By “strategy”, do you mean why does changing your profile for Weight and Total Insulin Dose make Control IQ work better for you? Excellent questions. I’m anxious to hear the answers too.
Generally, we all make changes to everything as diabetes is different for everyone. If the package on a cup of coffee says zero grams of carbs but we take a unit of insulin for a cup of coffee because it always makes our BG go up then we are simply making adjustments because we know taking no carbs will make out BG go up. I see this as the same thing.
The weight and Total Daily are the measurements used by Control-IQ to determine your max basal.
If it thinks you weigh more, and use more, it will potentially give more basal when your BG is going over target.
Btw, one thing I have found to be an issue with ME, the pump will show IOB, but no TIME for it.
And when I do manual corrections, this is an important factor for how I calculate corrections to how I want them.
IOB, good to know. Currently, my Medtronic pump does the same, only gives units left and I am always going to bolus history to find out when I put the bolus in.
I understand that your point that by increasing weight you might increase the max basal.
In Bolus IQ mode, how does it determine the max basal to give?
This is because Tandem fixed the iob at 5 hours. I think they forgot to program a countdown timer in the algorithm. Not having a descending time frame of insulin on board is bizarre, I haven’t run into any real issues with it. I would very much like to have the option to change the 5 hour limit to 2 hours because I use Fiasp, which doesn’t last much longer than 2 hours with me.
It uses the basal rates in your profiles. The daily dose in the CIQ menu, is on top of your daily dose that your basal profile is using. It’s a safety net, the pump won’t give you more insulin than you need. From reading about what others have said around the web, everyone has had to increase their basal rates by a large amount to get the system working correctly.
I see it on my Medtronic pump but I understand it being a real problem with Fiasp. But say I am at 300. I assume Control IQ gives me a 60% correction bolus but if my profile has a basal of 1.0 units, would that be the max basal they would give?
I have been following this and other threads regarding Control IQ. Many are gaming the system right from the start. I don’t wish to say they are right or wrong to do so, but I would like to hear from some people who have been using the system as it is. If it’s not too soon to know, how has it affected your A1C and your Time In Range? Does it need less time spent on the “feed and care” of your diabetes? I have been trying to decide whether I wish to take the plunge from Basal IQ to Control IQ and time spent minding the diabetes is a big thing with me. Anyone?
For a fair answer, I was ‘gaming the system’ on Basal-IQ as well (that got my A1c from 5.8 to 5.2).
And to be honest, those of us who are gaming it are the ones who are already at lower BG numbers to start with.
I honestly think that this system will do wonders for other less strict T1s, or those who are much higher on the A1c scale.
To me the term “gaming the system” has a negative connotation. I think we will all make adjustments but I would also like to hear from people about what happened when they first used it. Their experiences (and the adjustment they might make) would probably be different from the next person. So I am equally interested in why did the adjustments work?
It can ramp up the basal to a MAX, that max is what is based on weight and TDD. It has a max of 15 units per hour anyway though.
Thing is, this is more important for those of us running in Sleep Mode to keep the lowest possible numbers.
For those letting it run in normal mode, where it will give boluses as well, I think the correction factor is the biggest thing to adjust for a better outcome.
Agree. Those who wish to use Control IQ to improve their AIC, TIR might not make any adjustments. So us talking about making adjustments simply to maintain a low AIC, high TIR could be confusing.
You asked for an opinion of using it for the first time. I told you, I hated it. I had control-iq before anyone here, I entered sleep mode full time as a last ditch effort before giving up on CIQ.
You’re absolutely right. Even people with moderately good control are going to be frustrated a bit. Control-iq would have been amazing if they would have combined the features of sleep mode into the normal mode with correction bolus. That would have been fantastic.
