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If you wake up in the middle of the night to treat a low, do you brush your teeth before going back to bed?
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I have used sugar and water to make glucose pills that are just the right size to be able to swallow with water during the night, so I don’t have to worry about brushing my teeth.
How did you make these?
Sugar is what is used by bacteria to make acid that eats away at your enamel which by definition results in tooth decay.
Mixing as much sugar as possible to a small amount of water then flattening the mixture and using a small straw for sizing the tablets.
Afterwards let the tablets dry for at least six hours or more, then store them in a plastic bag or container.
It’s good to measure the sugar, divide it by the number of tablets and know how many carbs each tablet contains.
I brush my teeth before I go to bed each night. Once I am in bed I only get up to use the toilet.
I treat my night-time lows exclusively with honey. It does not require brushing my teeth.
Lawrence, honey is a sticky carbohydrate that will contribute to tooth decay if you don’t brush.
I have peppermint gum in my bedside table. When I have lows in the night, I have no energy to get up and go brush my teeth.
I am a dentist with T1DM and I actually was the one that submitted this question. Unfortunately, tooth decay is also a complication of Diabetes that is often never mentioned. Always brush after reversing low BG in the middle of the night!!!
I wonder how much the odd-hours sugar contributes to this statistical higher tooth decay
I always lay there and know I should get up and do it. But…..
I roll over take a glucose gummie turn off alarm and go back to sleep. Can’t even imaging brushing teeth. Would wake me up and probably would have trouble going back to sleep. Have my own teeth with no problems lol.
No, but I do use a flosser that’s sitting right beside me.
If I have a low in the middle of the night I will have juice, so I just rinse my mouth with water.
I have perfect solution… keep skittles and water by your bedside… use the water to swallow skittles whole! Never touch the teeth and they dissolve and absorb quickly!
Having a low is nuisance enough, getting up to brush my teeth would having me laying awake for a while. I eat the tabs then drink some water.
I keep a water bottle on my end table. Treat the low, swish the water around my mouth, and go back to sleep…hopefully.
A lot depends on what I eat. Most of the time I just drink water after to cleanse my mouth!
It is bad enough to be woken and have to treat wait for sugar to rise and then try to get back to sleep. If I also brushed my teeth there would be no getting back to sleep
Usually i treat a d over night low with oj and i drink it with a straw. I usually use a straw to drink everything but water and wine. And i use a stainless steel straw.
I just want to get back to sleep!
No. I have glucose tabs and a small capped bottle of water within reach on the bedside table. I’ll eat a glucose tab (4g), drink a sip of water and go back to sleep. If the low alarm wakes me again I get up, go to the kitchen, test my bg with a meter and respond to the meter results either by recalibrating the CGM or drinking 4 oz (approx) of apple cider. Then I’ll brush my teeth.
We use only juice for our son at night which he sips through a straw. Per dentist’s recommendation, we then have him sip some water.
Not always but quite often I will rinse with mouthwash.
Drink water!
An interesting question, I wonder what they are truly curious about? Blind habits? Rituals? The tooth decay all our low treatments surely must cause ie its concentrated sugar after all. Or simply they do “this”, wondered if anybody else did too
Never…. that would be enough activity to awaken me for the next day. Once my feet are on the floor, I begin FOTF rise in BG and cannot go back to sleep. I take my Welch’s fruit gummies from the bedside and only get up to meter if I feel the SG does not match my BG after looking at the SG Trend line on the app.