I’ve been on an insulin pump for the last 3 months and absolutely love it! While my daytime basals seem perfect my overnight rates need major tweaking. My morning fastings are always between 250-300. Last night for instance i went to bed at 130, this morning I woke up at 299. Because of a very busy schedule I regularly go to bed at 10pm about 2 - 2.5 hours after dinner, but I’m usually in the 120-150 range. I’ve done overnight basal tests and my bs seems to be slowly rising between 1am and 5:30am (I wake up for work at 5:30am). My problem is that I’ve tried increasing my overnight basal and I end up waking up even higher (300-400 range). I’ve also tried decreasing my overnight basal, thinking I may be rebounding from a low, but again I ended up higher (300-400 range). So obviously I’m missing something here. I’d appreciate any advice.
I agree with Dave.Pumping Insulin is a must if you are on the pump.You normally raise your basal 1-1 1/2 hours before the rise.Do you have the Dawn Phenomenon?My basal rate increases at 3 am and slowly goes down til 1100am.You should take your blood sugar every hour through the night so you know exactly what it’s doing every hour.Lost sleep is a small sacrifice in order to wake up with normal blood sugars and stay even throughout the night.Usually it take about 2 or 3 night basal tests to find a pattern.Good Luck.
As mentioned, buy the book, continue the testing and continue adjusting, it will hit the sweet spot eventually.
One issue that comes to mind, though, is whether you are sleeping on the pump in such a way as to kink the tubing or otherwise restrict the flow of insulin. Just a though.
Thank you all for your responses! I do own pumping insulin but I was just hoping i could figure out my basal rates without an overnight fasting basal test. I sucked it up last night and had dinner very early and tested every hour and finally woke up in an acceptable range
Dave - I was nervous about it but I did increase my 2am - 7am setting significatly to about 1.2U/hr. and it worked! Thank you so much! Hopefully I’ll get a repeat performance tonight.
What kind of pump are you using? I’ve been on the MiniMed 522 since January 29. Even though I’m 75 miles away from my endo, he keeps track of my readings as I upload through CareLink. Most of the early adjustments prescribed by him were to my nightime basals. For the first three weeks, he had me testing at midnight & 3am. Bummer! Just kidding. ;-^)
