Jelly babies - hypos - fudge

[Monica]

We've just come back from St. Ives, Cornwall. What a beautiful place!!!!

We spent 2 full days there, wandering round in the morning and going to the beach in the afternoon. Lunch for us non-fussy eaters and non-diabetics was a cornish pasty. My extremely fussy diabetic daughter had a bowl of chips. AAAAAAAHHHHH. First day, I calculated the chips and 2cp's for a pudding (which we hadn't decided on what). She ended up having fudge (no idea how much it was, but I was sure it was more than 2 cp's worth) Well, because she was running around in the sea (brrrr, well freezing!) I told her she should have something to eat before she goes hypo. At 5pm she was low 3.8, treated it, at 6pm she said she was still feeling hypo. 2.6!!!! So that evening I bought some jelly babies, as I thought that Boots was closed already and I didn't have any more glucose tabs left (C also took the blood meter out of my handbag the day before we left). Boots was open to buy tabs.

Anyway, next day more wandering round gave her some jelly babies, but no bickies. Lunchtime she was 3.9. So I thought I'd only give her insulin to cover the chips and nothing for pud. She decided she wanted fudge again( I discovered 10g fudge is about 9g carb). She had 65g!!!!!! Oh my god way too much. Well it seems not, as she was 3.4 at 2.30pm and 2.9 at 5pm.

I know exercise makes you go low, but I didn't think by that much!! I also have a feeling that maybe I overestimated the chips. I usually look at the portion and compare it to a macD regular portion. We all agreed it was bigger and therfore I calculated more. Why oh why does she only eat chips??????😱

(Sorry for this lenghty post)

 

[Northerner]

Glad to hear you had a good holiday! 🙂 Goodness, that's quite a battle against hypos you were having - well done for doing the regular checks and getting them sorted. One hypo can often engender another, so this may have been part of the problem. It would appear that Cornish fudge contains only phantom calories! There might be a poem in that discovery! It would appear that C's insulin sensitivity increased significantly during the week - I've had this happen to me on more than one occasion and it is soooo difficult trying to guess what adjustments to make to the insulin. You try to be extra cautious and prepare yourself for high levels - and the diabetes goes and fools you again and you get lows! It will be interesting to see if the levels return to 'normal' now you are back from holiday. I've had a very up and down week myself - and I'm not just talking about the Yorkshire Dales! 🙂

 

[Copepod]

Fudge is nice for treating hypos, but has relatively high (among sweets) fat content, which slows the absorbtion of sugar. I seem to remember fudge contains nearer 7g CHO per 10g fudge than 9g CHO. The fat in the chips would have slowed absorbtion of potato carbohydrate, too.

As you found, the important thing is to get sugar into someone in hypoglycaemia, rather than worry too much about the other ingredients.

However, I'd like to put in a mention for Scottish tablet - slightly crunchy fudge, sold as bars and wrapped sweets. I always stock up when I visit a supermarket in Scotland.

 

[Caroline Wilson]

I love fudge, being biased and having relatives in Devon, I aways think the variety from Devon is better (just my personal choice).

Sweet thoe fudge is, it is not something I had thought of suggetsing for a hypo because it has lots of fat (from cream or butter), which slows the absorption of sugar.

Glad you enjoyed the holiday.

 

[marke]

Monica, there is another factor excluding the 'fudge factor' ( well you get the idea with that one 🙂 ). The effects of exercise can last upto 24 hours, so a busy day previously added to a busy day that day may have meant the demand for carbs (sugar) was higher than normal. Your CP estimates may have been correct but the extra requirements of previous exercise could have been the cause. It a tricky one, I have spent today doing
gardening and car cleaning and that always pushes me down further than normal but
will also most likely effect me tommorrow morning. I have learnt to adjust for this, but for kids I would guess its even more of a challenge since their bodies have 'growing' to do as
well. Jelly babies are a great choice as they get absorbed very quickly, although I found a downside to them this summer. Leave them in the heat and they turn into a huge sticky mess that is no fun to try to eat in an emergency...

 

[Monica]

Marke - yes you're right about it lasting for 24 hours, but it never occurred to me at the time.

Reading all your replies, I realise that my post can't have been very clear. C didn't have the fudge for a hypo treatment. She had them for dessert/pudding after lunch.😉 So even if 10g of fudge has only 7g of carbs, that is still about 45g of carbs = 4.5 cps. I didn't include that in her insulin at all.

Anyway, Alan, yes she's back to "normal" 🙂 And I hope you enjoyed the Yorkshire Dales.

Caroline - I love fudge, I tend to buy it whenever we go to Bridlington, East Yorkshire. But the clotted cream fudge was absolutely the best down in St. Ives.

Copepod - too late to try the scottish tablet. Had I known about that, I'd have bought some 2 weeks ago in Port Glasgow. Oh well, never mind.😉

Oh and another question : Are the jelly babies in the big bags bigger than in the small pocket size packets? I bought the small packet with 10 babies and on the packet it said it had 33 carbs in it, making one baby 3.3 carbs. So if she only had 3 babies, that wouldn't be quite enough. Anyway she had half the packet.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

It's not unknown for me to work through 45gs worth of fast carbs on a day out walking, even an hour at the gym can need almost that much sometimes.

Yes the mini bags of Jelly Babies are smaller ones. Bought a large bag recently and they are about 5g each

mini bags of Skittles are quite robust in hot weather. Even survive in a jeans pocket!

 

[Monica]

It's not unknown for me to work through 45gs worth of fast carbs on a day out walking, even an hour at the gym can need almost that much sometimes.

Yes the mini bags of Jelly Babies are smaller ones. Bought a large bag recently and they are about 5g each

mini bags of Skittles are quite robust in hot weather. Even survive in a jeans pocket!

Thank you. 🙂