Doctors advise children under the age of eight should not consume slush ice drinks
Doctors in the UK have issued an urgent warning over slushy drinks after 21 children were hospitalised. According to experts, most suffer from glycerol intoxication syndrome, caused by the sweetening agent glycerol.
Doctors advise children under the age of eight should not consume slush ice drinks.
These drinks, popular in the UK as slushies, contain ingredients that are not recommended for children under the age of four. The advice comes under the guidance of National Health Services, which states that due to the high levels of glycerol, young children have symptoms like dizziness, low blood sugar, confusion, and they can even pass out.
These symptoms occur in young children because their bodies are not able to break glycerol down as efficiently as adults. The guidance was issued by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), with the most recent updates occurring in 2023.
What happened to the kids?
According to the doctors, the glycerol intoxication syndrome caused the kids to:
- Lose consciousness and show signs of low sugar and high acidity in the blood.
- Needed brain scans
- Had seizures
However, all the children later recovered and were discharged from the hospital.
What is glycerol?
According to the journal Archies of Diseases in Childhood, glycerol is used to maintain the slush effect in the absence of a high sugar content.
It leads to conditions that mimic inherited disorders of gluconeogenesis and glycerol metabolism. Doctors advise parents to be alert to the phenomenon, and public health bodies should ensure clear messaging regarding the fact that younger children, especially those under eight years of age, should avoid slush ice drinks containing glycerol.
"There is poor transparency around slush ice drink glycerol concentration; estimating a safe dose is therefore not easy. It is also likely that speed and dose of ingestion, along with other aspects such as whether the drink is consumed alongside a meal, during a fasting state, or consumed after high-intensity exercise, may be contributing factors," researchers wrote in the journal.
"To ensure safe population-level recommendations can be easily interpreted at the individual parental level, and given the variability across an age cohort of weight, we suggest that recommendations should be based on weight rather than age. Alternatively, the recommended age threshold may need to be higher (eight years) to ensure the dose per weight would not be exceeded given normal population variation in weight," the researchers added.
Signs and symptoms of glycerol intoxication syndrome
According to experts, children below the age of ten may suffer from headaches and sickness caused by exposure to glycerol.
At very high levels of exposure—typically when several of these products are drunk by a child in a short space of time—glycerol intoxication could cause shock, hypoglycemia, and loss of consThe NHS says typical early warning signs of hypoglycemia include feeling extremely hungry, trembling or shakiness, and sweating. In more severe cases, you may also feel confused and have difficulty concentrating. In very severe cases, a person experiencing hypoglycemia can lose consciousness.
Get Latest News Live on Times Now along with Breaking News and Top Headlines from Health and around the world.
