Sometimes I get this bonking sensation early in practice: shakiness, a starved feeling, weakness, odd lights in the visual field (not migrainal here), dizziness--the kind of stuff I usually associate with low blood sugar.
So I started eating a package of Lance ToastChee crackers before every practice, and I almost never get the bonking problem if I do so.
Alas, now a new problem has emerged: just lost my final lower molar, which cracked down the middle like its three predecessor brethren. It's now hard to eat crackers (I can kind of hamster-chomp them with my incisors and other non-masticating teeth).
It's actually hard to eat anything right now, given evacuated-tooth-related pain. My question: are there any forms of liquid nourishment that can take the place of solid food and provide enough of the right kinds of calories to let you swim without bonking?
Note: William Faulkner was once advised that a diet of whiskey alone was not sufficient to sustain life. His retort: There's a lot of nourishment in an acre of corn.
Alas, I have become a teetotaler and thus any recommended liquid nourishment must be of the non-spirited variety.
Thanks in advance for your advice. BTW, diets that allow all you can eat of one specific food really don't work long term. I have been on the Ice Cream Diet for two days straight now, and I never believed how much I could grow to hate this foul cold substance.
Thanks again for all the great suggestions. I had a smoothie for breakfast; I was particularly happy to hear that it's possible to remain alive on hummus and liquids after dental surgery! Thanks very much.
Anna Lea, I find your diabetic self testing concept brilliant. I am a magazine writer and have undergone various procedures/adventures for years to have stuff to write about. Your self testing of blood sugar with those strips is a great idea. It's really interesting to me that the symptoms (shakiness, blinking lights, hunger, etc.) are demonstrably linked to low blood sugar.
One thing that's odd to me still is the notion that I can sometimes swim through the low blood sugar, not eat anything extra, and feel fine by the end of practice. I am wondering if the body sometimes experiences a preliminary crash upon first starting a workout, then it takes some time before new fuel sources are mobilized.
Anyhow, I'm doing a story on prediabetes now, and I'm wondering if I could get the magazine to pay for a monitor (though wouldn't low blood sugar actually be the opposite of diabetes?)
I just found an interesting link to hypoglycemia (low blood sugar):
diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/.../
I guess it will be something of a balancing act for the forseeable future, trying to get enough liquid/non-masticated calories to continue working out without inducing other symptoms.
Oh, well. To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway: It's only decrepitude, many must have it.
