Progress "erased" overnight, driving me crazy!

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1

I am really going crazy with this happening every month...

Two weeks of GREAT blood sugars, losing weight, and then it ALL gets erased over the course of three or four days.

Yep. Gained three pounds overnight, insulin doses have gone up by 50-75%, STILL having crazy highs. Still eating lower carb, still exercising, still same routine, but everything has totally changed.

I am pretty sure it is hormones, but looking back through my blog, this pattern is continuous. Good control for a few weeks, then horrible, then good, then horrible. It's not that I'm changing anything, and it's not minor "tweaks" that I need to make ... It's MAJOR changes every month.

I don't understand how I could be taking ~30-35u a day and have an average of 6.0 (110 mg/dl) a week ago.

This week? Taking 60-65u and have an average of 10.4 (187 mg/dl).

I have kept my routine the same, still exercising daily, still eating the same foods, not stressed or sick, tried changing out the infusion set and insulin and correcting with a pen. It's just my body, none of the above.

It IS the time when I would expect hormones to be causing this type of thing. I have come to the conclusion that it is really NOT anything I am "doing" to make myself go this much "off track" every few weeks. Unless I go live in a hospital I can't get my life to be any more "consistent" than it is right now (and it's pretty consistent, same routine and foods almost every day).

I just don't know what I'm supposed to do when one or two weeks out of every month is ruined because of non-stop highs and requiring ridiculous amounts of insulin, followed by non-stop lows once "the drop" hits and all the doses need to be lowered overnight. I have like one or two normal weeks out of every four.

No wonder I have so much trouble.

It just drives me CRAZY! I really don't know what else I can do. At least ranting here makes me feel a bit better. :)

2

3 weeks of good control VS 1 week of crazy numbers => that must be the menstrual cycle. I would recommend to remember the day of your period. After a while you will know that x days after your period you need to increase your basal. This way you can develop some kind of counter strategy to compensate for the hormonally induced insensitivity to insulin. Not an easy situation of trial and error.

3

Oh, Jen, I hear you. Hormones have been my tormentors for most of my life. Our bodies do love to throw us curve balls, don't they?

I know that they prescribe metformin to women with PCOS. I wonder if there is an oral med you could take that would increase your insulin sensitivity just during Hell Week?

4

My weight goes up and down, I figure the moon is like on the other side of the planet adding it's gravitational field to mine. When I took steroids for a cough that wouldn't go away for 3 weeks, I just cranked my basal to 200% and it worked ok so it might be worth considering a "mega" adjustment to see what would happen?

5

I'm there with you Jen, having precisely the same issues.
Basically two weeks out of four are impossible(either extreme high or unrelenting lows) and the only thing I can explain it with is hormones. I'm dying to figure out something that will help (tried Metformin, tried antidepressants), thinking I might try out taking birth control continuously (skipping the usual placebo doses), my Dr. isn't too keen on it but i'm getting desperate and not entirely sure it really will work.
I don't know why but sometimes just knowing it's not something in your "control" helps, maybe just alleviating some of the guilt we tend to feel when things aren't running well.

6

A few years ago I was ranting to my (non-diabetic) friend about this problem and she did suggest I go on birth control just so it would make things totally predictable for me and lessen the craziness. I didn't want to do that, though. Right now my period is regular but it's not predictable. I know some people can be like, "Oh, I'll be getting my period tomorrow afternoon!" I'm more like, "I'll be getting my period sometime this week ..." I do track it, though, just seems to vary by a couple of days either way every month. I think this is part of my difficulty because it makes it hard to anticipate the changes, and if I don't jump on them immediately I find myself fighting highs for the next week to week and a half. Rare times in the past I'm jacked up all my settings within the first day, and those months seem to be okay (a bit higher than usual, but not getting 14s and 15s out of nowhere).

It also doesn't help that during the time my numbers go all out of whack is also the time I get hungrier AND am more emotionally volatile in general. Certainly doesn't help my mindset any!

7

Another thing that I'd suggest would be to look outside of your (or maybe next to?) endocrine system at numbers like resting heart rate and BP and see if you are making progress in those areas with all of the exercise? It may not make you feel better about the scale but maybe it'll provide a morale boost?

8

This household is another 6.0er that is losing weight. Here, it was sickness that set the HgbA1C back. But 3 lbs ? Come-on. The body varies in weight from water daily. Do you know how much the body (the cells and their various components) is made up of water? We fluctuate like that all the time, we take weight changed like that in stride. We are not on a carb counting diet, though it is a diet that is very low GI, and Insulin index. The blood glucose numbers is another thing. We get emotional lots of the time about those, but hey we are goal oriented.

9

I weigh myself every morning. Sometimes I see a big surge. But things go up and down. In the end, all that matters is the average. I don't care whether you have a bad few days, in the end your progress will shine through.

10

Hormonal fluctuations are a royal pain, Jen. I feel for you and am thankful that I'm mostly past all of that. All I can suggest is that you might consider weighing yourself once a month, or every couple of weeks, rather than let the scale drive you nuts. If you're following your low-carb plan, it will work whether you're watching the scale like a hawk or not. And during those times when you BG runs high, make sure you're drinking lots of water!

11

Diabetes is tricky enough without hormones making it go kerflooie, I had no idea the effect is so extreme. Sympathies.

12

@Shawnmarie: That is pretty mcuh exactly the pattern I follow in terms of my blood sugars.

@acidrock23: My blood pressure recently has been awesome! That is one thing I'm very happy about. My resting HR is all over the place due to this SVT thing, so that's not the best measure (often it will be like 72, but then sometimes it will be 92 or 122 ...).

@Relentless-a-matic: I am not a 6er, I would love it if I were. Actually, I'm hoping to someday hit the low 6s. That would make me very happy. For now I am stuck in the 7s. Also, I weigh myself in the morning before eating/drinking to minimize the whole water variability thing. Otherwise, thoughout the day, my weight can vary a lot. But in the morning it's usually pretty consistent. I usually weigh myself every few days, so I weighed myself and saw I had "gained" two pounds, so weighed myself again this morning and saw I had "gained" three more. Combined with waking up with a 13.7 (247 mg/dl) blood sugar and that fact that it takes me like two months to lose five pounds in the first place, it really ticked me off!

@bsc: I am hoping you are right. The fact that I have kept up this long without going completely off track will hopefully pay off at some point.

@Ann: I usually weigh myself every few days, in the morning before I've had anything to eat/drink. I used to do it every day but it drove me nuts. I think I might back off a bit more, but I do find if I don't weigh myself for a long time I sort of "forget" that I'm working on weight as a goal ... So I think doing it somewhat often is useful.

13

Oh Jen I really feel for you. Hormones are so tough to deal with. I'm going through the exact same thing right now except that I'm trying to get to the other side of menopause so I never know when or if I will have a period. I just wish I could be pro-active instead of re-active. I spent most of this weekend high even without eating and feeling lousy...then this morning had a beautiful 3 hour flatline.

I wish I could help but knowing I'm not alone helps me a tiny bit.