When your blood sugar drops below 70 mg/dL, you need fast-acting sugar immediately. Glucose tablets, fruit juice, or regular soda are the best first choices because they contain simple carbohydrates that enter your bloodstream within minutes. What you eat after that initial fix matters too, since the wrong follow-up can send your blood sugar crashing again.
How to Recognize a Low
Your body sends two waves of warning signals when blood sugar falls. The first wave comes from your nervous system reacting to the drop: shakiness, a pounding heart, sweating, sudden hunger, and anxiety. These early symptoms are your cue to act. If blood sugar keeps falling, typically below 55 mg/dL, a second set of symptoms kicks in as your brain runs short on fuel. That’s when confusion, weakness, fatigue, and difficulty thinking clearly take over. At that point, treating the low becomes urgent.
Some people, especially those who experience frequent lows, stop noticing the early warning signs altogether. If you’ve ever been told your blood sugar was low but felt fine, you may have reduced awareness, which makes keeping fast-acting sugar within reach even more important.
The 15-15 Rule
The standard approach recommended by the CDC and the American Diabetes Association is simple: eat 15 grams of fast-acting carbohydrates, wait 15 minutes, then check your blood sugar again. If it’s still under 70 mg/dL, repeat with another 15 grams. Keep cycling until your levels come back up.
Pure glucose is the fastest option. It doesn’t need to be broken down by your body the way other sugars do, so it hits your bloodstream first. Here’s what 15 grams of fast-acting carbohydrates looks like in practice:
- Glucose tablets: 3 to 4 tablets (check the label, since brands vary)
- Fruit juice: 4 ounces (half a cup) of orange or apple juice
- Regular soda: 4 ounces (not diet)
- Hard candy: 4 to 5 pieces of something like Lifesavers
- Honey or table sugar: 1 tablespoon
The key is choosing something that’s almost entirely simple sugar with little else in it. You want carbohydrates that move fast.
What Not to Eat During a Low
This is where people often make mistakes. Reaching for chocolate, a granola bar, or a slice of pizza feels instinctive when you’re shaky and hungry, but these foods contain fat, protein, or fiber that slow digestion. Fat in particular delays and then extends the blood sugar response, meaning your levels rise more slowly than you need them to. Protein can actually trigger additional insulin secretion in some people, which is the opposite of what you want when you’re already low.
Save the more substantial food for after you’ve corrected the low. In the moment, stick to pure, simple sugar.
What to Eat After You’ve Corrected the Low
Once your blood sugar is back above 70 mg/dL, the 15 grams of juice or glucose tablets you just consumed won’t keep you stable for long. That quick sugar burns through fast, and without a follow-up snack, you risk dropping again. This is where pairing a carbohydrate with protein makes a real difference. The carbohydrate provides continued fuel while the protein slows the release, giving you a steadier curve instead of another spike and crash.
Good follow-up snacks that combine roughly 15 grams of carbohydrate with a source of protein include:
- Crackers and peanut butter: 6 saltine crackers with 2 tablespoons of peanut butter
- Cheese and fruit: 1 small apple or banana with 1 ounce of cheese
- Half a sandwich: one slice of bread with meat, cheese, or peanut butter
- Crackers and tuna: 6 saltine crackers with a quarter cup of tuna salad
- Animal crackers and peanut butter: 8 animal crackers with 2 tablespoons of peanut butter
- Tortilla chips and beans: 15 to 20 baked tortilla chips with 2 tablespoons of refried beans
If your next meal is less than an hour away, you can skip the separate snack and simply eat your meal. But if it’s going to be a while, that carb-plus-protein combination is your best bet for staying stable.
Preventing Lows Overnight
Nighttime lows are particularly risky because you’re asleep and can’t respond to warning signs. A bedtime snack can help, but not everyone needs one, and what works depends on where your blood sugar sits before bed.
Research on people with type 1 diabetes found that when bedtime blood sugar was already above 180 mg/dL (10 mmol/L), no snack was necessary to prevent overnight lows. Between 126 and 180 mg/dL, any small snack helped. But when bedtime levels were below 126 mg/dL, the type of snack mattered: a standard snack combining starch and protein, or a protein-heavy snack, eliminated overnight lows entirely. A snack of just plain carbohydrate wasn’t as protective.
A practical bedtime snack for nights when your blood sugar is on the lower side might be a slice of toast with peanut butter, a small bowl of cereal with milk, or cheese and crackers. The goal is slow, sustained fuel that lasts through the hours you’re asleep.
Keeping Fast Sugar Within Reach
The biggest barrier to treating a low quickly isn’t knowledge. It’s access. Glucose tablets are small, shelf-stable, and precisely dosed, which makes them ideal for keeping in a bag, a desk drawer, a nightstand, or a glove compartment. Small juice boxes work well too. The worst time to figure out what to eat is when your hands are shaking and your thinking is foggy, so having a go-to option already within arm’s reach removes the guesswork entirely.
If you take insulin or medications that increase your risk for lows, it’s also worth having a glucagon kit at home. Glucagon is a hormone that signals your liver to release stored sugar, and it’s used when someone is too confused or unconscious to eat. Newer formulations come as a nasal spray or a pre-mixed injection that doesn’t require any preparation, making them far easier for a family member or coworker to use in an emergency.