I am in my 4th and final year of nursing school. Recently, there has been a change in the way my teachers and books have been teaching about treating low blood sugars. Now they are preaching to give patients a glass of milk when they are low. They claim the pasteurized sugars, protein, and fat will allow the sugar to level off more consistently. This was news to me! So I am going to be my own experiment. I just had a bs of 61 and drank one glass of milk. I am interested in these results!!
Has anyone else heard this from their endo's or doc's???
I've heard this before. A long time ago. Problem is if you are dropping quickly, milk metabolizes very slowly, so you could get into real trouble before it does any good. I know this because I've tested it too. I got into a habit of using something like Quik chocolate mix in milk (before they messed up the recipe into the yucky tasting 1/2 sugar version sold today, bah!) to provide a faster recovery, yet still get the longer lasting leveling. But, I don't do that much any more.
All I can say, just like there is a reason why they call the medical field a "practice", as with my Type 1 treatment of over 40 years, there is very little that is the same each and every time I have a low. I personally have found products like the gluco-tabs and similar to work the best. They are fast, and very accurate for getting my BG numbers where they need to be consistantly, if used correctly.
I am a teacher and the nurse at our school has mentioned this before. I have had a 1/2 glass a time or two when my BS were on the lower end,and I wanted to bring them up a little....it works and I did not spike to high after. I would not use milk to treat a more aggressive low.
Skim milk, not having fat, would work faster, right? Milk has never been my first choice, but I've used it. Dextrosol is my first choice, juice second. If candy is available, I'll go with Skittles.
I like that too, like 8-10G of carbs seems to work ok, if you can wait the 15-20-25 minutes for it to work? It seems like once it works I'm fine but it's not as satisfying from the "munchies" perspective as eating a giant bag of potato chips. It's better for me in that the end result is much tidier.
Milk is much slower than glucose tabs. I think every healthy person that is preaching milk should be punished with two units of insulin. Then they will learn the difference between a low that is reverting in 20min and a low that is reverting in 10min. I am sure that this would pretty much stop stupid proposals like this one.
Years ago when I lived alone, my fridge and cupboards were bare. I woke up with a low and rushed to find SOMETHING. I had no glucose tabs, no juice. The best I could come up with was yogurt. I knew it would take awhile to take effect, but it worked. It was a desperation move, not something I would choose if I had other options. That's my opinion of using milk to treat a low as well.
@Chris Miller, actually I don't think skim milk will work well at all. The fat is what provides many of the carbs in milk, so skim milk would work even less. Great thinking though.
Well Holger/ anti-milk posse, part of the deal is to manage the situations so that most of my lows will go away with a more moderate amount of carbs, like a glass of skim milk. I’m also terying to stick to around 30-40% carbs dietwise. The 5-10 minutes difference between milk and glucose tabs/ Smarties isn’t a big deal to me and I’d rather fix a mistake with something I know isn’t going to spike me that has other nutritive aspects, vitmin D, potassium, protein.
If I have 2U of insulin right now, I’d treat it with a Sam Adams “Wee Heavy”, Scotch ale that seems to be a bit carbier than milk and is 10% alcohol, so I won’t get a liver issue if I can’t quite drink fast enough…
I was told the same thing by a dietician back about nine years ago. I find it only works if it is at the start of the low. It does take longer to work and you tend to panic and over eat. It would be the only thing I would go to if I had nothing else in the house.
