Preppers Need Quick Energy Sources In Get Home/Bug Out Bags

Your bags (bugout bag, get home bag, whatever) are meant to go with you.  They should be stocked to keep you going. 

Imagine you’ve been working steadily for a while.  You’re not hungry; not thinking about food; got other things on the mind.  Then you notice something’s not right.  Maybe you feel light-headed, maybe dizzy, maybe like your energy suddenly drained right out of you.  You could find yourself unaccountably clumsy, with shaky hands, or unable to focus, think clearly, or remember important information.  Your motivation evaporates.  It’s not fun, not in the least.

In this post and podcast, we explore how to get them stocked for the job.

Bonking (the cyclists’ name for this effect) can sneak up on you, especially as both worry and concentrated effort suppress hunger. It’s effects on your attention, thinking, and motor skills can make it dangerous.  Since it’s very common during sustained effort, it’s a great idea to have some protection on hand.

See that bag under the seat? Spare tube, tire tools, small money, CLIF BAR. The Clif bars get the most use.

What causes Bonking?

While a runner might call this Hitting the Wall, a physiologist just calls it hypoglycemia.  When you haven’t eaten in a while, it’s your liver’s job to keep making sugar and dumping it in the blood to feed the brain.  The other tissues are supposed to leave it along and run on other fuels, such as fats.  However, when skeletal muscles get to working hard, they start cheating and taking that glucose out of the blood.  The liver can’t keep up, blood glucose drops suddenly, the brain quits working right, and you’re bonking.

How do you fix The Bonk?

Since low blood glucose is the problem, fixing it is pretty straightforward:  Ingest some quick-hitting carbs.  There are lots of choices, but my choice for everything from bike bag to bug out bag is the Clif bar.  You pick what you want, but the reasons for my choice might give you some ideas. 

Clif bars have a mix of fast carbs (rice syrup, making me feel better in just a few minutes) and slower to digest and absorb carbs and proteins (so the fueling will last a couple of hours).  It’s not enough calories to really fuel exercise, but it’s enough to fill the gap between what the liver and fat stores can provide and what I need.  Rarest of all, they both taste pretty good and are nearly indestructible.  

For the first three months of being hauled around in all kinds of weather, squished, etc., they stay in top quality.  They get a little hard but still not bad for another three months.  Then I make sure to swap them out before they get rock hard.  Put them in a back pocket on a long hot ride and you have what’s essentially an extra nutritious warm tasty cookie that can be eaten with one hand without making a mess.  They don’t melt, don’t crumble, don’t mind any number of freeze/thaw cycles, and come in waterproof packaging that takes a fair amount of abuse.

In my (not a physician’s) opinion, everyone with a get home bag or bug out bag should have this general sort of fast sugar on hand. It’s not just me, I’ve seen literally dozens of teammates/athletes/work mates get caught by a surprise bonk. 

What about diabetics?  Yes, you too.  Eating sugar as a habit, particularly fast sugar sources, is indeed a bad idea for diabetics.  The thing about stress and unusual exercise though is that it does unpredictable things to your fuel handling.  Even if you’re normally quite immune to low blood sugar problems, stressful and physical situations might bring the problem up, and that’s one time where some fast sugar becomes more appropriate.

What if you bonk and no food is to hand?

Slow down.  Rest a bit.  Your liver will make more glucose, but it will take a few minutes.  Food is a quicker answer that lets you go back to hard work more reliably, but rest by itself will probably make you feel much better shortly.

Caffeine: The Other Kind of Energy

Caffeine, being a potent, legal, and easily available strong stimulant, is often treated as a wonder drug.  In several dimensions, it rather is.  It can improve alertness and ability to focus, delay sleep, and help you stay productive longer, and promote the release of fats into your bloodstream to provide better energy without stealing that glucose out of the blood.  It can reduce some kinds of headaches (did you know it’s a main ingredient in Excedrin?)

It’s also easy to find and easy to carry.  Salty and I keep ’emergency’ caffeine, in the form of one of those 5-hr energy shots, handy in most of our bags.  They’ve come in very handy when a drive got extended to later in the night than we’d planned.  They get nasty after a year though, so don’t stock and forget.  ‘Beans’ (sort of ALL THE CAFFEINE candies) and actual coffee beans and energy gels that combine fast sugar with caffeine are very portable too.

It’s also got some real downsides.  It can improve focus so much that it promotes attentional blindness, which is when you inadvertently fail to notice aspects of your environment that are not what you’re trying to focus on (but might be important).  It increases anxiety and the risk of panic.  It can spike blood pressure.  It can make one jittery, and make impossible tasks that require very steady hands.  If you do need to slow down and sleep too recently after the last dose …. too bad.  Ain’t happening.

It’s at least worth considering keeping a caffeine source handy in the bags too.  If you do use it, keep in mind what other caffeine sources you’ve been hitting (drinks, coffee, tea, chocolate, some over the counter drugs, etc.)  Whether you want the caffeine or not, know what you’re getting.  

What about herbal energy supplements?

This one’s tricky, because they don’t tell you what’s in a lot of them; and to be honest a lot of them don’t actually end up having what the label claims.  The significant ingredients are usually herbal forms of caffeine and ephedrine.  Both are potent stimulants.  Since herbal products are sold as foods rather than drugs, they don’t have to measure or report how much active ingredients they have, and that can vary from batch to batch.  I would therefore use these only with caution, and definitely not stack them with known caffeine or ephedrine sources.

Sometimes you need to keep sharp…but not so sharp you cut yourself.