Low levels

Hi all. I’ve been type 1 now for nearly a year. Am taking 8 units of slow lantus at night. And am only having around 2 maybe 3 units of novo rapid with my evening meal. Normally when my sugars drop to around 4 or 5 I get light headed so I know I need sugar.but lately they have been dropping to 4 or sometimes even 3 and I’m not having the lightheaded feeling that normally warns me. Any ideas please. As I’m a little worried I might just go low and not notice. Regards alan.

If you have frequent lows you will lose some of the ability to recognize them. The solution to that is to limit the amount of lows you do have. By the way, 5 (90) and even 4 (72) are not lows. But you may experience them as such if you've run high for awhile.90 is a perfect blood sugar and even 72 only bares watching if you still have bolus insulin on board. Neither need to be treated.

If you do in fact go low somewhat often (some say under 70, others under 60) note when you are low. If it is within 2-3 hours after eating you need to adjust your I:C ratio to take less insulin for the carbs you're eating. If it is before meals or quite awhile after, at night or in the morning you might try reducing your basal (Lantus) by one unit or try splitting it into two doses.

Do you have the book Using Insulin by John Walsh? it helps with all of this.

Tha

Thanks Zoe. Did speak to my diabetic nurse and she told me to reduce my lantus by one unit at night and same how that goes .my levels are generally good apart from the last week or so but must admit I did go off the rails abit,and my levels were high .not heard of the book but will look it up.
Regards alan

Hi Sulky
do you mean your bloodsugar is dropping to 4 or 5? Because that is not considered low.
a low bloodsugar is below 4, or that is at least how my doc defines it.
so you should be fine with bg of 4 or 5.

Hello swisschocolate.
Wasn’t to worried about levels being 4 or 5" it’s that before I was noticing when they were getting around that level. My levels are normally around 5 or 7’ so when it went to 4 I would start sweating and know it was dropping.now I’m not getting that feeling and was just worried that I might not notice when they go down to to low.