Do you remember the "sugar tax" of a few years ago? Our favourite sugary drinks, the life-saving drinks which we used to treat hypos, suddenly became less sweet. Lucozade, Ribena, Vimto and the other teeth rotters became less attractive or pointless if you wanted to treat a low blood sugar. Lucozade clung on to a good chunk of its glucose but it was still much reduced, meaning more would need to be consumed (and bought) to treat a hypo than before the days of the sugar tax.
Today, news reports have highlighted that an independent review of the food that we eat should be subjected to further taxes, specifically sugary and salty food, and vegetables should be prescribed on the NHS.
The story is here if you'd like to read through it.
That story aside, it has made me wonder what the cost of hypos are. I don't mean the physical exhaustion, stress and anxiety. I'm talking cash, moolah, filthy lucre. Just how much does a hypo cost? In an ideal world, nothing. Gluco Gels are available on prescription and assuming you only need 30g of carbs (3 x 10g tubes of glucose) to treat your hypos per month (my allowance) then you're golden, hypos will cost you nothing as a Type 1 Diabetic. Meanwhile, back in the real world, here are my hypo stats for 2021 so far:
At the half way point of the year (183 days, 26 weeks) I'd had a grand total of 74 low blood glucose events. That's just under 3 per week. Of course, that fluctuates depending on a seemingly infinite number of variables but let's assume an average of 3 per week, rather than the days before CGM alerts when my hypo numbers were almost double that amount.
Hypo treatments and their costs will vary. I don't eat and drink the same thing in the same amounts for each hypo. So, what's the most common treat for me? Squashies and Lucozade! Let's do some pricing up:
4 x 330ml bottles of Lucozade are £2.70 (68p per bottle)
1 x packet of Squashies is £1.00
I conservatively estimate that I will drink half a bottle of Lucozade and eat around a quarter of a packet of Squashies for a hypo. Again, that will vary depending on many things but as an average I think that's a reasonably conservative amount. An average hypo is costing me:
34p in Lucozade
25p in Squashies
59p is no big deal, right?
3 hypos per week, though. Alright, £1.77 per week.
Oh, £92.04 per year.
I've had T1D for almost 37 years. £3,405.48
Perhaps I'll still be here in another 37 years. £6,810.96
Remember that my hypo frequency was once double what it currently is? Yikes!
Suddenly hypos are starting to look like expensive events, over the course of my life. I could probably buy a weeks' groceries for what I spend treating a hypo over a year. And now a proposed extra sugar tax of 15% - 25%?
I know that my hypo events are a tiny number compared to some. I wonder how much your hypos are costing you? and do you agree with the proposed new sugar and salt tax? Let me know.
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