I'm a long time type 1 but new to an insulin pump. What does adjusting the ISF do to the amount of insulin I'm receiving?
The insulin sensitivity factor (ISF) comes into play mostly for corrections. It is how many points the bg is lowered by 1.00 units of insulin. E.g. if your ISF is 50, a unit of insulin will decrease the bg by 50. Thus it will affect the amount of insulin you are taking by changing + or - the amount needed for correction.
Does increasing or decreasing the ISF give me less insulin? Sorry, it's confusing to me. Lefty
Increasing your ISF will give you less insulin.
As artwoman said, the ISF is used for correcting high BGs. If you increase the ISF from say 50 to 60, it will mean you take less insulin for any given correction dose. If you decrease the ISF from 50 to 40. then that means that you'd take more insulin to correct the same high BG number.
It's confusing in that the ISF number and the insulin dose it calculates are inversely related. When ISF goes up, the insulin dose goes down. Conversely, when the ISF goes down, the insulin dose goes up.
The arithmetic looks like this:
(High BG minus target BG) divided by ISF equals insulin correction dose.
Or, (High BG-target BG)/ISF = insulin correction dose
Pumps take care of all the math but it's useful to see the how the number relate.
Terry - once again you explained the inverse math so well. I should have done that in my initial reply. I guess I should write thank you notes to all of the math teachers I had who told me I would indeed use that stuff as an adult in real life!
I've started to see the term, "numeracy," in the same discussions as "literacy" with respect to a patient's basic life skills and their overall ability to make personal treatment decisions.
No, the teachers didn't lie when they told us at a young age that reading, writing, and arithmetic are useful in life.
I like it "numeracy" Sometimes language changes can be fun.