A nudge with some staying power

Also why they aren’t nearly as tasty, ha. I wish Skittles worked as well!

No, really I’ve never used them. I know they are just plain glucose and it is supposed to be faster, but things with fructose are plenty quick. OJ works just fine for me.

To me, eating a cookie or something like that is more like being non-D.

Since they sell glucose tabs as a treatment for low, and not as a tasty treat, I just always figured there was something I would enjoy more. Sometimes I treat a low with a gin and tonic, made with the normal tonic water instead of the crappy diet kind. It’s amazing the stuff that will raise your BG.

The idea that someone shouldn’t use ice cream - yes I know the fat slows it down, but it will also raise you. I’ve never had a problem with not raising BG from ice cream. And it tastes great.

I guess my perspective is just that being low is a good time to be non-D for a short while. Which is why I never have tried them. :blush:

My ‘great lines’ have come back to bite me…

Changed to a new endo because my old one retired. My old endo had decided to re-categorize me as Type 1 six months ago (as you might recall). The new endo was going to continue with that, as it makes enough sense and will make some insurance issues easier. When he saw my great Dexcom lines, however, he changed his mind, saying that “No Type 1 can have numbers like that!” and said he’d call it ‘burnt-out Type 2’ – which is bad enough (and, while possible, not so easy for me to completely agree with, either). When he ended up coding it, though, he did ‘worse’ – he coded me with ICD-10 code E13 – which is “Other specified DM without complications” – in other words, “Type OTHER”… the “wild card” Dx. IF I’d been tested and tested positive for MODY, I suppose that would make sense; however, I have never been tested. All the other listed “E13” diagnoses require specific circumstances, NONE of which are applicable to me (unless someone removed my pancreas while I slept without my knowing about it! :stuck_out_tongue:). That Dx will likely be a nightmare for insurance purposes!

Now, I know other Type 1’s with graphs that are as good or even much better than mine. (Start with Dr. Richard Bernstein, who, admittedly, does not use a CGM - still has those kind of results - and several Facebook groups devoted to that sort of thing - and others). Aside from that, I have no idea why he did that - have asked, and was told he will “reconsider it.” We’ll see…

Sorry for the diversion.

That is a legitimate concern. Doctors as a group are relatively ignorant of living with diabetes. They are even more ignorant of people like you and me, people who use the latest technology and are willing to do “whatever it takes” lifestyle-wise to regain glucose normality. I would be leery of this doctor.

I have an appointment with someone else on June 2 which I have not yet cancelled. I liked most of the way the appointment with this guy went, but that does concern me. He is on board with a low-carb approach, and seems to be up on the latest research, which is good. He’s also willing to try things that might be off-label or unorthodox, but this coding issue does in fact concern me. I may end up with a bill that my insurance won’t cover, but I am considering keeping that other appointment.

You need an new endo. That is nonsense.

Good control in no way validates or invalidates the disease.

Imagine you offer someone a drink, and they say no thank-you, they are a recovering alcoholic and haven’t had a drink in 10 years. I guess your endo would say, “10 years? Well you must not be an alcoholic anymore.”

That is a bad precedent.

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I regularly go low in the late afternoon, so you can’t know how thrilled I am to learn that! Better than glucose tabs any day.

THOSE THINGS WERE DISGUSTING…

Be careful. It has a lot. Go light on the tonic, heavy on the gin…

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Probably, I really don’t remember but I didn’t use them for long so that was probably why! Also hardly any came in a box.

How many carbs in the juice from a slice of lime?

Will the fructose in the lime juice have some staying power like the peanut butter with the glucose tab?

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Public service annoucement. This is the only recall that no one will ever listen to :slight_smile:

The Liquor Control Board Of Ontario was the first to issue a recall after its internal quality assurance team discovered that some bottles of Bombay Sapphire London Dry Gin had not been properly diluted, resulting in an alcohol content of 77 per cent, not 40 per cent as listed on the bottle.

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Good grief. You have my sympathies. You can borrow one of my cgm traces from a bad day if it’ll help … :wink:

SMARTIES!!! I can’t believe I never thought of that! I carry Juicy Juice apple juice boxes in my purse and they are SOOOO dang heavy!!! I’m going to have to try this.

I find the Smarties more precise, and cheaper, also. Another reason I prefer to carry Smarties over dextrose/glucose tablets is that they are less likely (though it has happened, though to a lesser degree) to spew a mist of dextrose particles all over me, my purse, and my testing equipment. Which can skew future bg test results.

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Sigh. So now I’m a little bewildered. I went to bed so excited about the Smarties idea, and as I was telling hubs about it, I told him 4 rolls = 1 juice box. He said “that’s a lot of Smarties, I would worry whether you could get them eaten fast enough.”

And of course he’s right. Now that I think about it, 4 rolls of Smarties would probably get so icky sweet that it would make my soft palate hurt, slowing me down. The whole reason I don’t use glucotabs is because for whatever reason the juice boxes seem more effective. It’s just that I usually carry at least 3-4 boxes with me so I have contingencies upon contingencies, and that much liquid gets sooo heavy.

I’ll have to keep thinking.

I’ve found liquid carbs, like juice, to be the fastest acting emergency sugar to treat serious lows. When I need that fast action, I will chew a glucose tab and also drink about eight ounces of water.

My big problem with juice boxes, in addition to the weight that you mention, is that it usually contains more carbs than I want to use to treat my low. I’ll often treat a moderately trending low with just 2-4 grams of carbs. I know I could avoid consuming the whole box but it seems like a waste of the juice and packaging.

It’s uncommon for me to use more than one glucose tab at time and rare to use more than two in a single episode. I’ll often bite a glucose tab in half for a 2-carb treatment. If I treat with the recommended 15 grams of carbs and wait 15 minutes, it will almost always lead to going high and then spending hours riding the gluco-coaster.

See with me there are times I need 2, 24-carb boxes for one low. Sometimes my lows are simply that sharp.

Before I started to limit carbs, I experienced many more lows similar to what you describe. They would come on quickly and seemed to have a lot of power behind them. Juice boxes did well to neutralize that situation.

I realize we each have our own experience with diabetes since our mix of contributing metabolic factors differs from person to person. Your diabetes may vary! My experience as a man, for example, contrasts markedly with a woman’s metabolism.

I found, however, that eating fewer carbs led to taking less insulin and my dosing mistakes were smaller. My blood glucose variability diminished a lot; I personally found a direct correlation between consuming fewer carbs and less diabetes drama. I got very good at detecting and treating sharply crashing blood glucose. Unfortunately, there were a few instances where I failed to catch the low. I feel lucky to have survived.

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And see for me, I have trouble wrapping my brain around limiting carbs. From my very first shot of R and N 24 years ago, carbs were how I balance the insulin and are therefore the most important part. Not to mention, I’m the size of a pencil and would give anything to put on about 10 pounds and keep it. Carbs are the best way to do that for me because if I overdo fatty content I wind up purging that content from all orifices. YDMV is no joke!!

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