I have been low for hours. I drank two juice paks at work and then left because I was worried, and now took a teaspoon of honey. Bg is now in the 50’s still. Should I change my inset? I am not sure what is going in here. Dexcom says 50’s, fingerstick is 71 but I still feel wonky.
Super frustrating. Then you take enough and your heading for the moon.
If it continues to crater, do you have glucagon?
I keep sport chews for such an eventuality. Less urgen but want to bring sugar up, an apple works surprisingly well for me.
What is your IOB reading? You might just need some more juice.
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Thanks, no iob at all and I had shut basal off at work for 20 minutes at least. I had eaten right before going there.
This is also a trend because the past week or so my blood sugar is just crashing all of the time and I don’t know what is going on. I had set my basal rates a little higher just a tiny bit for some hours when I had all of that problem with the cartridges and I was heading to dka and I needed to get it down and had done injections.
I don’t remember what the original settings were now and I’m wondering if I should lower them back down and just use the temp rates like I do.
I started a brand new insulin vial then which is not close to or at expiration. I wonder if it could be that? I also cut the lawn to clean up a bunch of leaves yesterday and that can affect me too, but the thing is it was happening before that too but it always responded while today it’s just not responding.
I have baqsimi but really don’t want to use it. That could make me vomit etc. and irritate my nose and I have been having terrible reflux and laringitis for 2-3 weeks now.
I remember someone who is type one here, in Australia, once saying her blood sugar crashed so badly and she couldn’t get it up and she had to be in the hospital for a week. I hope that’s not gonna happen to me.
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Sounds like maybe a combination of activity and the higher basal rate?? I hope your blood sugar gets in range soon!
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Thanks. I lowered what I thought were the higher rates but just by .2 hopefully that will help. Then I just started eating without bolusing anything… I ate a snack of cheese and crackers and two little aperatif glasses of juice…then I ate my regular dinner and when I saw it had come up on fingerstick to 104, 75 on dex, I bolused what I would normally bolus and ate the rest.
I’m at 96 now so something is still going on obviously, but 96 is better than 56 and the way I felt before so maybe I had a need for proteins etc.
Normally the 30 g of juice that I drank at work should’ve gotten me to at least 150 in a couple of hours if I don’t raise the basal. And eating a snack with 15 g of juice and then my normal dinner and still bolusing the same amount should not get me at 96 with no rise from eating.
As I was sitting there wondering am I going to have to use baqsimi or go to the hospital or something I started thinking maybe I am undergoing a miracle and I’m being cured and I thought to myself well if I pass out and almost die now and it turns out I don’t need insulin anymore it will be worth it.
I also changed the inset and I was a bit concerned when I took the old one out because it looked like maybe the tip had broken off. But when I compared it to a new one which I used under a Magnifier they didn’t look significantly different… the old one did look duller I guess from having been inserted probably and being used for 2- three days.
Anyway for now I feel better I’m going to try to only increase the basal when I sleep very slightly and see what happens. I woke up at 61 yesterday so it was not that bad. I had eaten a snack and then increased the basil as usual but I don’t remember what I increased it to.
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Happy to hear you’re a bit better and had to laugh at your comment (above) because I’m pretty sure we have ALL had those thoughts at times. “Hmm my sugar has been inexplicably good for hours! Maybe I’m cured!” I actually think that that kind of optimism is healthy. We can continue to live with this challenging burden, buoyed by a little hope now and then.
I bet it was a total combo: lower carbs, more activity & a bit more insulin. One thing I’ve noticed is just like high glucose makes me relatively insulin resistance, low glucose makes me much more insulin sensitive. The exact backwards of how we would like it to be.
This is the definition of an “unstable system”
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Thanks 
Yes. But it was not that my blood sugar was inexplicably good it was inexplicably crashing no matter how much juice I drank to stabilize it so that would make me think what I said that maybe I didn’t need insulin anymore. Being released from the non stop torture of this disease would be the happiest day of my life.
I was also shutting my basal off. So my thoughts were as frightening as this was it would be worth it if I was indeed not going to need insulin anymore and that was the reason why this was happening. I have not had anything like this happen before I think it’s kind of a rare occurrence actually. I’ve had many instances where I had a lot of insulin on board and was having a bad low and then did not respond but nothing like this before. This happened to me frequently when I was on MDI with a long acting insulin which was very dangerous for me because I was not able to treat lows with iob due to having the long acting insulin in my system.
It is still not really stabilized because it continued to drop after the dinner but not as badly. I did not raise the basil as much after my snack before I slept and it was better when I woke up but it is still in the crashing mode so to speak. I also checked how much basil I have been using for the last few days and it has been about three units less than I would normally use due to me reducing temp rates I guess so none of this really makes sense.
Hi meee…
I have this problem a lot. It’s infuriating! You do every thing you’ve been told to do and nothing seems to work! You can’t get it up and keep it up (pun intended)!
I’ve talked to my endo about this and she has told me several times (so it’ll eventually stick in) that I need to do something I didn’t see you talking about in your post or in any of the replies.
She says that eating only or mostly carbs or sugar, like juice, milk, or even tablets, might not be enough. She says I need to eat protein also. She has explained several times (and I still don’t quite get it, so don’t flame me, responders, if this doesn’t make sense to you; I’m just reporting what I heard my endo tell me), that protein has some effect on how well the sugar/carbs I eat raises my BG. She says without some protein along with sugar/carbs, etc., my BG may climb a bit but it won’t stay up! So I’ll have to wash rinse repeat over and over and over, and eventually, hours later (usually at 2 am!) I’ll be off the chart high!
She asked me what I eat for a snack when I’m low. I said a snack cracker pack and 8 oz. milk. She instantly said “that’s not enough protein.” She suggested a better snack might be an apple or crackers with gobs of peanut butter, not just the tiny bit in a peanut butter snack cracker pack. She also suggested a glucerna protein shake. It’s low in carbs but high in protein.
Maybe discuss this with your endo. Get his/her suggestions for a combo of sugar/carbs plus protein to “lock in” the sugar/carbs (my endo’s phrase).
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Thanks
I often eat some protein when I’m having a low after I drink some juice. I will eat some almond flour crackers, peanut butter or cheese etc. I did mention that in my post that before eating dinner, I ate a snack of cheese and crackers, drank two more shots of juice and then I ate my entire dinner and bolused the same amount I would normally for the dinner, so this was a really unusual situation for me…my blood sugar has not gone anything over low 90s for hours now and it was in 50s for hours… it dropped to 40s while I was sitting in bed reading before I got up yesterday. And I did not have my high basal rate while sleeping.
Also my basal consumption has dropped by almost 3 units, which is a lot for me.
I kind of figured out the protein thing on my own at some point in time. My CDE had told me the glucose tabs are the best if you’re having a really bad low and that does hold true for me if I’m on a really fast dropping love with iob, or whatever it’s only juice and glucose tabs and then shutting off basal for as long as needed.
I never discuss any of this stuff with my endo, well almost never anyway. It’s usually a waste of time. They have no clue what it’s like living with this disease and we are all very individual in the way we respond anyway. CDE has a child with type 1 so she knows more but again, no one knows how things work for me and it is never the same.
I am still on the low trend and I’m not sure what’s going on- dropped back to 66 already so I’m going to have a snack and go for a walk and see if that helps sometimes exercise can actually raise my blood sugar kind of crazy but this is a crazy disease for sure. Walking, not lifting weights etc.
It’s never been that bad that I had to leave work due to a low. I usually just drink the juice or whatever and that’s it. So I’m going to be taking glucose tabs and smarties and juice for a while. I noticed I had bought some new juice that has less sugar but it has some sugar and Monk fruit in it and it just was not raising my blood sugar at all, so I bought a bottle of another type of juice that also has lower sugar but which reliably raises my blood sugar. It made no difference though. I am more than 2/3 of the way through that bottle already after three or four days only. Cde said don’t drink apple juice because the pectin slows down the sugar. I once ate a regular size snickers bar for a bad low and it worked, lol, years ago.
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Well the information these days, which has now been proven as fact is that the low blood sugars cause serious heart damage, like heart attacks in your sleep type thing. So you should try to avoid the lows as best you can. I noticed too the difference between the finger stick and the dexcom being about 20 also. They call that a normal range.
If you WANT your BG to drop after a meal bolus, then eat cheese or peanut butter beforehand. Neither of those is good as a before-meal snack. They delay carb absorption.
They are ok as part of a balanced meal with enough fiber protein and liquid to help the carbs get past the fat.
I don’t go low often, but when I am getting low I don’t worry about going high. Low is life threatening, high isn’t. I don’t wonder why I’m low. I treat the low.
On a pump I’d suspend sasal delivery, check IOB and calculate the carb correction. Then I’d stick test. On MDI I just stick test and estimate the carb correction.
I don’t rely on food to raise me up. I use sugar, preferably the glucose tablets that I font.leave the house without. I know how my body reacts to 10g of tabs. For me it’s enough to offset 1 unit of insulin or raise my BG 30mg/dL. ie my carb correction is 1:3 g /mg/dL.
If I need to delay a meal when away from home, I carry granola bars that are a balance of fat protein and 24 g of carbs that take an hour to raise my BG gradually by 50mg/dL over an hour, 75 over 3 hours.
(It took a while to find ones I don’t enjoy eating. )
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I don’t know if this is a type1 vs type 2 thing, but eating fat before carbs makes my sugars go crazy high.
I was always taught to mix them to get a more stable glucose trend but it just never worked out.
I eat a lot of natural carbs like corn potatoes and very little fat.
It’s made a difference in my sugars and it’s sustainable for me.
I was a year on low carb, and my sugars were also very good, but it wasn’t something I could maintain for the long run.
Fat causes insulin resistance even in type1 s. So when you are eating fat and you are low, it’s more difficult for your body to switch gears when you eat carbs, so you can have stubborn lows. That would happen to me a lot on low carb.
I found carb gels are the best defense to stubborn lows.
I too eat very little fat and lots of plant based healthy carbs. Please see Masteringdiabetes.org
I have been following this way of eating for 6 yrs. I followed the Bernstein diet for 11 yrs and ended up with heart stents, dangerously low blood pressure which made me pass out, and severe migraines. When I stopped eating 30 carbs daily and went to approximately 275 carbs daily, I never passed out again and my migraines disappeared.
I now take less insulin than when I was low carbing. I take a total of 15 1/2 units of insulin now. When low carbing I got down to 17 units. Previously I took 40 units for a good part of my life. I used to not be able to eat even 1/2 of an apple without my glucose level going high and now I can eat all kinds of fruit. I used to have very high insulin resistance, and now it is quite low.
I also no longer worry much about my arteries, since my LDL is down to 70 without a statin. I was looking at some old medical records yesterday and realized that my LDL was well over 200 when low carbing. Eating 30 carbs daily was a horrible choice for me.
Many type 2’s who follow the Mastering Diabetes founder’s eating advice, no longer need insulin or diabetic meds. As long as they follow a low fat plant based diet, they no longer have diabetes. It is such a healthy alternative to low carbing.
Alc 4.6 (I do take B12, which lowers the A1c) My TIR is excellent. I rarely have a glucose reading over 150.
Marilyn
Type 1 dx 1959
Sorry, I saw Timothy’s post and posted because of his comments. If this reply would be better somewhere else, please move it. Maybe I should have started this as a new topic, since I am so certain it could help many fellow diabetics both type 1 and 2.
It is a way of eating that one has to stick to, but I have never felt healthier in my life. For the first time, I am convinced that I will be able to live a long and healthy life. I will be 72 in January and will soon mark 64 yrs of living with diabetes.
Wow, I wasn’t aware of this. I tend to have a fair number of lows, though usually recover quickly. Do you have any links discussing lows causing serious heart damage? I’d really like to read more on this! Thanks!
Here’s a reliable article:
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Thank you, @SophieCat! I wonder if accumulated hypos cause damage to the heart as well. My belief is that accumulated hypos do cause long term damage to the brain, but that is just something that I assume, not factual! Of course, during the hypo, my brain certainly isn’t working properly!! 
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Potaoes and corn aren’t low carb and both have high glycemic indexes, and your concepts of mixing, and how digestion and the stomach function aren’t complete.
You also are discounting the roles of chewing and fiber in the digestion of proteins and fats. Many people don’t chew food enough and don’t get enough fiber in their meals and eat too quickly. Bite, gulp and wash things down with water isn’t how how the human body is designed to eat. We aren’t like dogs with short bowels that discard a large amount of the animal protein we eat.
Eating a mix of fatty food, portein and cabohydrates is like spooning in cake ingredients - lumps of butter, cracked eggs, sugar, flour vanilla and liquid - into a bowl. When making a cake, The liquid will be soaked up by the sugar quickly slowerby flour and it takes times and mixing to spread out the ingredients evenly.
But the stomach isn’t a simple bowl or one with with a drain like a toilet with an unrestricted entrace leading in and a tunne leading out. It has two tunnels and have “doors”. The exit door passes small particles and liquids.
Mixing sugar and fat in water and acid, the “surface” surface will dissove quickly. Like a toilet, if there is a large blob of stuff in the bowl, the exit can be blocked.
It takes time for the acid to break down the fat and protein. Acid in the stomach breaks down its content until until can pass through the exit door. Fiber never disssolves, it holds onto water to improve digestion in the stomach and helps move everything through the exit and the colon.
If you get a persistent high after a higher fat meal, it’s because:
- Some of the simpler carbs get dissolved, passed into the intestine and metabolized faster than the insulin can act.
- Once above 180mg/dL insulin resistance starts taking effect and the correction factor starts changing non-linearly, making the insulin lkess effective.
- A portion of the protein gets converted to carbs .
- Fat, fiber and protein show down the movement long of sticky carbohydrates enough that the pre-meal insulin bolus runs out.
- The bacteria in the colon continue break down the protein and fat to glucose and amino acids.
Like most studies and article isn’t a complete picture and is distorted by media and misinterpretation. Statistically, heart damage can be preceded by hypoglycemia. That’s an association not causation. There are similar associations with infections, malnutrition, starvation, dehydration and trauma. (There is a stronger association with poverty. )
Hypoglycemia is not unique to PWD. It’s an abnormal condition where some organs like the brain are starved for the energy they need to function. And it NEVER happens chronically without a simultaneous lack of other organ degradation and failures and the the lack of nutrients such as water, minerals, vitamins and amino acids.
A PWD is not a simple glucose consuming machine. The machine needs glucose as fuel and as a building component. It also needs animo acids, minerals and lots of water to replace the cells that are constantly dying - like blood cells and to maintain ones that can’t be replaced like some mature brain and nerve cells.
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Thanks, this makes sense. I’m pretty sure hypos do damage to the brain!) I just didn’t know they were doing damage to other organs.
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I follow a very complex diet of veggies and even some high carb veggies. I also eat a lot of beans and chick peas, which are really Beans.
Fat really does cause insulin resistance, it doesn’t mean it’s the only way to go, but it works well for me, where I eat far more carbs and yet I use less insulin
That all comes from eating low fat
I’ve been at this 35 years, I’ve tried every way of eating. I was on Atkinson for the better part of a year, I changed to eat anything I wanted, and I’ve done restrictive dieting
Low fat high carb iWorks for me and I get a lot more fiber than most people do
I’m all for doing what works, and everybody reacts a little differently
But more importantly everyone tolerates different diets and ways of eating differently
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