To correctly dose insulin you need to work or both your basal rate (show acting insulin dose), and your carb to insulin ratio. You also need to work out tour correct timing for dosing.
Buy or burrow the book Using Insulin or Think Like a Pancreas. They both explain how to do this.
In short:
For basal testing you need to fast and take your basal insulin and see if it keeps your blood sugar stable or if it rises. If it risers even without eating your dose needs to be increased.
Hi Jimmy,
Premixed insulin requires you to eat on a fixed schedule, and you cannot easily change your insulin dose.
Separate dosing of Lantus (long acting) and Humalog (short acting) where you inject each insulin separately (also called MDI for multi daily injections) is much more flexible. You test and adjust your basal insulin (lantus), then you dose your fast acting for each meal based on how much food / carbs/ protein you eat.
It sounds like you need a specialist that can help you with both carb counting and your insulin intake. Any changes in your insulin intake can take time to adjust. The fact that you are testing so much shows that you are trying to take care of your diabetes. Have you talked to your doctor about the highs and lows? Has your doctor talked to you about going to the pump? There are so many varibles that come into play here. I would suggest speaking to your doctor.
Carb counting is a fairly simple way of quantifying the effects that different foods with have on blood sugar levels. Because all carbohydrates (except for fiber) will convert to blood glucose, adding up the carbs in a meal or snack allows us to determine its effect on blood sugar. Those who take rapid-acting insulin at mealtimes can match the dose to the amount of carbohydrate using an "insulin-to-carb" ratio.
Hopefully you wont have to b on insulin like me but in the beginning my doctor put me on that diet until i could meet with the dietician. Its still very similar to that diet just incorporated the carb counting with it. I recently was just allowed to add fruit n my meal bc fruit can b very very tricky especially if you are on insulin. Good luck its not as hard as it seems once you get it.
Your bolus should only cover what you eat and you determine that by counting carbs. The carb/bolus ration determines how much insulin you get per carb. Your basal rate is what your body needs 24 hours a day to keep your blood glucose in line. From what you describe, it seems to me you need to adjust your basal rates. Are you using a pump? That is the best way to make this happen.
Would start out by just trying to stay calm and eat low carb food initially ; the hospital throws this crash course at you about carb counting ; what 22 year old wants to think about carb counting??? the big issue is so much bigger than this . it will soon be something that he instinctively can estimate and knows what foods will satisfy him at the time and how much insulin he needs. It is a mind boggling experience.
Hello umobile98! I'm glad you've come to the Forum in search of answers to assist your husband in taking the best care of himself possible. I hope I can provide you with some answers and I know you'll probably get lots of additional suggestions as this topic is one that concerns everyone affected by diabetes, especially at the beginning. I want to let you know that none of us here are medical professionals ~ we are parents and spouses of type 1's or type 1's themselves.
In addition after starting the pump and following a low carb diet I lost 35lbs the first year without really trying. It was merely counting the carbs I was eating and making sure the insulin dose corresponded to the food. I must admit that I did not eat a lot of carbs because my control was so much better without them. And with better control I felt so much better so that was my motivation. I hope this gives you some inspiration to try the pump. I truly believe you will be glad you did.
This can be done by carefully adjusting your insulin doses and combine with eating a low carb diet (the low carb will reduce your insulin requirements and thus also protect you from going too low or high).
I recommend the book diabetes solutions by Dr. Richard Bernstein. HE describes how to get excellent control using insulin and lwo carb diet. Even if you don't end up going as low carb as he recommends, you can still use what he teachers and a lower carb approach to get good control.
Her fasting blood sugars on our glucometer have been ranging from 87 to 169, and random readings have been ranging from 76 to 266. I have been carb counting and if I keep her total daily carb intake at 150 or less, I can control the sugars to the almost normal range. She has had a couple of times when she has been under 100, and complained about not feeling well.
You most certainly need to learn about carb counting and how food affects your blood sugar by trying different foods and then testing two hours later.
You say you are on Lantus (basal insulin). If your numbers are consistently high after eating you are likely needing to go on a basal/bolus regimen and learn how to develop an insulin: carb ratio to suit your mealtime (bolus) dose to what you eat. John Walsh's book Using Insulin is excellent.
Hello,
It is not correct that she cannot eat after the correction (the correction should have corrected for the high sugar), however, you will need to dose her insulin based on the carbs she eats for dinner.
Please follow the Drs advice.
Are you following a lower carb diet with your daughter? A high carb diet can make blood sugars very hard to control (and need lots of insulin).
If you can fairly correctly estimate your dosage of insulin, based on what you eat, you should have less swings. Further a low carb diet (less carbs means less insulin means less chance of mistakes) may also help. Fat has no impact on blood sugar. Protein has less impact than carbs. The timing of dosing relative to when you eat can also make a big difference. This is called Prebolusing.
for something sensible like a day or two of meal plans. The big thing is carbohydrate counting so get a carb book. If he takes Humalog insulin, dose would be 1 unit per 10 grams carb. If not, you must watch the simple sugars carefully. Small amounts of fruit are okay and larger amounts can be tolerated after eating protein.
It teaches you how to use and fine tune insulin doses. It also teaches you how to eat very low carb. There is a facebook group called Type1 Grit. Please look into that. Also, U-Tube "Bernstein Diabetes University". It will take effort to get this under control, but it will be possible with the right tools and knowledge.
What insulins do you take. Have you done basal and bolus testing?
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