Do you count carbs? How do you know your carb ratio in order to calculate insulin dose?
I’ve been calculating my insulin dose daily while counting carbs. If my blood glucose is OK five hours after the last Novolog™ injection, then I divide grams of carbohydrate by the carb ratio (CR). Example for planning to consume 49 grams with CR=7: dose = 49 / 7 = 7 units.
I adjust the dose up or down versus a target blood glucose level: 120 mg/dL as read from my CGM. If higher I increase the dose, and if lower, I decrease the dose.
Are you a non-pumper? Are you using a similar method?
Yes lucky for me I have a pump, and my carb ratio was always 20 even when I was in Injections.
This made my math easy.
I approached it from the back end. I learned to count carbs in units of 20 So if I was eating 40 carbs I took 2 units.
Yours is 7 and that’s nearly half of the 15 they teach you to count carbs in. Also called exchanges way back when.
So you can just double that and get very close.
So generally small banana is 15. So you need 2 units. I take 0.75.
At some point you will be able to look at a plate of food and come up with a number of units you will need.
I am going to post a carb counting test here. I’ll put some plates of food and see how everyone does.
Then I’ll post my results.
I’ll set that up tonight. It’s good practice and also fun
Yes, I do the same. My I:C (Insulin to carb ratio) is 1:3 so where you divide by 7, I divide by 3. Then I make adjustments with additional small dose periodically during the day to flatline between 80-100 mg/dL based on my Dexcom G6 CGM. I only use fast acting Humalog no other insulins and am MDI, not a pumper.
I’ve been using food labels or else ‘myfitnesspal.com’ for carbohydrate contents. Timothy, I look forward to your test!
I’ve experienced changing carb ratios; have you? I was forewarned about one extreme case: I had to take prednisone to tame a case of poison oak. My carbohydrate ratio went from 7 to 3.5.
Do you use ‘insulin sensitivity factor’ (ISF)? It would be the decrease in blood glucose after taking 1 unit of insulin.
I try to recalculate my carb ratio with every dose, based on how much I undershoot or overshoot my target.
CJ114, I’m likewise an MDI, also using Lantus.
I stopped using Lantus a few years back as it was causing my daily nighttime lows. I complained to my endo about that issue for years and she would hear none of it until I got a CGM, proved it out, ditched the Lantus as well as nighttime lows.
