Other than Lucozade

I've recently discovered "squeezy pouches" from Asda - from the cartoon pictures, I guess they're aimed at children's luncboxes, but I find them pleasant tasting, range of flavours (various fruits & chocolate) & types (fruit, dairy & jelly) not too sweet, convenient as they have plastic caps so you don't end up with a sticky opened sachet like with sports gels, cheap (aboout 45p each or 3 for £1), plus convenient CHO content - all approx 15g CHO, almost all of which is sugar, in pouch weighing 85g or 90g. While I use them to prevent and treat hypos, particularly to carry when running for over 30 mins, when I usually need to take some sugar on board, without choking or stopping running. Fruit pouches don't claim to be gluten free, but no gluten ingredients are listed, so worth investigating further with Coeliac UK lists. Dairy & jelly pouches contain maize starch & thickeners.

jamesgmulroy said:

milk or a banana raise my blood sugar as swiftly as lucozade but i leave the lid off my bedside lucozade bottle and find it far easier to drink

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Hi

I always tip Lucozade into an empty Lucozade Sport bottle. The flip top is so easy to lift when feeling hypo and finding yourself struggling to open the red cap.

The DAFNE people say to use fruit juice. You can buy packs of 200ml cartons that are easy to keep all over the place: in the car, school bag, bedroom, kitchen and anywhere your lad frequents. It's worth keeping some somewhere in the school sports section.

Lucozade is awful to use because it is so fizzy, you can't get it down quickly and have to sip it while the hypo gets worse. At least, that's what I found when I used to use it.

I used to use cartons of Ribena too, but the DAFNE course people said there was too much glucose in each one, and fruit juices are better. Ribena works much quicker though, because it has glucose syrup in it which goes straight into the blood without needing any breaking down first.

Then eat something solid about ten minutes after the juice. I have always found that tablets, like the dextrose etc, are very difficult to dissolve because my mouth goes dry with the hypo and those tablets need a lot of saliva to get them down, and I don't know if it there is any science in this or not, but I have found that they don't seem to start working until you have a drink too, so you might as well use sweet liquid if you've got to drink anyway. The tablets are also fiddly and difficult to open and handle with shaky hypo hands and brain.

If there is nothing else available, two or three spoons of sugar in some warm water, stirred well and gulped, works as well as anything else. There is absolutely no point buying specially made, expensive things that say they are 'made for the job', when a few spoon of sugar, or 'value' orange juices from the supermarket, work just as well.

Good luck with it all.

When I did the DAFNE course last year they recommended Jelly Babies for hypos or low BG. 3 will raise your blood sugar and work quicker than glucose tablets. Much nicer tasting too.