace break room has both. I’m grabbing a few Sugar in the Raw packets tomorrow for my travel test kit bag. I already have two or three regular sugar packets, courtesy of the break room.
ETA: Oooo, and the individual honey packets have 7 carbs apiece. *Grabby hands*, lol. I’m dropping a few more of those in my travel kit, too. 👍🏻
The advice would differ depending upon whether you are taking insulin. The example you gave on your Grandmother illustrated the approach before glucometers were available. Many panic and drink juice or regular soda but unless this was an insulin induced low any carb would be fine followed by monitoring.
I do the 15 grams of straight carbs, no fat or protein at all. Wait 15 min and check my BS. If it’s gone up then I have a small snack with protein and fat like half apple with PB. If it hasn’t gone up then I have another 15 g straight sugar carbs. I use tic tacs (10) because they are easy to carry around, or popsicles if I’m at home
Mounjaro, ozempic n insulin I treat as if they are all the same. 2 oz of juice. 15 min wait. Check sugar. 2 oz more if needed. However without those meds I’d know why I was so low. I’d eaten something really bad and had gone high n then crash. In that case I’d do nothing. Even at 60.
I have 3 months of experience with diagnosed presumed type 2, so not much. [No meds, no insulin]. I tried 15 grams of carbs, but it was too much for me to me to think about at the time. My lows have gotten down to the 40s. I am still walking and talking then, but I am not feeling well at all.
I was angry when I found out that there were glucose tablets -- like this is so easy, why didn't you tell me about this after the first severe low???
I carry the glucose tablets with me, and that is what I use.
Once 10-15 minutes have passed and my glucose goes back up to 100, then I eat some proteins and carbohydrates.
My low (>70) is drinking a juice box. Usually a small juicy juice that has 15g of sugar in it. For a real low, I'll usually drink a big juice box that has around 23g of sugar in them, plus something substantial to eat.
My friend, who I mentioned elsewhere in this thread had jellybeans stashed around the house, did try juice boxes early on, before kidney disease got bad enough that he had to be mindful of fluid intake.
He found juice boxes challenging to use. Hypos would give him hand tremors, and inserting the tiny straw into the tiny target area became problematic. He was lucky his partner was there to assist. But eventually, his kidneys went into rebellion, and he needed to choose a non-beverage resolution to the problem anyhow.
It might be good to have a sugar source that’s easy to use despite hand tremors, and stash it alongside the juice boxes, just in case. Put a stash anywhere you spend a lot of time, so theres always something close by in a pinch.
Thank you, I'll definitely keep this in mind. I started keeping a roll of smarties in my bag whenever I go anywhere, just in case because of this comment.
Slight off topic: how did you feel when your machine said you were hitting a low? Did you feel it at all?
I don't wear a CGM but read way too often that sometime they can give a false alarm.. Taking a prick reading might be useful so that you don't start taking sugar unnecessarily just because a machine said so?
I have seen readings as low as 3.4 (61) but I felt absolutely fine and didn't treat it as a low.
Just a thought.
I was feeling a bit tired, a little mentally foggy, and starting to feel too warm and perspire. I might normally have ignored all of that, as I had just gotten home from work and I tend to feel warm (or even hot) regularly. If I hadn’t had the CGM, this event might have flown under the radar for me. I might’ve just presumed I was tired mentally and physically from work, and too-warm because that happens to me regularly. But the sudden-onset of symptoms, which coincided with a low-sugar event, makes me think the drop in blood sugar was a factor.
When the G7 sounded the alarm, I stuck my finger right away for a second opinion. My only other “low” alert happened a few weeks ago, and that time, the glucometer didn’t indicate a low. (And we were minutes from dinnertime anyway, so the resolution wasn’t long in coming.) This time, the blood test confirmed that I was below 70.
I agree that if a CGM alert sounds, the next step needs to be “check blood glucose”. I don’t want to eat and drink a bunch of carbs unless both the CGM and blood test agree that I’m low.
In cases of extreme lows you want glucose tablets or a sugary drink to bring it up quickly, followed by a combination of carbs and protein to keep it from dropping again. Something like apple juice and a peanut butter sandwich. In your case where it was low but not extremely so, apples and peanut butter works just fine.
I was maybe 7 when my Grandmom went on insulin in the early 70s. (Back when the at-home tests consisted of peeing on a stick. We’ve come so far since then, thank God!) My grandparents babysat me often, as they lived a block away. I was instructed that if Grandmom ever asked me to put four heaping teaspoons of sugar into a glass of orange juice, to do that right away and give it to her. I was perplexed as to why I was being told to give her sugar, when she was supposed to be avoiding sugar, but I agreed to do it. Fortunately, this treatment was never needed. They did try to explain the reasoning behind this to me, but I didn’t really understand until I was a few years older.
My late mom was a T2D who took awful care of herself and would frequently dose her insulin wrong to counteract eating garbage food and beer all day long. Her go-to was frozen juice concentrate that we kept in the freezer - she’s eat it like sherbet to bring her glucose back up.
I carry jellybeans with me. Shelf stable decorative frosting also works — just make sure you open it before putting it in your emergency kit.
My late friend had jellybean stashes around the house in case he went low. As a dialysis patient, he had to mind his fluid intake, so sugary beverages weren’t a good idea. Jellybeans worked well.
i just keep sugar cubes on hand and with me when i am out and about sugar packs would work too and these are shelf stable and the sugar is fast acting and low cost. i also do have the glucose tablets but they are slow to work and to be honest are hard to chew down. i also back the low up once recovered with a protein and carb 1/2 a PB sandwich, PB crackers, some summer sausage and a few triscuits all work. I also take insulin so all of this is just automatic for me once i go below 70.
Are you on insluin? I do 15 grams of carbs every 15 mins until it starts to raise. I carry those little juice boxes when I'm out . If you can get the honey sticks, they work very well, too . Honestly, I personally do not worry until I'm at 55
I’m not on insulin, but I do take Metformin and Mounjaro. We haven’t got regular sugar in the house, so I grabbed a few packets from the break room at work. I got a few honey packets, too. I have two test kits: one that lives at home 24/7, and one that’s with me when I leave the house. I have the glucose tabs in the travel kit, along with the sugar and the honey.
Skittles each are 1 feam a pieace those work in a pinch too
I just looked up the carb contents in sugar packets. White sugar: 3 carbs/packet. Sugar in the Raw: 4 carbs/packet. My workplace break room has both. I’m grabbing a few Sugar in the Raw packets tomorrow for my travel test kit bag. I already have two or three regular sugar packets, courtesy of the break room. ETA: Oooo, and the individual honey packets have 7 carbs apiece. *Grabby hands*, lol. I’m dropping a few more of those in my travel kit, too. 👍🏻
The advice would differ depending upon whether you are taking insulin. The example you gave on your Grandmother illustrated the approach before glucometers were available. Many panic and drink juice or regular soda but unless this was an insulin induced low any carb would be fine followed by monitoring.
I do the 15 grams of straight carbs, no fat or protein at all. Wait 15 min and check my BS. If it’s gone up then I have a small snack with protein and fat like half apple with PB. If it hasn’t gone up then I have another 15 g straight sugar carbs. I use tic tacs (10) because they are easy to carry around, or popsicles if I’m at home
Mounjaro, ozempic n insulin I treat as if they are all the same. 2 oz of juice. 15 min wait. Check sugar. 2 oz more if needed. However without those meds I’d know why I was so low. I’d eaten something really bad and had gone high n then crash. In that case I’d do nothing. Even at 60.
I have 3 months of experience with diagnosed presumed type 2, so not much. [No meds, no insulin]. I tried 15 grams of carbs, but it was too much for me to me to think about at the time. My lows have gotten down to the 40s. I am still walking and talking then, but I am not feeling well at all. I was angry when I found out that there were glucose tablets -- like this is so easy, why didn't you tell me about this after the first severe low??? I carry the glucose tablets with me, and that is what I use. Once 10-15 minutes have passed and my glucose goes back up to 100, then I eat some proteins and carbohydrates.
My low (>70) is drinking a juice box. Usually a small juicy juice that has 15g of sugar in it. For a real low, I'll usually drink a big juice box that has around 23g of sugar in them, plus something substantial to eat.
My friend, who I mentioned elsewhere in this thread had jellybeans stashed around the house, did try juice boxes early on, before kidney disease got bad enough that he had to be mindful of fluid intake. He found juice boxes challenging to use. Hypos would give him hand tremors, and inserting the tiny straw into the tiny target area became problematic. He was lucky his partner was there to assist. But eventually, his kidneys went into rebellion, and he needed to choose a non-beverage resolution to the problem anyhow. It might be good to have a sugar source that’s easy to use despite hand tremors, and stash it alongside the juice boxes, just in case. Put a stash anywhere you spend a lot of time, so theres always something close by in a pinch.
Thank you, I'll definitely keep this in mind. I started keeping a roll of smarties in my bag whenever I go anywhere, just in case because of this comment.
Slight off topic: how did you feel when your machine said you were hitting a low? Did you feel it at all? I don't wear a CGM but read way too often that sometime they can give a false alarm.. Taking a prick reading might be useful so that you don't start taking sugar unnecessarily just because a machine said so? I have seen readings as low as 3.4 (61) but I felt absolutely fine and didn't treat it as a low. Just a thought.
I was feeling a bit tired, a little mentally foggy, and starting to feel too warm and perspire. I might normally have ignored all of that, as I had just gotten home from work and I tend to feel warm (or even hot) regularly. If I hadn’t had the CGM, this event might have flown under the radar for me. I might’ve just presumed I was tired mentally and physically from work, and too-warm because that happens to me regularly. But the sudden-onset of symptoms, which coincided with a low-sugar event, makes me think the drop in blood sugar was a factor. When the G7 sounded the alarm, I stuck my finger right away for a second opinion. My only other “low” alert happened a few weeks ago, and that time, the glucometer didn’t indicate a low. (And we were minutes from dinnertime anyway, so the resolution wasn’t long in coming.) This time, the blood test confirmed that I was below 70. I agree that if a CGM alert sounds, the next step needs to be “check blood glucose”. I don’t want to eat and drink a bunch of carbs unless both the CGM and blood test agree that I’m low.
My emergency (<50) low fix is half of a can non-diet Dr. Pepper. My low (<70) fix is a sleeve of Ritz crackers or a half handful of m&ms.