How much to you fluctuate once your fast acting is "done"?

Hi All,

A couple of the recent threads here has got me wondering how much you flucuate when you don’t have fast acting still active. I guess the question arose from the “too low to drive” thread. For me when I have lunch, at noon, and check to see where I landed at 3pm, I don’t get much movement until I do something that would cause it to move - eat/drink carbs, excercise, dawn phenom, etc. I am wondering what others experiences are? I guess I always thought that if your basal was correct, then you would tend to float along in the same area, say plus or minus 15 points, unless you’re sick or whatever. That said, I rarely check before I drive, excercise or even eat my next meal, because my basal keeps me realtively level. I know this mainly becasue I did a ton of testing when I first started, and period days of additional tests, I don’t normally do. Now I test maybe 6-8 times per day.

Let me just say that I was LADA, so maybe thats helping me? Not sure.

Thanks, Jason

The biggest realization I had from a trial with a CGMS is that as a Type 1, my blood sugar is never “stable”. It is always moving - maybe not much - but it is moving. This should be less true for a LADA, especially the closer you are to diagnosis, since you probably have more functional beta cells that can stabilize your background BG (although not enough to handle the big spikes).

Also, I find that Humalog (and Novolog when I tested a couple bottles) lasts me longer than three hours - for me its mostly done at 4 hours but then I get a final small peak of activity up to the 5 hour mark.

If I have no food on board, and no insulin on board, I pleasingly flatline most of the time. That’s the only way I can flatline, hahaha. I guess my basal must be more or less correct, because I hardly ever have unexplained lows. My c-peptide is near zero, I make almost no insulin of my own.

I do however sometimes have bizarre unexplained highs, with no food on board, no insulin on board, no stress, no exercise, no hormones, just a 320 out of the clear blue sky. This is a true number, I did not make it up!

your right ideally if your basal is correct you should stay relatively flat you fast acting is only covering high bs or food… now obviosly other things like exercise but i don’t think you were wondering about what raises and lowers bs.

but your right if your basal is correct you should effectively answer what the liver is pumping out with steady numbers…


admittedly, it doesn’t quite work out that way all the time but it’s not totally unusual to hit it like that in the overnight hours?

with no food on board you body may be hungry and have the liver dump a load of sugar to kill your hungar for that present time…obviously hungar returns and this process can effectively keep happening but the body must burn fat into sugar yada yada yada…

Jason, your basal sounds spot on. Congrats! LADA can be incredibly challenging with lows from your own insulin production, or highs when things suddenly change.

For me every day is different and it is not an exact science.

I have tested my basals and have flat lined, but any time I add hormones, food, boluses, exercise (movement), stress into the mix I am screwed.

Way jealous of your steadiness, but happy for you at the same time.

Thanks all for the responses. Yeh, I am about 5 years from diagnosis and 2 years from when I started insulin. I know there is some residual beta cell function, but I think they are about gone as I’ll spike from pretty much any amount of carbs. So, I guess for the most part if my basal is correct, which it seems to be, then I should stay relatively level. At least for now :slight_smile: I’m sure at some point something will change.

If you can stay stable - great for you! For others…it’s hard.

I find that, as a woman, my basal rate needs can change from day to day. With ovulation, menstruation, etc…they really mess with my BGs. I can have the same basal rates and eat the same things on three different days. Normal day - I’ll be ok. Ovulation day - I’ll probably be high. Right before or during menstruation - could be high OR low. There’s no EXACT pattern to it either, so it’s totally a crapshoot on any given day. It sometimes takes a few hours into the day before I figure out ‘oh this will be a high day…better bump up the basal’ or ‘gosh, I keep going low! better turn it down’.

And then stress from work, varying exercise levels from day to day, different sleep patterns on weekdays vs weekends…mess up all the days in between. Haha.

In essence - I try to keep it stable. But to do so I have to check and sometimes give a small correction or grab a glucose tablet. So I can be stable - if I check every hour or two :slight_smile:

HOLY. COW.

That is awe-inspiring.

Kari that is so me

Kari, that is so me too. Crapshoot on any given day is about right. If I am in the good range that usually only means that I am on my way to a low. It never just stays there in the good range.

Highs out of no where. Lows out of no where. And then I will have a few days where everything seems to be working out just perfectly and I haven’t a clue why. (I do love those days.)

But usually it’s always a surprise when I check my sugar because I honestly never know what to expect. It gets a bit frustrating at times as it seems there are just too many variables to account for, and as I am getting older it seems a bit more difficult.