Basal Rates

[craig81]

Hello fellow pumpers.

I've had one week on the Medtronic pump and am surprised at how quickly I've managed to get used to having it permanently attached. Keep forgetting it's there, and end up catching the tubing on daft things. Ouch! But I'm sure you've all been there and can relate. No sympathy required!

Anyhoo, at the weekend, I was giving free reign to tamper about with my basal rates. Whoop whoop! Whilst I understood about taking baby steps I hated having to put my control and basal rates largely in the care of the DSN. After 21 years of self-managing that was extremely difficult to do. Thankfully, I'm now back to piloting the ship myself, so to speak. Hopefully I won't hit any (or too many) icebergs.

However, what I'm finding is that my basal rates are going UP. I was told that there is generally a 30% decrease in basal needs once you switch to the pump because of better absorption. I've went from 12 units to 16 units basal daily. I'm okay with that, as I'm able to try and now combat the dreaded dawn phenomenon. I suspect the total now includes all the corrections I was having from gaps in the levemir coverage during the day.

Soooo, after a wee ramble, I'm curious as to what people's basal patterns look like and when you require more insulin, and when you require less. I'll go first, obviously. It would be interesting to see if we follow a similar trend.

0000 - 0.700
0300 - 0.800
0530 - 0.850
1100 - 0.500
1530 - 0.650
2030 - 0.700

 

[CarbsRok]

I have 12 basal settings they vary from 0.025 for 4 hours to 2.45 for 2 hours.
Everyone's needs are different so do what suits you and your body

 

[mrman]

0000 0.05
0200 0.20
0300 0.50
0400 0.80
0500 0.75
0600 0.80
0700 0.85
0800 0.60
0900 0.50
1000 0.25
1100 0.30
1200 0.25
1300 0.05
1600 0.10
1700 0.80
1800 0.50
2000 0.30
2100 0.10

Type 1, pumping nova rapid

 

[donnellysdogs]

1) Previously on mdi you couldn't regulate hourly..and that why you on a pump!

2) your start up dosage would prob have been set too low.. Risk of hypo's and not being given full reign to change... Big risk factors as with MDI they do not really know just how much insulin is reacting on an hourly basis.

Your basal insulin rates will rarely stay the same for much more than 3 months. Less for children...mewly diagnosed etc...

It doesn't matter what your basal rates are in total.... So long as in early days you do regular basal testing and fuly understand how long insulin reacts in your body, which hours to change and when....,

Hospitals seem to like pumpers to run on 50/50 ish. My consultant doesn't give two monkeys about ratio's with me, as she knows I am an individual who is permanently on the go physically....




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[Spiker]

I did wonder myself if the mantra "your total daily dose will drop 30% on the pump" was code for "we will use very conservative basal rates first to make sure you don't have hypos that put you off". I still don't see why a pump should lead to significantly lower doses than MDI.

Having said that, my doses also rose quickly from the initial level set at the pump clinic. And let's face it, it's safer to start insulin too low and adjust upwards, than the other way around. That's the same as how they start people on MDI.

One thing is that realised I had significantly underestimated all the insulin I was taking on MDI. All the little corrections you forget about. Then on a pump the TDD is accurately tracked for the first time, and you see what you are really using. So I am convinced that pump users do use 30% less total insulin than they *thought* they were using on MDI. Certainly true in my case.

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