Diabetes Talking

Question:

Nigel Kendrick said this… Saw DSN today for a routine checkup. I still have the aftermath of flu/bronchitis etc. so she prescribed some Pholcodine ’sugar free’ cough suppressant for (guess what) a cough. Readings have been higher than expected today so I did a minor bit of investigation and one curious thing I note about the ingredients on the Pholcodine is ‘condensed milk flavour’. Over to you…! NK

Sugar alcohols. I bet it’s loaded with that shite, plus most cough mixtures do bump the numbers up a little due to the actual medicine bit. Ratty — Life’s Rich Pageant www.flyingrat.net

Response:

Saw DSN today for a routine checkup. I still have the aftermath of flu/bronchitis etc. so she prescribed some Pholcodine ’sugar free’ cough suppressant for (guess what) a cough. Readings have been higher than expected today so I did a minor bit of investigation and one curious thing I note about the ingredients on the Pholcodine is ‘condensed milk flavour’. Over to you…! NK

Response:

A few years ago, when my daughter was only a few months old, she was not sleeping well and keeping us up all night.  The health visitor suggested an antihistamine syrup, used to treat allergic reactions, but with the usual side effect of making the recipient drowsy.  Plastered all over the box it came in was the label "SUGAR FREE!"  On reading the label a bit more closely, I noticed that it said "Not suitable for diabetics" which puzzled me somewhat (this was long before I was diagnosed, but I knew a little about it as my grandad had been a T2.  Reading the ingredients showed that it was 99% Glucose syrup.  Now I always though that Glucose was a sugar – imagine my surprise to find out that it wasn’t! Cheers Chris Q – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Saw DSN today for a routine checkup. I still have the aftermath of flu/bronchitis etc. so she prescribed some Pholcodine ’sugar free’ cough suppressant for (guess what) a cough. Readings have been higher than expected today so I did a minor bit of investigation and one curious thing I note about the ingredients on the Pholcodine is ‘condensed milk flavour’. Over to you…! NK

Response:

Sugar alcohols. I bet it’s loaded with that shite, plus most cough mixtures do bump the numbers up a little due to the actual medicine bit. Ratty — Life’s Rich Pageant www.flyingrat.net

Thanks for the insight… See what you mean about sugar alcohols – the ingredients on the bottle list alchol and glycerol and having done a Web search on the latter it’s worrying that the product is labelled as ’sugar free’ and so would seem ‘diabetic-friendly’, yet it is loaded with carbs… From a Web page… "There is no rational basis to consider glycerin as anything but a carbohydrate……glycerin is clearly included with this ‘Carbohydrate by Difference’ definition which is used to calculate carbohydrate content…" "A sugar alcohol (or polyol) is the hydrogenated derivative of a sugar. As noted above, glycerin is the hydrogenated derivative of glyceraldehyde and dihydroxyacetone, and thus is a sugar alcohol. " NK

Response:

I’ve emailed the manufacturers with some polite observations, they’ve replied that the email is being forwarded to the appropriate department – I’ll keep here posted. Happened to be in the Pharmacy this afternoon and mentioned the ‘problem’ to the pharmacist and before you could say ‘fasting blood glucose’ he had every pharmacy book under the sun out and was leafing through ingredients and formulations – he came across a version of Pholcodine that didn’t have glycerol in it and he even had a bottle on the shelf which we both checked – ‘ah, this is the watery version’, he said, ‘not so thick’. He’s asked me to let him know what the manufacturers of the other stuff say and I thought I might as well let the DSN know the outcome too – it would be nice to think my investigations made a difference! NK

Response:

16:12:53 Tue, 30 Mar 2004alt.support.diabetes.uk – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -Nigel Kendrick said this… Saw DSN today for a routine checkup. I still have the aftermath of flu/bronchitis etc. so she prescribed some Pholcodine ’sugar free’ cough suppressant for (guess what) a cough. Readings have been higher than expected today so I did a minor bit of investigation and one curious thing I note about the ingredients on the Pholcodine is ‘condensed milk flavour’. Over to you…! NK Sugar alcohols. I bet it’s loaded with that shite, plus most cough mixtures do bump the numbers up a little due to the actual medicine bit.

Also remember that your numbers might be up slightly just because of the illness (cough) as well. — London, UK              Home Page:      http://www.tucana.demon.co.uk                          Web Shop:      http://buy.at/tucana           Mobile Phone Ring Tones:      http://www.ringamoby.com "Everything I do and say with anyone makes a difference." Gita Bellin

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