I’m just exhausted by Type 1. Example: great fasting at 114. Milk for breakfast, normal and the dose works consistently. Lunch BG 198? No stress, sickness. or weirdness. Corrected. Ate 25 carbs lunch with appropriate dose. Four hours later, 187. I’ve ingested 40 carbs since wake-up. Taken four units. My “normal daily…basal and bolus” is 12. 25 carbs is a 1:15 ratio…less than two units.
Just exhausted by the constant struggle.
I think you need a real hug, best I can do is a virtual one, take care…
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Thank you.
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Hi @Sue27, I’m sorry you are going thru all this. Is it possible that your body has become resistant to the type of fast acting insulin you use? Just a thought. I hope you find a solution.
Those post-meal numbers aren’t outrageously high, though if they’re typical rather than outliers, then yes, they could be lower. Without knowing anything about what type of insulin you take or how it’s delivered, my guess would be that maybe your “appropriate dose” is no longer so appropriate.
As @Gail12 said, don’t rule out the possibility that it is the insulin itself. People do vary from individual to individual in their sensitivity. For example, Humalog does absolutely nothing for me; might as well be a placebo. All the others work fine. And it can change over time; I know several people whose insulin lost or reduced its effectiveness after a period of months or years. Body chemistry can change. Everything in physiology is potentially a moving target.
Thanks all. Just “fired” my useless Endo. Novolog has worked great. I get it, but not willing to bet that insulin is the cause. I think it’s more a carb ratio.
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I have a similar story, which has been ongoing in one form or another for the last 51 years. First, my insulin dose, activity level, food intake, and meal timing is absolutely identical every day. But for two weeks I was getting a blood sugar result of 40 at noontime, which two days ago suddenly rose to 200 at noontime, with no change in anything I was doing. So yesterday I took an additional two units of Humalog to bring down the 200, since for me, each unit brings the blood sugar down by about 40. The result was exactly as I had predicted, since by 5 PM the blood sugar was back down to 120. But then today, the same thing happened again, so I was 200 at noontime and took two units, expecting to go back down to 120, just as I did the day before, but instead within three hours I went down to 20, and came dangerously close to a hospital visit. Given the spontaneous variability of glucose levels and insulin requirements, strict blood sugar control is impossible.
I struggle too and am tired of fighting. What’s the alternative though? What works one day doesn’t always work the next day. Sometimes I feel like the insulin I inject is like water and does nothing. It’s been a long haul, 31 years.
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I will hit 55 years on Christmas day of this year. It’s been lots of years, lots of different kinds of struggles. I try really hard. I get worn down.
I am afraid of food right now. It’s like if I think about it my BG goes up. Not eating. Afraid of food. Keeping hydrated.
This, too, will pass.
what about bernstein level carbs?
Tried that also. Long term type1 has loops and spinners. Thank. Great thought.
Stumbled upon some resources yesterday…http://behavioraldiabetes.org/
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That is an excellent resource. The Institute’s founder, Bill Polonsky, is the author of Diabetes Burnout, one of the best books on the subject (maybe the best).
Cut out the carbs. Monitor 8-10X/day, take fast-acting insulin as needed. Exercise. Experiment, use trial and error. Yes it is a constant thing, so is life.
The now famous ACCORD study, done on type 2 diabetics, found that attempting to bring their A1c levels down below 7 was counterproductive and actually increased their death rate. In response to this, the New York Times published an editorial suggesting that the rigors of strict control were simply exhausting patients and damaging their health. One interesting fact here is that low blood sugar can also damage the vasculature, as a side-effect of the stress hormones it causes to be released, so both low and high blood sugar can injure the body.
Now every follow-up study on the ACCORD study solemnly warns that while trying for strict blood sugar control is bad for type 2 diabetics, of course no implications should be drawn from that for type 1 diabetics. But since blood sugar levels are supposedly the cause of damage in both groups, why are the conclusions of a study of blood sugar control strategies in one group so utterly irrelevant to blood sugar control in the other? Perhaps patients are stressing out trying to get under an A1c of 7 for nothing?
Has anyone ever bothered to assess whether the benefits of strict control in reducing complications are really outweighed by the burden of trying to keep blood sugar levels in control all the time, combined with potentially lethal hypoglycemic crises? I have only ever seen one medical journal article that raised that question, where the author asked whether the additional burden imposed on patients by strict control was really a net benefit, but he mentioned that only in passing.
I am (clearly) not a doctor but IMHO the bigger difference is not the diagnosis of T1 vs T2 but rather on insulin therapy vs not on insulin therapy.
Though in the study, 73% of patients in the intensive blood sugar control group were on insulin, so the results should transfer to type 1 patients, 100% of whom on are insulin. Accord Group, “Effects of Intensive Glucose Lowering in Type 2 Diabetes,” New England Journal of Medicine, 358, 2545-2559, June 12, 2008.
Yes it’s a lot of work and lots of days it’s a lot of work for poor results!
I regard it as a complete success if I spend the whole day and never go below 60 and don’t go above 200. That works out to an average of bg 130 which is an A1C of 6.2 which is not a bad place to be.
Your three numbers average out to a little higher but that’s OK because there’s other days where they average out a little lower.
No, I am nowhere near the flatliner superstars who can stick between 80 and 90 without ever leaving it.
But at the same time you and I have better control than 90% of diabetics.
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O.K. Lets talk about this, @Seydlitz. My Doc comes from a family where EVERYONE had type 1 and (probably) someone died due to hypo. Hypo freaks her out. Hypo does NOT worry me as much as highs, so we battle over this a lot. My best friend comes from a family with 6 type 1 diabetics out of 8 kids. In these cases, its important to recognize that families may have generations of trauma, due to early death, that impacts their perception/paradigm of the illness.
You are touching on the issue of ‘variability.’ Now, this topic has caused huge fights on this site in the past. So, I want to exercise caution in bringing it up. I can run under 7 pretty easily. However, the innate variability that I believe is inherent to my system (partially due to lifestyle) may increase epilepsy complications beyond what is reasonable, so we have decided NOT to run me much below 7.
I take the position that everyone’s system has a certain amount of variability that is inherent. This differs between individuals and for individuals over time, for instance you will see variability decrease with age and activity level. Running under 7 is not ideal for everyone, for instance, if you have trouble recovering from lows - ie. super hypoglycemic unaware and your system is highly variable, than this may not be ideal. Depends on the individual.
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