I was dx’d this last September with Type 1. I am using Humalog in an Animas pump. I was using about 20-30 units of insulin total/ day until I started training for a half marathon.
Since I run about 20+ miles a week I am low 1-4 times a day and I have decreased my insulin by 5-15 units a day. I barely bolus for food unless its over 20g at a time.
Am I honeymooning or am I kicking ■■■? haha
My HA1C in Sept was 11.3 and now it’s 5.4.
If I am honeymooning do I bolus and hope my body doesn’t do it? Or is my metabolism just more and I will go low? I don’t want to destroy more beta cells by assuming my body will take care of it.
My doctor told me not to bolus, but I wanted your opinion. Has this happened to anyone before?
5.4= kicking ■■■. The TDD probably doesn’t matter that much as there’s probably some honeymooning stuff going on but I haven’t seen any sort of “quantification” about that. If you are T1, I wouldn’t worry about beta cells or prolonging your honeymoon. I run too but I still bolus. It’s more about timing the bolus. Before a race that starts @ 8:00 (which I loathe, BTW…), I just get up early to give the small AM bolus a chance to get clear. Afterwards, I just keep an eye on things but would rather have a really small bolus and “kick ■■■” than not bolus and run my BG up.
One other thing I’ve noticed (without any formal documentation…) is that it seems like as I work out a lot, I get in shape and then don’t get as much bang for my insulin bucks as I used to.
Thanks for the reply! I feel better about the whole prolonging my honeymoon thing. I’d rather “kill those cells” than be hypoglycemic- I’ve had a few scary moments while training… they won’t make it out alive anyways haha
I’ll def keep that timing of bolus in mind. I think that my food/glucose tab timing for exercise needs a little work. I tend to think I’m high enough and take a tab or two but still drop 80 points after 2 miles
And that’s interesting about the “insulin bucks.” I will have to keep an eye out for that too. Ugh so much to do just to run
In some ways, I think that it may be a slight advantage of having diabetes in that I feel like I’m probably more aware of my body/ bg/etc. than “straight”, non-diabetic people.
Also honeymooning (diagnosed in December @ 8.7, now 5.6, and have been told I have quite a bit of beta cell function left), and I do much the same thing. A lot of it depends on your individual BG targets (some people will give small corrections at 115??? I’m not one of them but hey more power to them) and how many carbs you like to consume, but you have a lot more flexibility since you have a pump. I’d probably play around with an I:C ratio between 1:15 and 1:25 and set a bolus threshold for yourself (maybe 8g? 10g?) above which you take bolus insulin but before which you just let your pancreas do the dirty work. I use pens with a 1:15 and can’t take less than one unit, so mine is around 10g, above which I just eat a cracker or a small handful of blueberries or a roll of smarties in addition to what I was going to eat.
