Low bg and calculating the right carb dose

[Spencer67]

My bg hit a shaky low today at 3.9, to bring it up again i always take in too much and over compensate then have to do a reading and use more bolus as a correctional.

I figured i'd try a calculated guess as 15g of carb, i thought, should take me up approx 1mmol/l
so i measured approx 30g hoping i would get to about 5/6, but i went up to 9.4mmo/l, guess my estimations are a bit scew.

How are you calculating the correct amount of carb to take to raise it back to a normal level?

 

[Spencer67]

On hindsight 30g is taking me up approx 4/5mmol, so 7.5g is increasing my bg 1mmol/l, would 15g have been enough or is that still too much?

 

[himtoo]

hi @Spencer67
first thing is to decide your choices of "poison" -LOL

i use rowntree's fruit pastilles -- 6 pastilles = 15 grams carb
others i have seen on here use jelly babies
lucozade do dextrose tablets ( nice in orange flavour IMHO )

then when you hit that low decide how to proceed
for me if it was at a meal time i wouldn't treat the low - i would just eat the meal
any other time i would treat the hypo - test 15 minutes later and then decide next course of action.

 

[Spencer67]

hi @Spencer67
first thing is to decide your choices of "poison" -LOL

i use rowntree's fruit pastilles -- 6 pastilles = 15 grams carb
others i have seen on here use jelly babies
lucozade do dextrose tablets ( nice in orange flavour IMHO )

then when you hit that low decide how to proceed
for me if it was at a meal time i wouldn't treat the low - i would just eat the meal
any other time i would treat the hypo - test 15 minutes later and then decide next course of action.

Thanks, it was lemon fudge cake , easy to measure on my scales and it had the grams of carb listed on it so i could work it out. I try to stay away from the cakes tho usually.

 

[LucySW]

Depends how serious you feel it is. Most of the time, for me 6g = 2 dextrosols will get me up by 1.5 mmol. But you just have to do it by trial and error. You're you, and you'll also react differently in different circs. Sometimes you'll just feel it's more serious. But tho I know we're usually told to use 15g, I would try 6 or 9 and see.

BTW you know that it takes 15-20 minutes for the rise in BG to come thro to fingersticks? Because we are testing the small, capillary blood vessels. If someone could test our deep vein blood it would be different, but we can't.

So armed with Lucozade or dextrosols, why not try it out?

 

[Spiker]

I would not recommend cake as primary treatment for a hypo.

 

[Spiker]

It's impossible to predict how many carbs are needed to correct a hypo, even for the same person, because you never know how much excess insulin is active and how fast your BG is being driven down. You never know how far down it would go if left untreated.

Hence the advice is to take a small fixed number of carbs, say 12-20g, wait 5-10 minutes and retest. Repeat until your BG is rising. Monitor after that.

 

[Spencer67]

I would not recommend cake as primary treatment for a hypo.

No your quite right, i wouldn't endorse it either.

 

[stratospheric]

For me its 15g = 3mmol
I found that for me the best what works is tesco value small orange carton juice. 1 carton and it's all good in 10min

 

[LucySW]

It's fascinating isn't it. For each of us there's a particular, very specific dynamic. But we all have learnt so much about our particular Diabolio. We are fantastic, say I!

 

[Juicyj]

From my experience, I only treat it as a hypo if below 3.5, above that I would eat 10g of carb, such as small bag of crisps/biscuit, or my meal as normal with a slightly reduced QA, this is what they told us on DAFNE, however below 3.5 then I either take glucogel which I get on prescription and keep on me everywhere or 3 jelly babies, then re-test after 10 mins. Jelly babies are dangerous though as they get eaten up by other people, funnily enough no one ever takes my glucogel though !!

Depends on the hypo tho, some are slightly worse than others if you know what I mean..

 

[kevinfitzgerald]

Yeah we are all slightly different, some sweeter than others!

I swear by carrying a small bottle of lucozade around with me. If blood glucose is around the 3 mark or if I feel low regardless, a quarter of a bottle will bring me back up to a decent level within about ten minutes. I always prefer to take a liquid rather than a solid due to the speed it gets into the system.

I don't ever go too over board on how many or how little carbs I have eaten or need to take to raise sugars. I just keep all as simple as possible. Sugars low I take quarter small lucozade. If about to have a carby meal I will normally give 2/3 units more novorapid than I think I need and if needed I'll have a couple of plain biscuits a little later.

I find it difficult to manage my diabetes if I try to be precise so I stopped that ages ago. Now I just give myself a little more insulin I think I need for every meal I eat and strangely it works.

I do know my illness though inside out through years of having it and obviously this helps. If new I would advise to be as precise as possible.

Each to their own but when low it's lucozade for me. It's saved my life on many occasions in my early days.

KevFitz