I have recently started a walk-run half marathon program and am a little concerned about how to best handle the lows on my longer runs (6--15 miles).
I had found a gel that was called Chocolate #9, but they told me all their inventory is stale-dated....and that worried me.
Is there any other diabetic friendly gels out there?
Oh yeah! Many of us like the gels from LevelFoods -- 15g of glucose in a disposable packet. I'm partial to the Mandarin Orange flavor.
Now, that said, I haven't bought any in at least 7-8 months. It's ridiculously expensive. I moved on to skittles, 1g per candy, easy to carry, measure, seems to work fast enough for me (I start to feel better after 15 minutes, usually).
I would recommend going with something like skittles, smarties, or anything similar that can be easily measured on the spot, and consists of basically sugar -- no chocolate or other things that will include fat and protein, slowing absorption.
don't you get a sugar spike out of the skittles? I would have thought that it wouldn't last....causing a rollercoaster type situation.
Thank you Fraser
No more so than any other source of pure sugar... It depends, of course, on how many you eat!
Whether candy, dextrose tabs, or a fancy gel, it's all in administration.
If you overdo it, you'll get a nasty spike. Depending on how low, I eat enough to raise my BG to roughly 100. I figure that by combining my correction factor and IC ratio to get a BG delta to Carb ratio.
IMPORTANT: This is far from exact. IC and correction factors are not static parameters; they depend on things like BG level, as well as a host of other things.
Caveats aside, what ya gonna do? Gotta have some way of determining how much to correct with.
In my case, my CF is 1U per 10 mg/dl, IC is 1:4. So, very roughly, 4 grams of carbs raise my BG 10 mg/dl. I've found this mostly holds within +/- 20%.
So, if I'm @ 50, I want to get to 100, so ((100-50)/10)*4 = 20g. For that hypo I'd pop 20 skittles, then check BG at 15 and then again at 30 minutes. Rinse and repeat as necessary.
I'm T1 but agree the quicker carbs are better. I've run and, of course, eaten for a while now (since 2008 or 9...eeek...) and find the gels produce spikes like 2 hours after I eat them. That's ok if I'm running that long but I pretty much just have a gel before a 1/2 or maybe for a boost like 15-6 miles into full marathons, and rely on gatorade or a blend of Smarties and Starburst jelly beans to keep my BG level.
I try to balance things so I don't have spikes!!
T1, but I use the clif gels. The only good flavor is the chocolate one. I put it in the fridge so it's more like eating syrup than nasty goo.
I run and don’t eat anything during the run. I eat a banana right before I go and I am ok. But I’m the type who never goes low.
Jelly beans for me, work out roughly one carb per bean. Match the beans to my pace haha.
Moderate pace I consume 15g of carbs on hour.
Did try gels but all the UK ones tasted awful and had a very high mark up.
Well tried a Chocolate Raspberry GU Roctane Thursday night. It did real well with keeping my sugar level. BUT, it screwed with my stomach something awful. Plus, it made me need a restroom close by for a few hours afterwards.
Overall, it worked. But, I’m really hoping there is one out there that is easier on me.
Back to the drawing board.
Well, tried the GU Rocktane Strawberry Kiwi tonight and did real well. No stomach issues.
I’m thinking that maybe my body just couldn’t handle the high caffeine in the Chocolate Raspberry flavor.
Going to try it again the next run and see how it goes.
I have been running for some time now and ran into the same issues with the energy gel I have used during my long runs.
There are two that I have been using for the last few months that are working for me in controlling my BG and not upsetting the stomach. efuel gel from Cranksport are higher in carbs compare to others but it was better for my stomach and for my BG (All but one flavor were good for me). Accel Gel (Kiwi-Strawberry) have 25carb on average easy to digest. I normally use the higher carb gel early on the run and then switch to the lower carb.
Hope this helps.
Thanks Carlos. I hadn’t thought about switching between different ones.
So far the Roctane Kiwi-strawberry has been good for me. Have used 4 times with no problems.
Yep, seeing similar things in my workout runs.
Doing a 5k on June 1… So we shall see