I post on a few diabetic message boards and there is a new girl on another board, who has been having trouble with pumping, so her endo suggested taking levemir as her basal insulin and bolusing with her pump. She says it is working great for her and she has avoided the constant lows she was having.
I sometimes think since pumping that I have more lows than ever and sometimes I think it is from the constant fast acting insulin being shot into me, so perhaps her plan is the way to go. It makes sense to me.
Anyone else doing this plan? Is my thought process way off, in thinking that the constant fast acting insulin being shot into me, the reason for a lot of my lows and my afraid to move syndrome?
Hi. Over on children with diabetes homepage, if you read the articles, they have information from Dr. Edelman who is an expert on untethered pumping. You can do as you mentioned and just use pump for bolus insulin and extra corrections. You can do 80% Lantus/ 20% basal thru pump. You can do 50/50. My thought was it might be useful over the summer. Another way my niece could use untethered is to take a Lantus shot for the basal during the day. Her basals are lowest 7am thru 7pm. She could be pump free all day and hook up again at 7pm. She just happens to have a fairly flat patten from 7am to 7pm. Blood sugars climb highest 7pm thru midnight and still high 12 through 2am, then drop. So she could be free most of the day if she chose. However, she hates Lantus sting. Not sure if Levimir would work as well for her. When she heads into teen years, I believe she is going to want to take off the pump during the day.
Just need to add, that if you suffer from lows, as you know, you cannot decrease Lantus, once given. So if I were using untethered to help with lows, I would do 70 percent Lantus 30 percent basal through pump or even 50/50 so you can still give less insulin when needed.
Hi Karen,
I don’t pump but use MDI for my insulin, so I may be way off base here for you. I heard you say in another post that you are keeping tight control lately. I keep a tight control also and was seeing more lows than i had ever had before. So I started lowering my Lantus (both morning and evening) and also lowering my fast acting for each meal as well ( I am using Humalog). I only started lowering by 1 or 2 units at a time. There are some days when i add back 1 or 2 of those units also.
I hope you have been able to get into the habit of loging now. It will really help you keep all your doses and readings in mind and see if you have a good pattern. Sometimes I have used the action of loging to put off eating that extra piece of something that I really didn’t need to eat and wind up doing away with it entirely.
It is my thinking that my fast acting is more responsible for my lows than the Lantus I use for what I call my cruise control. But i only saw a better control of the lows when i eased up a little with both of them. The really nice thing about insulin is that you can make small adjustments up and down the line to see what works best for you. And it is such a nice drug to make changes with because you can see the results without having to wait a long time for them. I would give it a try. If you wind up not having taken enough, then give yourself a little more. I am sure you can find a better comfort zone in there.
