Do any other pump users have a very low basal rate? Recently due to an illness where I could not eat I have been testing my basal (i.e. skipping a meal and seeing if my basal keeps me stable) and I found that my blood sugars still seem to drop quite a bit at .5 (that's Point 5) units per hour. I use Humalog in my pump. Does anyone else use such low basal rates? I don't even exercise regularly and still my basal seems to need to be lowered. Heaven forbid I was more active.
Yes. During sleep my own basal is even lower than your .5. The ability to have one or more basal rates to keep us stable is one of the many advantages of pumps. If you decide to get more active, hopefully your pump can handle a decrease in the rate.
I've been pumping since July, also have GP so my Basal settings are pretty low for someone my age or at least that's what I am told. I usually run around 0.37 for most of my time blocks and for 3 of them 0.40. My blood sugars run around 120 for the most part except for meals and snacks. I am quite please with the pump so far and my A1c shows it. Before the pump I was always in the high 9's I am now 6.2
Yes, my basal goes down to 0.30 at certain times, the max setting is 0.55, so my usual daily total is about 10.5.
Yeah, I don't think that's particularly unusual. At one point I had a portion of the day where I only needed 0.6/hr, but I eventually needed to kick it up to 0.7. Most of my basal periods are in the 0.75 - 0.8 range. Ultimately you need what you need.
Currently running 0.375/hr all the time, reduce or suspend prior to exercise.
Thanks I never thought of suspending it.
That's one of the best parts of being on a pump! Instead of being stuck with your Lantus on board, you can tweak the basal, via a preset pattern or in response to lows, highs, activity, etc. For example, if your BG starts dropping because you injected too much bolus, just suspend basal.
The smallest dose you can program my Medtronic 723 for is 0.025 units.
If you wish, you can program this as your basil rate. You can also program a basil rate of 0 units if there is a repeating period during the day when you don't want your pump delivering any insulin.
I noticed that .8 seemed like too much but .775 wasn't quite enough so about a year or so ago I tried alternating 1/2 hour increments to "fake" (although I guess it's real enough?) a .7875U basal rate for most of the day. I fine tuned it a bit, keeping a morning basal bump and trimming out the .8s around dinner time when it seems I didn't need them and it shaved a bit off my A1C so I was happy to have tried it. When I adjust a basal rate for temp basal, I have it set up to do %ages, 7-13-50-60-150 for exercising or 200% to "correct" highs a bit more smoothly than bolus corrections.
I think TSlims might have .01U adustments but am not 100% sure...
My basal is .45 units most of the day and runs about .5 overnight.
My basal rate runs from 0.4 to 1.1 units per hour. The 0.4 rate runs for the last three hours of the day. Recently I've feathered back that period to as low as 0.2 units per hour.
My pump can deliver as little as 0.025 units per hour but I like to keep my basal rate in increments of 0.1 units for the sake of simple analysis. My brain has a harder time wrapping itself around basals out to three digits to the right of the decimal point,
I have been pumping for 6 years. My basal rates range from O.275-0.350 units/hour depending on time of day. I usually set my pump at 50% for cardio, and sometimes at 150% at times when I am running high.
Hi Roger, yes, so far mine is from .3 to .35 and I have frequently done various increased temp rates and suspended to 0 for lows for a while which is really great for me because it helps treat the low and makes the need for sugar lower. I haven't done 0% for exercise yet, just reductions, I'm a bit worried about that because I have patterns of spiking up rapidly with no basal. My pump, the tandem, has very low dosing capacities, the smallest is .05 for a bolus, the pump once tried to do a .02 correction when I entered a bg but then said it was too small a bolus and I figured out .05 was the smallest possible. You should ask your pump manufacturer what is the smallest dose possible if you can't figure it out. I would definitely try experimenting with reducing and increasing your basals when needed.
As others said, 0.5 is not that low a basal rate. I don’t have any hourly rates that are that high. Mine are mostly around .35 per hour. I’ve had Type 1 for over 38 years.
My lowest rate is 0.05u/hr for about 4 hours in the late afternoon/early evening. It's only 0.05 b/c I can't set a 0 basal rate on my pod. There are afternoons where I have to eat w/o bolusing to keep from dropping low b/c of it.