hey y’all. so i have a question about this sufficient active insulin feature on my pump. i wear a minimed paradigm 712 and when i use the bolus wizard feature it tells me how much active insulin i have and subtracts that from the bolus. the only problem is that i think it isnt accurate. is there a way to change the settings on my pump for how long insulin is considered active in my body? (i feel like my old diabetes educator did that once, but i cant figure out how she did it!)
has anyone else encountered this?
it was really bothering so i finally decided that if i tested at two hours after eating and was high but had “sufficient insulin” and technically didnt need to correct, i would correct anyway. so far its working, but it makes me irritated cuz i feel like its a big guessing game like: how long should i wait to correct? will this make me go low? etc.
As far as the question on how to change the length of time it considers insulin active for: On my pump (MM 722) , I choose the following menu options: Utilities / Bolus / Bolus Wizard Setup / Edit Settings, then scroll down to Active Ins Time and change that to the number of hours you want. Hope it’s the same or close on your model. Mine only used to be set for 3 hours, but I’ve changed it to 4 and I think that’s helped for me.
However, I have tried to read about how it calculates Insulin on Board, and I swear it confuses the hell out of me. Something like, insulin bolused for food doesn’t get calculated in, only insulin bolused to correct? What about manual boluses then… And I understand it’s calculated differently for different pump companies. Supposedly one way is supposed to avoid stacking insulin doses, but makes it harder to correct or something like that? If anyone is willing to try explaining that, I would love to read it.
I think they added the ability to change IOB/active insulin time on the X15 or X22 models. All I know is that those of us with the x12s can’t do it.
I basically figure that insulin is in my system for about four hours. When I do my post meal check at 2 hours, if I think I need a correction based on the results, I look back at how much I bolused, go back into the bolus wizard, see what the correction would be, ignore the active insulin they say, and instead do the math in my head (1/2 the original bolus), and correct or not based on that.
Totally a pain, but no other way to do it until I can afford an upgrade!
