I am t1 and I take Metformin. However, as I progressed with my diabetes I found myself having to eliminate more and more foods which at the beginning did not seem to spike me as much. It could be as your pancreas is putting out less and less insulin, you are having a more sensitive reaction to foods which in the past you did not have an issue with. I do find with the Metformin it keeps me insulin sensitive and also helps with dawn phenomenon. Maybe you should ask your doctor to put you back on the Metformin and experiment and see what happens.
Your Type won't be an absolute until you have your antibody testing and c-peptide done. That is a long time they are making you wait! Can you get it sooner?
The only way to know if you are taking the right carbs for a meal is to use an I:C ratio, not a set dose.
If you start out high, you are going to just get higher after breakfast, especially eating so many carbs. When I wake up high I take a correction right away. Do you know your ISF to know how many units to correct?
I don't know that it was too much, DW.I see you said you were 4.4 (79) three hours after lunch. You should check at 2 hours because that's when your peak is. You may have come down from that peak, so that's pretty good!
Just to give an example of an I:C ratio: For me, my lunch ratio is 1:10 - 1 unit of insulin for every 10 carbs. So let's say each of your slices of bread were 15 (you would have to look at the package for the actual number). That makes 30 carbs. Assuming it was just ham, cheese, bread and your drink had no carbs, nothing else with carbs, for me that would call for 3 units. But you have to figure out your own ratio: 7 units for 30 carbs (if that's what it was) would be an I:C ratio of 1:4. So you might try an I:C ratio of say 1:5 for lunch (breakfast and dinner would be different).
That is how you figure your I:C ratio. You try one and then see if you are too high or too low and then adjust it up or down the next time until you start to come out where you want most of the time.
You really don't want to just add fruit to it to make it come out to 7 units. You want to adjust your insulin to your food not the other way around. 4.4 (79) is not too low.
It's hard to say. For me my dinner ratio is the largest, but all you can do is experiment. Always be conservative. So try the 1:10 and see how it goes a couple times If you're high, try 1:8.
If you're at 4.4, you really don't need to eat to bring yourself back up.(unless you're hungry, of course!) You say you want to be between 6 and 10, but you can be lower than that. That 79 (4.4) was fine for anytime except bedtime. Also 10 (180) is too high. Doctors love 180 but they are wrong. Ideally you want to stay under 140 (though it isn't possible always) That would be about 8 in your numbers.
Other people might say yes, on the CGM. For myself, I know myself enough to know I would be staring at it all the time and drive myself nuts; also they are not that accurate and you still have to test. They're good for telling you which way you are going. Like remember you mentioned a 79 and I said it was fine? If it was 79 and going sharply down then you might want to watch it more carefully.A CGM would tell you that.
Is there any reason you can't test during class? (Actually that would be illegal if they didn't let you) or at least on a bathroom break. Most of us are pretty good at testing on our laps so nobody notices.
i am confused, just woke up with a BG of 13.8 mmol/l. i was 11.9 when i went to bed. Do i have to add an extra 3units bolus at lunch since i woke up this high? So if i take 8 for lunch do i have to add +3, so 11 units?
it seems though i keep adding insulin units and my BG won't stabilize, i keep going high and occasional lows.
A lot of times, when I was injecting, I'd correct by shooting it into my arm and doing pushups or running up and down the stairs to make it work faster. These days I'll pump a dose and take the dog for a walk, which seems to help it along?
I'm not really able to guess that. The way to go is to find out how much 1U lowers your BG when it's flat/ stable and not much is going on, fire away, wait a couple of hours and see where you're at. I have only conceived of these things in mg/dl, rather than the mmol scale. Before I had a pump, I was clueless about dosing, carb counting, etc. although I did it sort of flying by the seat of my pants? It would probably be useful for you to check out "Think Like a Pancreas" or "Using Insulin" as those spell out the proper way to manage things scientifically. Ginger Vieira has a book called "Your Diabetes Science Experiment" that also sounds promising, although I've not read it. I can't really say if 3U will do the trick or not. It may, but it may also be too much as I consider insulin to be a "hard drug" in that if you get carried away, it can kill you or injure you severely.
No, your lunchtime bolus is not based on how you woke up. Your lunchtime bolus is based on what you are eating for lunch. So you said you think a 1:5 ratio for lunch will work for you. So if you ate 30 carbs you would take 6 units, 40 carbs 8 units, etc. But if you are high in your test right before lunch, then you should add in a correction.
To answer your questions about correcting, you should correct anytime you are too high and don't have some insulin already on board to take care of it. Also before meals. Your problem might be that you are starting out your meals high. So if you are 180 and you take 6 units for a meal of 30 carbs, you may go up the right amount, say 20 points but that takes you to 200! You need to add a correction to that mealtime bolus based on your ISF.
I find the various formulas not too useful. It's the one part of Using Insulin that I glanced at but didn't pay that much attention to. Just like I:C ratios, I believe Correction factors are best determined by trial and error, because they are based on many individual factors. Like AR suggests, when you are stable, and not lowish, try a unit of insulin (without food of course) and then see how much it lowers you in 2-3 hours. Then as you use this factor, see how successful it is, because it takes several times using a factor to see if it is accurate for you.
I actually tried the formula in the link and (after doing the conversions..lol) it came out to 1 unit lowers me 72, where my actual ISF is 1:40 during the day and 1:60 at night.
