Tandem x2 iq off - no bg on bolus screen

New pump. Have had 1 training session.
I have decided to turn of Control IQ. I went to BOLUS. It is making me enter BG although a CGM is connected. BG shows on home screen. Is there something else I need to do? thanx

My guess is they just didn’t add that feature, since most get pump to use CIQ 24x7.

You could contact Tandem and suggest they add it.

If you don’t use Control IQ, your BG does not automatically populate. You must enter it manually. I am rarely using Control IQ these days and I miss the BG being entered for me. It seems to me it would be an easy software fix but I have never bothered contacting Tandem about it.

Thanks for your response. It seems ridiculous since it shows on the home screen! Doesn’t make sense. At the moment, this pump doesn’t seem right for me, but I’m stuck with it. Thanks for your help. :slight_smile:

I encourage you to report this to Tandem, as the pump can get updates. If they know it is important to some, they may consider adding it.

It’s just reverting back to “dumb pump” mode. BG never auto-populated before Control-IQ, so turning off Control-IQ removes all the upgrades that came with it

It took me a couple of months to get control iq to work for me.
I had to enter settings that didn’t seem right, but now it is pretty good. I have to resist making corrections manually though. Sometimes I still do just cause I’m impatient

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I am. very curious why the Tandem control IQ does not work for you as I am on the verge of switching to that pump. Would really like to hear your reasons for turning it off. Thanks.

I think this is directed to @Laddie.

I bet that your reply was directed to me.

I have been on and off Control IQ for 2+ years. I have accepted that an average of 112-120 is acceptable. But I have better blood sugars when Control IQ is not increasing, lowering, and suspending my insulin. I mostly think that Control IQ does not allow 80-110 to be acceptable blood sugars and lowers my insulin. But my non-Control IQ days and nights show that I need that insulin.

The Control IQ stars claim that my settings are incorrect. Maybe so. But I have increased basals, lowered basals, strengthened ISF, weakened ISF.

It is common knowledge that many of us “diabetes stars” don’t improve much with commercial automated AP systems. Whether we can’t give up control or whether there is no way to improve our numbers. TBD.

I think that Control IQ is great for most people with Type 1 diabetes. Especially teens, young adults, and anyone who struggles with this frustrating disease.

My mental health these days is better with me being the captain. Plus as smart and educated as I am, I don’t understand why my basal rates work great without Control IQ and sabotage me when Control IQ is turned on. Ultimately I think the problem is that our current insulins are not fast enough to handle the ons and offs of Control IQ.

If you’re interested, here are some of my blogposts on Control IQ in the last couple of years. For sure I keep trying new things. For sure Type 1 diabetes is hard.

But I am mostly doing fine.

This is a 6-hour tracing without Control IQ. I don’t have alerts on my G6 app because they are on my Tandem pump. But these readings are all in the 90’s.

I can’t do that with Control IQ. But I would argue that my Basals are good.

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Agree. We need much shorter action insulin so that reduction/suspension can be more effective.

Long periods of zero basal lead to a high, and I try to catch it and bolus when I can. Thinking maybe a low dose basal injection (lente/lantus) might help and tempted to experiment.

I have done untethered several times with Control IQ. It helps but ultimately doesn’t solve the problem. Sometimes it is the alarm fatigue reminding me to take the Lantus injection that makes me abandon the addition of a long-acting injection.

It was directed at the original poster plus Laddie or anyone who got the Tandem and is now not using it with the Dex. That is my whole purpose in getting it. I could keep the easier Medtronic pump if I did not want the auto control. My Tandem trainer who talked with me said that folks who were impatient and did not allow the newer version to learn your sensitivities and needs would always be chasing manually and that would make it irritating to use. But then she is a rep.

The rep also said that a recent trainee had too many alarms set!! I don’t know but she actually made a lot of sense to me.

you can’t do a steady line like that with Control IQ?? I thought that was the whole point of it. This does not sound good. Sorry, does this work? @Laddie

It all depends on how you define “good”. I use Control IQ only when I sleep and while I would prefer to run a little lower, I sleep much better not having to worry about highs and lows. I have my high alarm set for 140 so I sometimes get an alarm while I sleep but not often.

I decided that life was too short to try to re-arrange all my settings, my eating patterns, etc. so that I could achieve worse control with C-IQ. Management during the day doesn’t take much effort for me - I’m probably blessed with a little bit of residual beta cell function.

Thanks, I plan to give it a try.

For the vast majority of diabetics, Control-IQ is awesome. Mostly, because to be blunt, the vast majority of diabetics aren’t very good at managing on our own. It’s a rather small percentage that has ever been able to achieve an A1c under 7 and/or 70% TIR. That’s exactly who all these automated systems were designed for, and they’re really awesome at getting that "average"diabetic into those recommended goals.

The problem is, those most vocal in this community are NOT “average” diabetics. The ones who speak up the most and try to help/inspire others are far exceeding the recommended guidelines and aiming for non-diabetic levels of control. For someone who’s already capable of achieving stellar results, all the built-in safety mechanisms of these early systems just don’t allow them to achieve the same tight control they can do without it.

But these automated systems are changing all that, and more and more people are coming out of the woodwork to share their success. People like me! Suddenly people like me get to be rock stars, too. 32 years with Type 1 and I never once saw an A1c remotely NEAR to a seven until I got my T:slim. Usually 11+. (Granted, I also was using NPH/R until I started on the pump, so that insulin change alone was valuable.) I did have an 8.1 after starting with Dexcom, but it wasn’t until Basal-IQ (just low prevention) rolled out that I saw my first one under 7. Barely, by the skin of my teeth, at 6.9. Now with Control-IQ kept in sleep mode all the time, I’ve been very consistent at 5.8 for years now. I was the very definition of “average diabetic”, and now I feel like I’m on top of my game! I eat carbs. I sure don’t count them. (everything is made from scratch and I’m not about to weigh every darn ingredient!) Every bolus is a guesstimate. And STILL, Control-IQ gets me under 6.

So don’t infer too much from those who chose to turn it off without asking yourself, “is this even relevant to me?”. If you’re also “average” and struggle for the seven, you’ll probably love Control-IQ. If you’re in the 6’s and/or high 5’s, you’ll probably notice that Control-IQ takes a lot of burden off your shoulders and smoothes your variability, but doesn’t doesn’t lower your A1c much. If you’re mid-5’s or lower, you either won’t like Control-IQ much or you’ll have to compromise a higher A1c to give control over to the system. It’s near impossible to get a an A1c under the mid-5’s with Control-IQ because it will ALWAYS reduce your basal if you’re under the 110 target, aver it’s truly difficult to spend much time under that mark.

I really hope this was a misunderstanding on your part, because this is incorrect. Control-IQ has no learning ability whatsoever. It behaves exactly as it’s programmed to behave. This is really important to understand because it’s what sets the Medtronic and Tandem systems apart. It’s the Medtronic system that tries to learn your needs and gives you very little control. For some people, that may be a good thing… Especially if they don’t have a good support team to help them get good settings. But it also leaves you at the mercy of the AI, which may or may not work for you and which may or may not be thoroughly unimpressive. Tandem on the other hand gives you much more control over how it behaves. (Though not as much control as a lot of us are hoping for in the coming updates!). Once you get it working, it’s the vastly preferred system. BUT, many people despise it in the early days, because incorrect settings really make the system work against you. It’s not until you and your medical team figure out what works that the magic happens.

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That’s pretty! Sorry, diabetes has warped my aesthetic sense of beauty.