hello everyone
has anyone ever dealt with that?
school started 2.5 weeks ago, i'm in my last year of high school, and ever since school start i've been low.
especially during the evenings, but actually all over the day. i have been basal-testing, reducing my basal rate up to 50%!!!! and am still drinking up to 4 juice boxes a day (which is one quart of orange juice) and eating lots of other foods to cure lows.
i know that i am more active during school, but cutting basal rate into half!!! thats a lot!! the last year i had basal rates up to 26 units in 24 hrs, now i'm down to 15.
any inputs would be appreciated what i could do i am sick of hypos!
everyone have a great and hypo free day!!
In my junior high years I was taking upwards of 80 units a day.
By the time I was in second year of college I was down to circa 35 units a day.
So yes after the growth hormones slow down and let up, insulin needs really do drop.
I remember being (in my first year of college before I had really dropped my insulin doses) being so frustrated with repeated lows that I would sometimes wonder if I actually needed any insulin at all. Not taking insulin for a meal and ending up with bg's in the 300's quickly disproved that theory :-). But I did eventually figure out my basals and they have been fairly steady just requiring minor tweaks since then.
That is no fun. Small 0.05u adjustments to my basal rates make a big difference, so you might want to make smaller adjustments now that you have already cut down to 15u. If you are less active on weekends, maybe you will need a slightly higher basal pattern for weekends.
I went through something similar a year ago when I changed to a low carb diet. I cut my total daily dose of insulin in half. At the time I was charting my food, insulin (both basal and bolus), and exercise. I used a one sheet per day chart. It really helped to give me some perspective as I kept cutting back on my basal rates. It may seem like a real bother to do this but it will probably get you on track more quickly with less trial and error. As if you don't already have enough activity to fill your hours!
I wasn't diagnosed until I was 30 so I have no experience with growth hormones and diabetes. Tim's comment makes sense to me.
Good luck.
thanks for your responses. i had contact with my doctor, he said school start could be the cause. he told me to monitor as closely as i already have and said we will take further action if it continues, as it could be celiac or thyroid or other digestive problems, so we might do a full blood screening, but not now.
Look the short answer is you have WAAAAY too much insulin in the mix. Once in a while, ok fine... we all go low. But every single day....a whole bunch of times per day that's TOO MUCH insulin in the equation period.
Are you using any kind of standard ratio for food/number correction? Id look at that as well. The background is obviously too much. But given the lows are happening all over the map, sounds like the ooops factor needs serious scrutiny too.
You don't care how it happens, as long as ALL the lows stop, immediately! Much easier game to slowly, gently increase your background doses to bring the ceiling number down, than ever to be terrified to death of lows that keep trying to rip your legs off ala "diabetic jaws" every couple hours.
Its entirely avoidable. Stop taking that much background insulin and be real ultra conservative with the short acting coverage. High beats the heck outta low every time !!!!!!!
I reduced my basal a few days ago, now im high at night but sink towards the morning and still low at noon. But that is something i can work with! Thanks for your inputs. I decided to leave my correction and I:C ratio out of this game for now, as the lows also happened whilst basal testing.