I had two pieces of toast (with no sugar jam) and two cups of coffee for breakfast.
I had high sugar (13.4) so I took 5 units of nonorapid. An hour later I have even higher sugar (15.9) – I just don’t get it!
Feeling tired, heavy and very moody.
:-(
Morning is often the worst time of day. Many of us have Darn Phenomenon (it is really called Dawn Phenomenon (DP)). Our bodies clear the circulating insulin and then, in the ultimate punishment, releases hormones causing our blood sugar to rise. Some days, I'll wake up high and if I don't take action and I don't eat, my blood sugar will just rise higher and higher. I work very hard to start the day right. If I awake high, even a tad high, I'll often correct right away. And then I always eat breakfast and I'll often cover the breakfast, but I'll have to use perhaps twice the insulin to cover the carbs that I would require at dinner. DP, the curse of the diabetic.
Perhaps you were already high before breakfast and taking insulin after your meal when you had gone even higher was just chasing the dog. Perhaps give my method a try?
Hi bsc and thanks for that insight. I have never heard of DP (lol) but I will take that into consideration. Unfortunately I forgot to test myself after waking up so cannot say whether I was high or not.
Much appreciated.
If I'm stressed, it doesn't seem to matter how much insulin I take in the morning! I don't have high cortisol (or DP lol) in the morning but lots of morning meetings that can be stressful. The only thing I've found to help is a short 10-15 minute run right after eating, is my level is below 12.
You were very high before breakfast, Daniel 13.4 (241). I don't know what your I:C ratio is for breakfast, but for me I would need more than that just to cover the toast (30 carbs?) let alone correct for the high. I also would suggest eating low to no carbs when you are that high, say an omelette with meat or vegies. Do you know your ISF? The # of points one unit of insulin will lower your blood sugar? You need to compute that as well as your I:C ratio for a meal when you start out that high. Your rise wasn't that much, but you probably didn't correct for the already high number before the meal.
To give you an example, my ratio for breakfast is 1:5, so I would need 6 units just for the toast. Then my correction factor in the morning is 1:40. So to lower 241 to 110 I would need around another 3 units for a total of 9. But I would do it differently. I would correct first (the 3 units), then wait as long as I could to eat breakfast, test and bolus plus add a correction as needed before I ate and I wouldn't eat any carbs or very few.
With DP, mornings are just hard, especially on MDI. I can correct and by the time the insulin hits I'm higher than I was when I calculated the correction because I'm steady rising with the DP. So the correction that would have worked another time of day doesn't lower me to where I planned when I took the correction. Like trying to hit a moving target.
Edit: Reading the other posts, I realize that DP may definitely be a factor for you. I don't have that, so I don't think about it. I would ignore the part of my advice that says "wait as long as you can to eat" because for you your BG will just continue to rise. I would just bolus your carb and correction dosages together, wait 15-20 minutes after and then eat.
Did you take the caffeine into account? Caffeine is probably another culprit along with what everyone else has suggested. It can raise your blood sugar. It really spikes mine.
I'm lucky that caffeine doesn't spike my blood sugar, but you didn't say if you had milk in it. I bolus for 5 carbs for the milk in my morning cappuchino.