How many of you take a shot and adjust insulin depending on the carbs in your meal?
And how many adjust your carbs to a fixed amount of insulin?
I suppose if you want to lose or maintain weight the second would be the way to go, my problem is I seem to be doing a lot of corrections. Whether it be more insulin or more glucose tabs
I adjust my insulin to my carbs, but follow a similar pattern from day to day (30 grams at breakfast, 45-60 at lunch and dinner).
If you are findings that you are high after meals, will your blood sugars come back to normal after 4 hours? If not, then you probably need more insulin to cover the carbohydrates that you are eating. Also, some of us have better success taking the insulin a bit earlier. Try waiting 5-15 minutes after the injection before eating, but check your blood sugar every 5 minutes to see how quickly it is dropping.
Actually it is the opposite, you would gain weight if you were trying to eat more carbs to match a set dose. Sounds like maybe you need to re-compute your Insulin:Carb ratios so you are more accurately covering your carbs with insulin and end up in target range more often than not.
yeah, what she said - I have to alter Eric’s insulin : carb ratio every few months because he insists on growing all the time, but my understanding is that it shouldn’t be quite so variable for adults. Although even adults gain weight, and if you gain weight, you need more insulin per carb because the more “you” there is, the more insulin you need, so that’s a consideration right there.
I dose according to carbs. I don’t eat to feed the insulin with a fixed dose.
Like Kristin, I eat a set amount of carbs per meal. Makes it a lot easier.
To learn your I:C (insulin:carb) ratio, start out with no insulin on board, other than your basal. Eat something that you’re very sure of the carb count. Start at something with 15 carbs, not a huge meal. Take a reading. Take your meal insulin 15 minutes before you eat. Test two hours after. If your before & after reading are pretty close (without going way high or low), then you’ve got the right dose. Doctors start patients off on a 1:15 ratio & adjust from there up or down. Best to do this for several days at the same time with the same number of carbs & write it down to see patterns. Not hard.
Timing of injecting 15 minutes before eating is a general guideline. You need to play around to see what works for you.
Also, people tend to have different ratios based on time of day. Most people are most carb sensitive/insulin resistant in the morning. Your ratio for breakfast may be lower than for other meals. Afternoon, when we’re more active, usually has a higher ratio. Dinner tends to also be a time when ratio is lower.
So, start by testing I:C ratio with one meal & adjusting insulin from there. Then, move on to the other meals.
If you’re low or high between meals, it’s the basal insulin. Raise or lower by only 1 unit at a time & keep that dose for 3 days to get a good idea of what’s happening. Making wild changes won’t give you a handle on what to do.
These are great books:
Think Like a Pancreas: A Practical Guide to Managing Diabetes with Insulin
By Gary Scheiner
Using Insulin, Everything You Need for Success With Insulin By John Walsh
I do both. I have a set scale to start and I eat more or less the same every day. If I go out and decide to eat a higher than usual carb meal I adjust with more insulin. If I’m going to exercise, I adjust down.
Donald, I take insulin according to the carb grams. I have never adjusted my carbs to a fixed amount of insulin - even when I was given a dose to take by the MD right at the beginning. I refused both the set amount he said and the grams of carbs the nutritionist said.
I determined what 1 gram would do to my blood sugar and carried on from there, along with all the weight changes. I made my own algorithms.
Corrections can be minimized as one knows what that one gram of carb does to oneself’s BG, providing one is not changing weight or having illness/inflammatory/stress problems! And with those, one does corrections, the sooner the better.
Of course I adhere to all this with tongue in cheek as I think of the Dreamfield’s spaghetti I ate last night - 84 one to two hours later. 194 at 3.5 hours later!
Leo,
I had the same experience with Dreamfield’s & it seems this is the reaction many T1s have. I’d have been better off eating regular pasta.
Ditto! Regular pasta is more predictable for me.
Me too.
I was going to tell you to read those two books, but Gerri beat me to it. You will be amazed how much less frustrating diabetes is when you acutally understand thngs you didn’t before. I had no idea how to “Think Like a Pancreas” before, and that book changed my life after being type 1 for over 25 years.
Also, with the bad allergies people are having, if you have allergies, those may be raising your bg one day, and not bothering it the next.
Thanks
I have requested" think like a pancreas" for a fathers day gift
insulin to carbs and you should aim to get BGL in normal range 2 hours post prandial, any longer and it will play a role in conributing to A1c levels. - below 7.8 at 2 hrs after a meal
I adjust the bolus insulin, either by shot or pump, to match the expected carbs in the meal. It is hard to get it exactly right so I frequently end up making corrections when I test 2 hours post prandial. It is better to err on the high side than the low side to avoid eating to the insulin, which can cause weight gain.
Actually, I could use a little weight gain right now.
Thanks for your response it is especially nice to hear from a fellow San Diegan. I am sorry you got D at a young age I was 20 when I got it 28 years ago. Take care
Most times I count my carbs and then bolus insulin. Other times I might take a fixed amount of insulin and adjust my carbs to fit the insulin expecially if I’m weight watching.