Has anyone experienced this. My son was diagnosed almost two years ago and has been on the pump for about 9 months, in the past five days or so his insulin needs keep going down. He goes low, I make adjustments to his pump then next thing I know he goes low again. He goes up when he eats and then about 3 hours later he plummets and through the night. I have slowly been decreasing his bolus then basal in small increments. He has done this before but for only a brief period till I would have to change everything back, never this long I feel like I am playing catch up, probably about the time I get things right he will start having highs and then we will be increasing insulin.
Yes, this happened to my niece shortly before being diagnosed with Hashimotos thyroiditis. First, not sure of how long, but I think a month of highs, then lows and she was using fifty percent of her prior basal. She had other symptoms for thyroid which were not caught at first. When her yearly labs came in, it was discovered she had a thyroid problem and she was put on Synthroid. Then her basal needs went back to normal. I would get his thyroid checked. However, in general, insulin adjustments are a part of D. There can be quite a bit of variability which can sometimes have a long term pattern you may be able to discern. With weight gain, growth, the basals will go high for growth spurt, then the baseline basal may be higher most of the time.
Not sure if this is relevant or not… but whenever my 5-year-old son goes through a growth spurt… we get stubbornly HIGH readings added onto a vivacious appetite (which makes it harder to control high readings!).
He had labs done a few months ago and thyroid function was fine. However both me and his father are hypothyroid. He hasn’t had a lot of highs lately his last A1C was best we had. I will keep an eye on this. Thank You!
This may be obvious… but has he been a lot more active? Sports, etc… that can really bring the numbers down for hours at a time. Also growth spurts mess with the insulin requirement but usually the opposite way… My son was dx about 15 months ago and is 14. Still on MDI. I hear adolescence is the hardest time to regulate but he has about a 7.2 a1c so not horrible…
Hi there,
I have type 1 and two type 1 one kids. How old is your child? We are currently reducing our 6 year olds pump rates as she is lower all the time with know other contributing factors(activity, diet, etc) I do agree with the periods of growth, as those hormones create an increase in resistance, hence the reason people warn you about adolescence and diabetes.
Hope this helps
Cheers http://www.three2treat.com
My son is 9, activity not an issue if anything he is getting less right now. His diet hasn’t changed, he could be going thru a growth spirt or hormones but like everyone says that usually causes resistance not sensitivity to the insulin. I don’t know how you manage three type 1s in the same household. I guess we do what we must at least that is what I have found out , poking my child with needles mutliple times a day is something I never thought I could do. Blessings!
Also, looking on the bright side, it’s possible these periods of unexplained lows is evidence the body is still producing beta cells but they are killed off immediately by the autoimmune process, as some researchers believe. Not sure if this is true, but I hope so.
this is interesting. At the beginning of the month our son had a growth spurt and we had to keep increasing his insulinl. Finally we had all the settings on his pump adjusted perfectly then things were great for a week or 2 then he started having more and more lows. I cut the daytime basal back to where it was than the insulin to carb ratios and he still went low (though after the second day of the ratio adjustment he was fine but it has only been 2 days) then i had to cut back his overnight basal… we are almost back to where we were before the growth spurt. This has been most perplexing as needing more insulin over time as he grows makes perfect sense (he is only 6 so we anticipate this happening many more times), but needing less? I don’t get it. maybe the thing about the beta cells is true as i kept saying that it is almost like his pancreas is producing insulin. strange anyway. I am just waiting for the numbers to go back up and have to change everything all over again:P
I know exactly how you feel adjust and chase highs, adjust and chase lows. I am really dreading the teen years although I think we are getting a touch of puberty already at 9. I have heard and I the Dr. didn’t agree that diabetics mature earlier. Anyway after all the lows and adjusting he has been having some highs as wel,l so I have been increasing in some areas on the pump. I was hoping he would just go back to his old settings since we had the best control he had seen since diagnosis in the weeks before all this happened. Now I begin to wonder if we will ever see"control" like that again.
All I can say is that I’m amazed at the changes in the amount of insulin my daughter (11) has needed over time. She’s at her higest useage right now, but in the summer I couldn’t crank it down fast enough. Maybe there’s a “why” maybe it’s just “the way things are.” I just keep an eye on it and make regular adjustment in her numbers.