Tresiba

Hi, does anyone know about the long acting insulin tresiba? I’m after double taking and don’t know how to treat it?

I’m not sure what double-taking means, but there’s quite a lot of good information and experience on the forum about Tresiba. Here are some discussions to start, you can also search the forum.

https://forum.tudiabetes.org/t/switching-from-lantus-to-levemir2
https://forum.tudiabetes.org/t/tresiba-basal-insulin1
https://forum.tudiabetes.org/t/levemir-split-or-a-single-dose1
https://forum.tudiabetes.org/t/insulin-degludec-tresiba

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I had to think about it but I’m thinking “double taking” meant mistakenly taking a second dose of Tresiba. If that’s true, I hope you have successfully dealt with it. Checking your blood sugar frequently while keeping fast-acting glucose at hand is a good plan.

While this forum is great for learning the details of diabetes, it’s very nature prevents it from responding well to emergencies. I hope you’re OK! @truenorth has listed some of the many TuD posts about Tresiba. I encourage you to read them when you can.

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let us know what happened @meganrundle2000? How are you doing?

Hope you are doing ok if you took a double dose? I take Tresiba and have since Nov 2016. I thought I took a double dose one day as I forgot whether I had taken it that morning. Now I write down the date each day in the morning when I take Tresiba. It has helped a lot and I started writing down the date on Feb 1. I also am marking the pens as they last 6 weeks out of the fridge once opened. I am writing the date on the pen the day I take it out of the fridge.

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Taking a double dose of Tresiba is less of a problem than taking a double dose of faster basal insulins. A simple way of understanding how this will affect you is to figure that Tresiba lasts 42 hours and Tresiba has an onset of 3-4 hours and a peak at 3-9 hours. For the next 24 hours or so you will have an accumulated dose of basal insulin that is about 1/3 higher than normal (this is because your basal dose essentially stacks over two days). After 24 hours or so your accumulated dose will verge towards a normal dose.

What this means is that you need to be aware that you may need to compensate for about a 1/3 higher basal dose over the next 24 hours. You can do this by correcting with glucose or by reducing mealtime doses. On your second day you could skip your dose but that would likely to cause you to go high at the end of the 24 hours in the second day. A better solution would be to take something like a half or quarter dose later in the day than normal and then resume a regular schedule. Because Tresiba lasts so long, the general rule is to keep the average total basal dose the same by skipping or dropping subsequent basal doses.

Tresiba explicitly says that you can inject a missed injection later, just do it during waking hours. The instructions say not to do two injections closer than 8 hours. The implications is that you can miss the timing of your Tresiba dose by 16 hours without a worry. So a double dose. Tresiba is actually much more forgiving than other basal insulins.

As always, check with your doctor or CDE although understand they may not have a particularly great answer.

ps And yes I use Tresiba.

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