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Snack suggestions to raise blood sugar please.

CathyFP

CathyFP

Well-Known Member
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Type 1.5 LADA
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Hi everyone
I need some suggestions of what to eat when my blood sugar is around 5 and trending downward and I don’t have time to make a proper meal and I just want to stabilise my blood sugar without taking insulin. Is this even possible? Currently I tend to eat a digestive biscuit but I suspect there might be better things as these sometimes make me go too high.
 
Nothing wrong with a digestive @CathyFP Perhaps you only needed half or 3/4 of one? Flapjack bars and cereal bars are good too. Again, you don’t have to eat the whole thing necessarily. It also depends what you’re about to do. If your blood sugar is and going down and you’re about to exercise, then I’d have some fast carbs and some slow.
 
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At around 5 a couple of JBs will do the trick.Any thing below 4 needs to be treated as a hypo. If you put hypo trtments in the search bar of this site you will get loads of ideas
gail
 
It depends on the arrow which accompanies that reading. If it is a vertical downward arrow, then a hypo treatment like jelly babies or dextrose tablets might be necessary, but maybe just one or two jelly babies instead of a full 3 for a hypo.
I keep dried fruit like figs, dates or prunes at my desk for slower drops with a sloping downward arrow. A date or fig is about 7-8g carbs and a prune is about 5g each, so I would just have one and keep an eye on it, bearing in mind that Libre will almost certainly not register those carbs for about 30 mins maybe longer, so will continue to show me dropping fast for that period of time after eating it. I work on the basis that 10g carbs will raise my levels by about 3mmols so 5g carbs will raise them by about 1.5mmols, so if I am at 5, 10g carbs (2 x jelly babies) will take me up to about 8mmols which is usually higher than I like to be. Plus Libre often overestimates how low I am, so it might say 5.0 with a downward arrow but my levels might have already stopped dropping at 5.8 and be leveling out in reality and then 10g carbs will definitely take me too high, so I tend to be more careful about how many carbs I eat to stop a drop because in reality the drop may have already started leveling out or even be going back up.

I try not to eat biscuits because once I start, I don't want to stop..... just no will power! 🙄 Oddly I view jelly babies as medication (particularly the green ones YUK!_ so never tempted to over eat them and I like that they are pretty much in 5g units, so they are easy to work out how many I need plus I can always bite one in half for just 2-3g if I need a very small upwards nudge! Cruel I know!!
 
I find a Tuc cracker (3g carbs) and a jelly bean works quite well.
 
As @rebrascora mentioned it depends upon the slope of the graph.
If it was flat or not very steep, I would want slow acting carbs. I would not be taking jelly babies or dried fruit at that stage. I think I would just need about 5g carbs so something like half a digestive or even half a Twix stick (the fat in the chocolate would slow down the carbs further). What about mini-cookies? Provided you can restrict yourself to one or two and then seal the packet, they are about the right size.
However, if it is a steep down hill, I would want a faster acting carb like JB.
 
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