Are Oral Rehydration Products Like Liquid I.V. Safe For Diabetics?

Answer

Hello and thanks for reaching out to us!

There are a large number of oral rehydration products on the market, most of which are powdered products that come in single-use packets or sachets, so it's tough to give a one-size fits all answer. Some of the more popular products available include:

• Liquid I.V.
• HydroMATE
• DripDrops
• Nuun

Essentially all of these products contain electrolytes (such as sodium and potassium), vitamins, and sugar. The sugar contained in these products may be in a variety of forms, such as sucrose or glucose, but they are all simple sugars. Products range from as little as one gram of sugar per serving to 11 grams.

In regard to how safe they are to use if you are diabetic, you really just need to be aware of the sugar content contained in the specific product you plan on taking.

Diabetics need to be aware of the number of carbohydrates they are getting via their diet, and sugar counts as a carbohydrate. This is especially important if you are a diabetic that injects insulin based on the specific number of carbohydrates you take in at a given time (i.e. inject insulin via a sliding scale).

Additionally, if you track any other aspects of your dietary intake (such as sodium), be sure to note that as well. Liquid I.V., for example, contains 500mg of sodium per serving, which is around 22% of your daily value (in those not on a sodium-restricted diet).

Overall, these products are safe to use if you have diabetes, but you just must take into consideration the sugar content.

Sugar In Rehydration products

I pulled a few examples of oral rehydration products to give you an idea of their sugar content. The following is the nutrition facts from Liquid I.V.

As you can see, Liquid I.V. contains 11 grams of sugar (and 12 grams of total carbohydrates per stick). The carbohydrates in this product are from the addition of cane sugar and dextrose.

Let's use DripDrops for another example. Below are the nutrition facts for the several available flavors of DripDrops:

Like Liquid I.V., the first ingredient in DripDrops is sugar, although it does contain slightly less, at 7 grams per serving.

There are plenty of additional products on the market similar to Liquid I.V. and DripDrops, and the point here is that you should be sure to check the nutrition facts to see how much sugar any particular product contains.

Final Words

Thanks again for reaching out to us!

Hopefully, this answer helped provide some guidance. The types of rehydration products I talked about here are extremely popular and are generally safe to use for most people.

There certainly are some considerations though. For diabetics, in particular, it is important to take into consideration what these contain, especially the sugar content, but, again, they aren't inherently unsafe for diabetics to use.