Does anyone use Apidra in their pump? What is your active insulin time set for? I know that Apidra works faster than Novolog and Humalog…
we use three for apidra, that's what our endo recommended, now that we have dexie, I'd say it COULD be two and a half, in theory if our basals were exactly right, becuase after about 2 and a half hours the bs flattens out.
I do the same. I got started using 3 because it was a nice even number when I had to do the math on MDI, but it seems to work fine with my pump, so that's what I programmed in.
The active insulin setting has little to do with when it starts impacting BG. I have my pump set for 3 hours but there is probably a small amount of insulin on board for 5-6 hours. The pump setting is a sensitivity setting for correction insulin only based on the high and low target settings...if your BG is in target range then the active insulin setting has no impact on the next bolus. Lower settings will increase correction insulin if you are off target and higher settings will decrease added correction insulin when you are off target.
Actually John, it has all to with with my target. My I:C ratio is so low and my ISF IS rarely super high. So after I bolus for a meal, after 2-3 1/2 hours and I double check my bg to make sure it backs under 180, if it’s not and I have IOB due to me having so much from carbs and so less from correction, it tells me I have enought IOB already when it has already wore off. So in that situation I normally would have to wait out the hours to lower by bg using my sensitivity. I hope I made sense. I can explainit better than I can write it.
I started with 3 hrs when I first started using Apidra, but have since increased it to 4 hr and that has taken care of a lot of lows I was getting. I think that it really has a lot to do with how it metabolizes in your particular body, too. Novalog and Humalog were more like 6 hrs for me, and they both had this weird second peak for me too. I'm much happier with Apidra.
I used to have mine set to 3 hours, but changed it to 4 at my endocrinologist's suggestion due to lows I was having. I did a test once where I corrected and then tested every half hour, and it seemed to be mostly done its action after about 2.5 hours, but I'm sure hangs around longer than that. Humalog and NovoRapid apparently hang around for 5-6 hours, even though they are mostly done their action after 4.
I think it also is how the pump calculates IOB which is a pretty important factor to have access to. (and accurate!)