Acceptable fasting blood sugar?

I’m wondering what the general consensus is on acceptable fasting blood sugars. My endo increased my Lantus until my 4 day average fasting bs came down to under 140. I’m taking 18 units of Lantus and my fasting bs lingers between 120 and 140 now. He’s satisfied with that. I feel like this is too high. I’d prefer to be 90-100. Maybe I’m crazy to try to be that low?

The fasting blood sugar ranges keep changing. When I was diagnosed back in 1965, the acceptable fasting range was 75-140. When I saw my endo last month and she did a blood sugar, I was 120, mind you this was about 40 minutes after lunch. The results came back as HIGH with normal being 73-100. Just a few months ago it was 73-103. So the upper number keeps lowering.

This is what I do, my endo wants me to keep it between 80 and 120. I like it around 80, so that’s where I try to keep it. It’s my body. I’m the one with diabetes. She doesn’t argue with me.

So if you want to be be between 90-100, go for it. You just tell your endo where you want your fasting to be. That you’re the diabetic, it’s your body.

If I consistently wake up over 100 I’ll increase my basal until I end up at 70-100… Of course there’s a lot of other variables that play but that’s my target.

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When I’ve discussed it with my GP and with my first endo, they wanted my fasting BG to be below 120 - and adjusted my medication/insulin to that end. I have read that fasting BGs of 115 are considered increased risk for dementia later in life, so my goal is to aim to be below 100. Until this summer, I’ve managed that fairly well, but have made some significant adjustments to my diet which resulted in equally significant changes to my basal – i have not gotten my FBG back where I like it just yet – though this mornings 106 shows promise!

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I prefer to wake up in double digits, 70-99 mg/dl. Since I have diabetes, I will accept anything at 140 or below but I act to target under 100 for my wake up glucose.

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My target fasting is 70 - 90 range, and I think I’ve hit jackpot if it’s in the low 80s.

I’m on MDI and have a dawn phenomenon that usually increases my BG 30-40 points between the hours of 3 or 4 AM and 10 or 11 AM. So I target 90-100, planning to wake up, bolus and eat breakfast around 4 AM. (Then usually go back to bed.) I accept that if it happens to be a morning that I sleep in late, my BG will be higher. When I go through a period where I’m sleeping in late more often than not, I’ll increase my Lantus by one unit so my FBG is closer to my goal of 90-100, but then I need to go to bed at a little higher BG to avoid a hypo at about 3 or 4 AM before DP starts.

Like most have said, I would typically aim to wake up with a fasting BGL of 70-100. Personally, my evening BGLs are the hardest for me to keep stable. Sometimes it seems to stay flat around the mid 80s all night, where as other nights it will go up to 150 for no real reason.

The battle is trying to combat the raise, wtihout causing a low. Which frankly is the battle in diabetes all the time but I guess it becomes more problematic when you are sleeping and maybe aren’t aware you are going low!

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I target morning BG to be 80-99. Since I switched to Tresiba I hit my target most of the time AND no more lows during the night! Tresiba us life changing.

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Sounds like you are in really really good control. If you are seeing numbers between 120 and 140 most of the time, wow, that’s really good.

But there’s always “better”!

Further fine tuning might be to adjust the basal, OR it might be to adjust the after-meal (fast-acting) insulin. It’s hard to say. If you feel that if you miss or delay a meal and your bg would drift from 120 to 50 in a few hours just from the lantus, then your basal is already high enough, or too high, and further fine tuning should probably be tweaking the after-meal fast-acting insulin.

Do you inject your rapid-acting insulin after eating? Don’t you pre-bolus before you eat? Or are you referring to correction doses?

Sorry I’m confused.

Yeah, I did use some confusing words! I meant the bolus, the fast-acting insulin given before a meal which works for several hours after each meal.

I’m just saying, that if bg before each meal is 120 or 140, that it could be lowered with EITHER a tiny bit more basal OR a tiny bit more fast-acting insulin with each meal OR with a tiny fast-acting correction dose. My initial feeling is that if bg is never going below 120, that any of the above could be the solution, but I might tend to tweak my mealtime fast acting doses more often than my basal. It just seems easier to make minor course corrections with the fast-acting, and I feel the correction from say 120 to 100, is a very minor one.

I was given a very good piece of advice on the CWD forum (pretty sure someone must have posted it here, too): your best chance of not going too high after a meal is to delay eating until your BG is 100 or under. If waiting is not possible, you should inject a correction dose added to the amount of insulin needed to cover the carbs you are going to consume. Sorry if I’m stating the obvious!

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I’m on the sliding scale method for bolus :disappointed: so I can’t really speak to tweaking a bolus or correction dosing. Sometimes I feel so stupid and I think its because the sliding scale method is so un-empowering (Is that a word?). My diagnosis was a year ago (even though it was initially type 2) and I feel like I should be much further along than finally just having fine tuned my basal and still using the d**n sliding scale. Sorry, I’m grumpy today.

Becca, take the proverbial D-bull by the horns and, after adequate education (read Think Like a Pancreas by Gary Scheiner), count carbs, determine an accurate ISF, DIA, I:C ratio, and reap the benefits. You can do it!

Sliding Scale = Dark Ages

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90 to 100 is not low. It’s normal.

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I’ve been trying for 70-100 range for fasting myself, with varying success. I find that it’s hard to be consistent, because I have a fairly variable dawn phenomenon (some days it’s there, some not), so if usually I’m in that range, and then occasionally wake up at 150, I’ve decided that’s ok. It does mean though that sometimes I have overnight lows, but usually the gradual/mild kind. Seems worth it to me since I figure if I can keep things lower overnight, that has a major impact on my A1c, since that’s a large chunk of time each day and inherently less variable than the day. That said, for years my blood sugars were all over the place, so as I’ve been getting them in control, there was definitely a phase where I was very happy with 120-140. The lower targets have felt much more reasonable now that I have a CGM and am more stable in general.

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One thing I’ve found is I “feel” too low when my BG is below 100.
It’s probably because I’ve run high for so long I’ve gotten used to being in a given range and going below “feels” wrong. I talked to my endo about it and she recommended a range of 100-120 as a starting point and once I’m consistently there we can revisit it. So far I’m in the range most mornings and feel good so I don’t plan to drop it, although I did set my pump to use 90-110 as the target range when calculating insulin doses. Using that tactic helped pull my morning BGs into the real range I wanted and lower everything else a little as well.

Wheelman

I’m also worried, having read/heard stories, that if I get my blood sugars under tight control with MDI then my insurance will deny a pump. Gah!

I had this experience as well, but now after a year of roughly sticking closer to this range than I ever have before I find that I don’t feel low unless I drop below 65-70. The one caveat I would make with that is you need to be fairly comfortable that your blood glucose won’t just drop dramatically. I am so it doesn’t bother me that I don’t feel ‘low’ untill that level, but I also give small amounts of insulin so really I don’t see huge unexpected drops in my BGLs.