icon-nav-help
Need Help

Submit your question to our team of health care professionals.

icon-nav-current-questions
Current Question

See what's on the mind of the community right now.

icon-conf-speakers-at-a-glance
Meet the Team

Learn more about our world-renowned team.

icon-nav-archives
CWD Answers Archives

Review the entire archive according to the date it was posted.

CWD_Answers_Icon
October 8, 2008

Hypoglycemia

advertisement
Question from Kaprijke, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium:

Reading your web site’s comments on treating hypoglycemia, I was surprised to hear that one can drink milk to overcome a low. I had never heard that. Compared to soft drink or glucose tablets, milk does not contain that many carbohydrates. Can you tell me why milk is a good option?

Answer:

From: DTeam Staff

I don’t believe that milk is a great option to treat acute hypoglycemia, especially symptomatic hypoglycemia. The sugar in milk is lactose. Lactose is a disaccharide made up of glucose (which is what your body uses for energy) and galactose. Indeed, essentially all other sugars (even lactose [milk sugar] and fructose [fruit sugar]) must be converted into glucose. The bigger the sugar or the more complex it is from glucose, the longer it takes to break down and/or convert to glucose. Sucrose (table sugar) is made up of two glucose molecules together. Dextrose is a form of glucose. Our bodies can break sucrose down to glucose pretty rapidly. So, the treatment of hypoglycemia is best by using a sugar that is rapidly broken down to or which contains glucose. Milk is not optimal. On the other hand, milk does contain protein. Over hours, the proteins in milk will be converted into glucose. So, milk is good to follow up a hypoglycemia episode and thus have a sustained treatment effect.

DS