I am moving this to a blog post, so you may have seen this before. :)
This is a photo of the glucose tablets I bought from the oldest pharmacy in Europe, which is in Dubrovnik, Croatia. I packed more glucose tabs than I thought I would need for our 2+ week trip to Europe, but by the 4th day I was already running low. I doubted I would be able to find any in Europe-- I didn't know what they were called, and it's not a common term that you would expect most people to know. We took a tour of the oldest pharmacy, and then realized that it is still in service. We waited in line and I asked the pharmacist, "Do you have glucose?" She didn't recognize the word, so I said, "sugar?" My husband then pointed to me and said, "diabetes." The pharmacist pointed to what looked like a tubes of candy on a little stand beside the cash register and said, "When sugar in blood is low, you eat this to bring up." I said, "YES! That's what I'm looking for!" She was nice enough to let us pay for them with Euros; I think that the pharmacy was only supposed to take kuna, which is the Croatian currency. We got some more glucose tablets in Florence, Italy, where they call them "energy tablets." They worked really well! Here's a picture...
I think I will start collecting glucose tablets from every country I visit. :)
Hey Toni!
The tablets I got in Croatia pretty much tasted the same. They were a little less “chalky” tasting, I thought, but they were smaller so you have to eat about 5 of them to get the usual 15g of carbs (that’s just my estimate!). The tablets I got in Italy were lemon flavored and tasted much better, in my opinion. And they worked really quickly!! Only two of them brought my bg up in no time. I think I’m going to try to find them online and order some more.
I’ll edit this blog post and post a picture of them.
I hope you are doing well. Happy New Year!
~ Katie
I travel a lot in Europe and live on the fringe in England. I would expect to find glucose everywhere.
i was amazed to be given Capuccino flavoured glucose tabs, when I “ran out of fuel” in Germany.
i’m glad you found them. For prople planning a trip, it might be an idea to wrie down the word for Glucose in the languages of the countries you expect to visit. You could also try( C6 H 12 O6), which is the empirical chemical formula for glucose and would be understood by any pharmacist worldwide.
I found them horrid. It’s quite a long adventure. my husband has a cousin in Germany and we all got together in the mountains of Bavaria for a wedding. One afternoon the cousin suggested a walk to a famous beauty spot. He led us up and down narrow steep paths for 2 hours until I ran out of fuel.(that’s not supposed to be possible on Metformin and nateglinide) one of the youngsters ran ahead to where the rest of the family, with another couple of diabetics, were waiting and brought back this stuff. I learned my lesson. I now have cherry flavour and Tropical fruit flavour in my handbag and backpack at all times. I haven’t seen the Capuccino in Britain either. It may be exclusive to Germany. Still i had to wait for the beauty spot on the Internet. We had got lost.
I looked on the web and found seveal flavours including sour apple, which could be nice, but they all seemed to be in “bottles”. I buy in paper wrappers, which look a bit like the Croation ones you bought. I think we could have a thread here. Which are the most liked flavours?
Hmmmm, I’ve often thought someone (or perhaps a group of us) should assemble a listing of where these things are sold in different countries around the world, and what the word is in the local language. For example, even in the U.K. (the birthplace of the English language), chemists (pharmacists to those of us in the U.S.) didn’t call them “glucose” tabs, they were dextrose tabs, sold under the brand name Lucozade tablets (there may be other brands, too). I can find the names in Sweden and Finland (I have relatives and friends with type 1 in both places), but perhaps we can assemble a list! Anyone else care to join?
Glucose exists in 2 mirror image molecular forms. Dextrose, the right handed molecule which is biologically active and Laevose,the left handed molecule, which isn’t. Both are forms of glucose. Natural glucose is a mixture of the 2.
In Britain, any pharmacist(chemist) would understand the term Glucose. Lucozade is certainly one common brand. The other one found everywhere is called Dextrosol
Lucozade is also the name of a high glucose carbonated drink. It used to be recommended to sick people, now it tends to be thought of as a sports drink. It’s the fastest acting glucose I know of. Powdered glucose is also available in all pharmacies.
In other European countries, there is a distinction between the Pharmacy, where medicines are dispensed and the Droguerie, where cosmetis and perfumery goods are sold. That’s coming here now. I noticed that my local giant supermarket, recently refurbished, has a department called “Pharmacy” When I was a child, nearly 60 years ago, they were known as “dispensing Chemists”
Thanks so much to everyone for all the helpful info. I agree that a list would be helpful.
I didn’t even think to research the terminology before I left the country, but it would have been so helpful to come across a discussion like this. I’m going to save this for the next time I travel!
Why do you Americans think Europe is still in the dark ages? Of course you can get glucose anywhere We even have water that is safe to drink:>). I came across capuccino flavoroured glucosein Germany, which I found plain horrid. Anything you get in the USA will be here somewhere, but may be much more expensive It might be a good idea to learn the Chemical formula for glucose C 6 H 12 O 6. Any pharmacist will recognise that even if they write in another alphabet. The numbers should be subscripts
But you did wonder if you would find glucose here. I currently have a brand called Dextro energy in several flavours. I rarely use them. Also if looking for a pharmacy in Europe, look out for a green cross, often in lights. It’s not official in every country, but it’s spreading. Even here in Britain, where we still call them chemists and where the same store has a pharmacy and a perfumery usually.
