Dextrose, anyone?

[addyb]

Paul,

That makes sense. But I think the point with that documentary was that taking too much glucuse/dextrose raises your blood sugar to an extremely high level and so, your body has to use up it's insulin levels to compensate. Similar to riding a roller-coaster. It's like when you drink too much coffee: Sure, you stay awake but eventually you get the shakes. It's because your body has to work to put itself back to homeostasis, which is it's optimum balance point. I think with glucose/dextrose tabs, they are to be used to bring your blood sugar levels back to an acceptable level once they have dropped due to physical or mental exertion.

But if too much enters the bloodstream, well...you get the proverbial roller coaster.

Adam

 

[buckley]

Quite simply

'what goes up must come down' if you cram in to much sugar, you'll have a high and then an hour or two later start to feel incredibly knackered and lethargic! I would only recomend dextrose tabs and all that malarky to a diabetic.

Buckley!

 

[Too Much Kit To Carry]

Hi guys,

From my limited understanding of Carb. Ingestion the worst thing to take is refined "sugars" <call them what you will> - the body gets a relatively quick hit and then starts to withdraw - which creates a craving. A lot of obese folk consume shed loads of popular fizzy drinks, snacks etc. crammed with sugar - once the mental gratification is achieved the chemical highs and then lows kick in - thus more is needed.

I'm a little surprised that so few have advocated fruit as a readily avialable and cheap source of easily digested carbs not to mention fibre. "Sugars" are great, don't get me wrong, but we really do need them little.

BTW – I used to ingest approx. 10,000 calories per day and had a very low body fat percentage – shame to get older, discover fine food and wine

Phil.

 

[Voivode]

I'm a little surprised that so few have advocated fruit as a readily avialable and cheap source of easily digested carbs not to mention fibre. "Sugars" are great, don't get me wrong, but we really do need them little.

BTW – I used to ingest approx. 10,000 calories per day and had a very low body fat percentage – shame to get older, discover fine food and wine

Phil.

Yeah, a couple of us have pointed fruit out. I take dried fruit mixes when we're backpacking and they make a great trail snack. I dry my own apple slices in my dehydrator and they're a bazillion times better than from the store, IMHO.

Also: 10,000 calories a day! The RDI is around 2,400 or so! You certainly must not have had a desk job. I am also blessed with an aggressive metabolism and when on an extended outing in the mountains can easily eat 6,000 calories/day and still be mass-neutral.

 

[Too Much Kit To Carry]

Yeah, a couple of us have pointed fruit out. I take dried fruit mixes when we're backpacking and they make a great trail snack. I dry my own apple slices in my dehydrator and they're a bazillion times better than from the store, IMHO.

Also: 10,000 calories a day! The RDI is around 2,400 or so! You certainly must not have had a desk job. I am also blessed with an aggressive metabolism and when on an extended outing in the mountains can easily eat 6,000 calories/day and still be mass-neutral.

Hey Voivode,

Yeah I love fruit - it's the best thing since sliced bread

And I sure did eat those calories. :yikes:

This goes back a few years when I was cycling shed loads and in the gym 6 days a week and trekking quite a bit. I'm 6 feet tall and _USED_ to be 15 stone with a 28 inch waist also was a builder at the time and worked real hard. Used to take Joe Weider Mega Mass 2000 shakes with raw eggs several times a day, eat like a horse and maintain my weight - oh to be young and fit again - still I'm a family man now, pipe, slippers and all - wouldn't swap it for the world. I'm the same weight now - although the waist size has gone up a little

Phil.

 

[addyb]

Phil,

That sounds like me....except that no matter what I eat, I'm still skinny as a rail. Don't you wish you were free, young, and 21 again?

My typical breakfast is a couple raw eggs, some honey, some whey protein powder, milk, and some fruit blended together. It does the trick!

 

[HuBBa]

Wooh haven't posted in a long time so here goes =)

I had a direct experience of the "up's and downs" this summer actually while tracking along Kungsleden in the northern mountain regions of Sweden. At half the ascent up towards the highest point on my trek (only 1100 m btw, this is Sweden, not the Himalayas i stopped to eat some of my home made dried fruits. Now i had been walking for about 15 km already through mountain terrain, so i had about 4 hours worth of walking without eating any "real" meals, and here is where the warning flags SHOULD have popped up

That dried fruit was an instant sugar rush, which ended almost as fast as it came, and when it left, i was in a world of hurt. Headaches, fatigue, muscle soreness, everything hit me at once and i only had about 150 m to the cabin i was going to visit, but let me tell you that those 150 meters were a LOT tougher than the 15000 meters i had already cleared.

Now my situation was in no real way dangerous except when i made the brilliant judgement not to walk an extra 100 meters to cross a bridge and instead took a short route through unproven mountain terrain and across a 10 m wide part of the Jokk (alpine river/creek) with waterfalls both upstream and downstream of me. Clearly a very bad judgement call but at the time i rather took that risk than going the extra way around, thats how big of a deal those last few meters were.

I managed to cross it without any problems however and soon was in the cabin but i was fatigued for about two hours before i could get some proper food into me.

Now as i said, i was within visual range of a cabin at all times and even though it was raining and quite cold i had people passing me all the time. So i wasn't in any real danger.. but if i had been in an isolate place with distance to salvation then what would have just been a quick upper could have turned into a rescue / survival situation.

So the point is, treat sugar with respect, even if it's not refined. And don't ever eat fast sugars like that when fatigued and on an empty stomache

 

[malcolmc]

I’ve used Dextro tablets and still carry them but would not use them unless really necessary and then only sparingly. They can give you a physical and mental boost, in a difficult situation that may be extremely useful. But you do have to plan for when the effect wears off leaving you more drained than before you took them. The packet says take 1 to 3 tabs as required, that lasts me 1 to 2 hours – very much a short-term measure. I’m a little concerned a people consuming whole packets (14 tabs) in one go. If all else fails read the instructions comes to mind.

 

[TheGreenMan]

Paul,

That makes sense. But I think the point with that documentary was that taking too much glucuse/dextrose raises your blood sugar to an extremely high level and so, your body has to use up it's insulin levels to compensate...

Yeah, you could well be right, Adam.

The high energy bar in question consists pretty much of 100% sugar, and is a very well known one here in the UK. I dare not mention its name (And the name is irrelevant anyway, for the purposes of this discussion) in fear of bringing the manufacturer’s legal wrath down on the owner of this site.

Best regards,
Paul.

 

[TheGreenMan]

Wooh haven't posted in a long time so here goes =)...

Excellent post, HuBBa. Very interesting and useful, thank you.

Best regards,
Paul.

 

[rik_uk3]

Anyone remember the scene in 28 days later, where the two central characters are climbing stairs and the guy can't keep up? Seems he had been living on sugar for a few days and had "crashed"

I am very bad in the mornings can't eat until I've been up a while, so on an early shift at the hospital, I get up at 05.15, shower, then several mugs of tea with some sugar and a few biscuits, maybe a banana. Work starts at 07.00, and I have breakfast at around 10.00, tea, weetabix with fresh fruit, yogurt, toast and butter (not marg). This keeps me going until late afternoon when I get home. Once a week I treat myself to a full fried breakfast from the canteen I try and cut down on sugar in the evenings, if I have hot drinks I use a sweetener or go without and rely on food and Stella Artois as sugar sources

Strange thing is, like many, I can eat as soon as I wake up when on holiday or camping