hello, i have some questions i hope you can help with. i am/was honeymooning since nov 2011. in the last couple of weeks i have been seeing random (or what i think to be random) numbers, especially post prandial. by the time the next meal rolls around i am usually down to where i should be, or just about, in the 80s,90s, sometimes low hundreds.
now what im seeing are high numbers two hours after eating. my i:c ratio is/was the same all day, 1:30. sometimes i just wont eat any carbs because i dont feel like eating 30, but i always eat them at breakfast. whenever i do eat carbs it has to be 30, because my pen only goes in full units.(i have asked about 1/2 unit pens, supposedly in spain there are none).
a couple of days ago i woke up at 101, two hours later i was 236. i went for an hour vengeance walk and was down to 80. i got numbers like that all last week. so i have been trying lower i:c ratios. for breakfast yesterday, i tried 1:25. my fasting wake up was 113, two hours later 161. for lunch i was back at 99.
today i woke at 97, used a 1:20 ratio and after two hours i was at 142. at lunch i was 98. i had done some light housework and was up and down a couple of flights of stairs. just after bfast.
my breakfast is always the same and while i dont like to see 140 on the meter i know its just because im used to honeymoon numbers. this to me doesnt sound like dawn phenomenon because im waking up with good numbers. im eating right after i wake up. the bolus is off, right? i know the week before your period can throw numbers off but that would be pre and postprandial, requiring more basal. right?
maybe if my honeymoon is ending im starting to spike with my breakfast foods that have been ok for me? (breakfast biscuits and yogurt or fruit)
finally, with a post prandial number of 140, this may be a good ratio and it should be safe for me to exercise and not go higher. right now any kind of workout makes me go high, indicating that i am not shooting up enough insulin, even if i start exercising in the low 100s i rise to the 170s. very annoying.
sorry such a long post. i see my doctor at the end of september but she is useless. thank you!!
Your numbers are great...every day is just going to be a little diffrent even if you do everything exactly the same each day. Short bursts of activity can cause a spike in BG but I can assure you that if your activity lasts long enough your BG will drop. Example: Interval training can cause BG spiks and riding a bike 20k will lower BG.
It's is also not uncommon for individual's to have BG spiks in the morning even when their first BG test is on target, skip breakfast and see what happens, skip lunch and see what happens.
I sometimes spike when I'm late for a meal...my body just dumps hormones I have no explanation it just happens randomly.
Dawn phenomena doesn't just affect your waking BG; it also affects your post breakfast numbers. I think you diagnosed the problem well by changing your breakfast I:C. Your 1:20 breakfast I:C looks like a winner for now.
A two hour post-breakfast number of 142 is pretty good in my opinion. My ideal post meal numbers are <= 140 @ 1 hour and <= 120 @ 2 hours and 85 and stable @ 4 hours. This is an ideal target and I usually fall short but my numbers benefit from this goal.
You might try adding some fat and/or protein to your breakfast to slow down the carb absorption. You could use whole milk yogurt and a liberal amount of butter or cream cheese on your biscuit. I would also try to absolutely limit your breakfast carbs to 20.
I think you're doing well. Congratulations on your willingness to do some personal experimentation. Your observations (don't be afraid to keep a log) will be much more valuable than most of the advice from your endo when it comes to making insulin adjustments.
It sounds like you are definitely coming out of your honeymoon and you are doing all the right thing in tweaking your ratios. Yes, breakfast is the hardest meal; by "biscuit" I'm not sure if you mean that in the American way as a type of bread or the English way as a cookie. Either way, yes, as your honeymoon ends you will find you need to limit such things for breakfast, but continue to "eat to your meter" - to do just what you're doing - seeing what works. I would stay at the 1:20 for awhile as 140 is borderline. One result is just one result, so your next results might be a bit lower or higher and you might decide to tweak the ratio a bit more. Give it a couple days. You may also find you need different ratios for different meals. Keep up the good work!
honeymooning is great, isnt it, shawnmarie? have some pancakes for me. ;) still hoping this is just a bump and i can continue on the honeymoon, but this is feeling a bit different...
john, when i walk it goes down, but whenever i do my kettlebell workouts or zumba or astanga yoga, its high. a couple of weeks ago it would just go down with anything!
terry, im gonna try some fat and protein. yesterday i tried eating some salad with my breakfast for some reason, this is why tudiabetes helps! i was putting off these changes for a couple of days because i didnt want to start with the logging malarchy. uggh. lazy teacher on last week of holidays.
and zoe, thanks so much. you always help whenever i post about anything. ill definitely give it a couple more days before i change anything else.
Glad to help, sounds like you're doing great! The one other thing I want to say is that once you come out of your honeymoon, things can get more random. As type 1's, few of us can stay perfectly stable and sometimes things happen for seemingly no reason. Don't let it get to you!
I think it sounds like you are doing exactly the right thing, changing the ratios and the #s are moving in the right direction? I would keep moving the ratio until I got where I'd want it to be. I like the idea of more fat and protein, maybe replacing some carbs, if only because then when you hit the "crossover point", there won't be as much IOB involved to get crazy with?
To just have 140 as the aftermath of carbohydrate intake is good. It would be great if you can manage to keep it this way for your post prandial numbers.
With excercise I would like to recommend that you stick to aerobic excercises. Power lifting has the potential to put you in the anaerobic state. The negative aspect is that the muscles will release their deposits of glucagon that will be converted by the liver to glucose. Usually this does not happen with purely aerobic exercises. Another approach is to raise the glucose with anaerobic excercises for 20 minutes and then to consume them with aerobic exercises for the next 30 minutes. If your blood glucose is still increasing with exercise you can also inject some insulin to compensate the glucose from the liver. Potentially you can even eat something before and inject insulin for that. Usually insulin on board is the signal for the liver that carbohydrates are entering the blood stream. Thus the release of glucose from the liver should be smaller. You have to find out how your body reacts to that.
I could order the Novopen Echo in Germany and sent it to you. This is a half unit pen for NovoRapid or Levemir. Just let me know.
acidrock, what is the crossover point? holger, what a great idea. i did the exercise the opposite way round because i was too high to do weights at first. did a thirty minute walk and dropped from 207 (ridiculous, anxiety causing number!!) to 97. so i did half hour of kettle belling but then was at 74. so maybe next time eat a glucose tab before starting the 2nd part of workout.
thanks for the info on the novo website, am gonna have a look at it.
When you "find" the "sweet spot" where your BG will be where you want it by "crossing over" from having higher BG to running a shade low or vice versa? If I'm at .8u/ hour fasting and am trending up, I'd try .825U/ hr, see how that works, if it moves in the right direction, I figure "great, I'm onto something" and keep at it until I get where I want.
I'm borrowing the term from Robert J. Macnamara's (failed) attempt to win in Vietnam, when the "crossover point" was when the US/ ARVN could kill more NVA/ VC than were available, leading to "body counts" and other unpleasantness.
To figure out where the 207 is coming from, I'd look back at what was going on before that number and consider making changes. If it's in the AM, I would agree that it can be quite a bit harder but maybe a slight (5-10%?) basal adjustment and ***carefully*** see if it works? You can bounce things like this off your doc although the one time I had an issue my doc had made a suggestion about it took the nurse (CDE? I'm not 100% sure...) a couple of days to get back to me and I'd already made the changes they'd suggested so I usually just do my own thing, pretty much that way.
well, today the numbers are back to honeymoon numbers post prandial and after a glass of wine i had a drunken like hypo of 42-now im an even cheaper date! so i guess its test, test, test and no real consistency for now :/
