Good afternoon!

[Scarlett91]

Can anyone point me in the right direction for some information and good reads on learning to understand blood sugar reading and how different food make levels go up. I have no idea about the whole mmol. I've only been diabetic for 2 months. Thank you

 

[himtoo]

hi there @Scarlett91
a good book to start with is "Think Like A Pancreas"
this covers all aspects of our lovely life

 

[Scarlett91]

hi there @Scarlett91
a good book to start with is "Think Like A Pancreas"
this covers all aspects of our lovely life

Thank you. Does this cover all types of diabetes? I'm type 1.

 

[himtoo]

Thank you. Does this cover all types of diabetes? I'm type 1.

hi there lovely scarlett -- yes it is specifically aimed at us T1D's

it is quite scary and daunting and loads to get your head round in the first few months
just try to be kind to yourself and know you can only learn , make changes and see results in real time -- so it does take time

all the best
himtoo
x

 

[morpheus123]

Think like a pancreas is the best place to start. It's a great tool for understanding what is going on and also what can happen.

Also the forums are a fountain of knowledge and experience.

Mike

 

[Scarlett91]

Think like a pancreas is the best place to start. It's a great tool for understanding what is going on and also what can happen.

Also the forums are a fountain of knowledge and experience.

Mike

Thanks Mike I've just bought the book!
Scarlett

 

[Scott-C]

Hi, @Scarlett91 , I'd second @himtoo ,s recommendation of Think...

Another good one is Sugar Surfing by Stephen Ponder. It's aimed more at people using cgm and libre. There's some interesting stuff going on at the moment about Libre being on the nhs, remains to be seen how that'll pan out, but if you're able to afford 100 quid per month in the meantime, it's well worth the money, because you can see in real time how your bg is moving and do something about it before you go out if range. Strips alone just don't do that.

Breakthrough... by Thea Cooper is also good for keeping perspective. Will tell you **** all about managing T1 but it explains the discovery of insulin and makes me feel **** lucky I'm T1 now and not back then in the 1920's.

One thing to bear in mind is that T1 is inherently unpredictable. Sure, carb counting etc is a good starting point which improves your odds, but as soon as you inject insulin and eat food, there's a million and one other bodily chemical/biological processes going on which might throw your careful calculations out.

Don't get dispirited about that, it's just the way it works. You've not failed if you end up too low or high. It might be because you've miscalced, easy to do given the number of variables involved, but it might also be because some random bodily processes which you can't measure have gotten in the way. So just do what you need to do to bring bg back up or down, reflect on why it might have happened, save that info in the back of your mind to build what eventually becomes native T1 "intuition" , "gut feel", or "winging it", and move on.

You're newly dx'd, you've maybe got some honeymoon period going on (the beta cells in the Islets of Langherans in your pancreas, which make insulin, decide to have one last go at making insulin), so I'm not going to suggest anything contrary to what your docs say.

But, after a while, you might be asked whether you want to go on a DAFNE course.

The very general rules you'll learn there are that:

1 unit of insulin will drop you by 2 to 3 on your meter.

10 grams of carbs will raise you by 2 to 3 on your meter.

On the face of it, you would, therefore, have 1 u for each 10g to keep stable. But those are just general rules. Good starting points for newbies, but after you spend a bit of time messing about with strips or cgm, you might find that different numbers work better for you. Me, personally, 10 g will raise me by about 2.5, but I need 1.5 u for each 10g. Less or more for other people, you need to experiment to find out what's right for you.

If it all gets too much, google Eva Saxl. She fled Eastern Europe during the war because the Nazis wanted to kill her because she was Jewish, ended up in Shanghai, only to find that the Japanese invasion cut off insulin supplies. Did she curl up and die? Did she f*ck. She and her husband Victor figured out a way of making insulin from scratch from water buffalo pancreases in a make shift basement lab. Whenever I'm feeling down about T1, I try to imagine Eva turning up and slapping me around the head a bit - "oy vey, oy vey, you just need to go to the chemist or eat some sugar, I had to make it from scratch during a war!".

 

[Scarlett91]

Hi, @Scarlett91 , I'd second @himtoo ,s recommendation of Think...

Another good one is Sugar Surfing by Stephen Ponder. It's aimed more at people using cgm and libre. There's some interesting stuff going on at the moment about Libre being on the nhs, remains to be seen how that'll pan out, but if you're able to afford 100 quid per month in the meantime, it's well worth the money, because you can see in real time how your bg is moving and do something about it before you go out if range. Strips alone just don't do that.

Breakthrough... by Thea Cooper is also good for keeping perspective. Will tell you **** all about managing T1 but it explains the discovery of insulin and makes me feel **** lucky I'm T1 now and not back then in the 1920's.

One thing to bear in mind is that T1 is inherently unpredictable. Sure, carb counting etc is a good starting point which improves your odds, but as soon as you inject insulin and eat food, there's a million and one other bodily chemical/biological processes going on which might throw your careful calculations out.

Don't get dispirited about that, it's just the way it works. You've not failed if you end up too low or high. It might be because you've miscalced, easy to do given the number of variables involved, but it might also be because some random bodily processes which you can't measure have gotten in the way. So just do what you need to do to bring bg back up or down, reflect on why it might have happened, save that info in the back of your mind to build what eventually becomes native T1 "intuition" , "gut feel", or "winging it", and move on.

You're newly dx'd, you've maybe got some honeymoon period going on (the beta cells in the Islets of Langherans in your pancreas, which make insulin, decide to have one last go at making insulin), so I'm not going to suggest anything contrary to what your docs say.

But, after a while, you might be asked whether you want to go on a DAFNE course.

The very general rules you'll learn there are that:

1 unit of insulin will drop you by 2 to 3 on your meter.

10 grams of carbs will raise you by 2 to 3 on your meter.

On the face of it, you would, therefore, have 1 u for each 10g to keep stable. But those are just general rules. Good starting points for newbies, but after you spend a bit of time messing about with strips or cgm, you might find that different numbers work better for you. Me, personally, 10 g will raise me by about 2.5, but I need 1.5 u for each 10g. Less or more for other people, you need to experiment to find out what's right for you.

If it all gets too much, google Eva Saxl. She fled Eastern Europe during the war because the Nazis wanted to kill her because she was Jewish, ended up in Shanghai, only to find that the Japanese invasion cut off insulin supplies. Did she curl up and die? Did she f*ck. She and her husband Victor figured out a way of making insulin from scratch from water buffalo pancreases in a make shift basement lab. Whenever I'm feeling down about T1, I try to imagine Eva turning up and slapping me around the head a bit - "oy vey, oy vey, you just need to go to the chemist or eat some sugar, I had to make it from scratch during a war!".

Fabulous reply! Thank you so much. I am very much still in the honey mood period and still learning day by day.


Thanks again!
Scarlett

 

[novorapidboi26]

I've recently discovered this sugar surfing term on a Facebook page and went looking to see what it is.....

Is it simply just testing regularly and correcting [taking account of IOB] at every opportunity.......?

Or is it something new, requiring further reading....? Any sources online, including ponders videos haven't really informed me...

I realise that this type of approach lends itself to a pump and CGM....but has it only just came about because of these devices.....

I ask as I was doing this for a while on injections following DAFNE, but then decided to just to control my meals and insulin timing as opposed to constantly firing in insulin and finger pricking....

 

[Scott-C]

I've recently discovered this sugar surfing term on a Facebook page and went looking to see what it is.....

Is it simply just testing regularly and correcting [taking account of IOB] at every opportunity.......?

Or is it something new, requiring further reading....? Any sources online, including ponders videos haven't really informed me...

I realise that this type of approach lends itself to a pump and CGM....but has it only just came about because of these devices.....

I ask as I was doing this for a while on injections following DAFNE, but then decided to just to control my meals and insulin timing as opposed to constantly firing in insulin and finger pricking....

It's from Stephen Ponder's book Sugar Surfing.

He's an endo is also T1 and has been using cgm for years.

It's just really the notion that with cgm it's pretty easy to glance at the monitor every now and then and if there's suggestions that it's starting to go out of line in a way that would eventually take you out of range, keep a closer eye on it for the next 15 to 20 minutes or so, if the suggestion is confirmed, then think about a small nudge, say 1 or 2u to pin it from going higher, or 5g to stop it going lower.

As you know, getting an already high bg back down into range can take time and often a bit of rage bolusing (I think we're both in Scotland? Should that be "radge" bolusing?!).

But with sugar surfing, you're spotting the developing high and pinning it in tracks with 1 or 2u before it gets anywhere near out of range so it never actually becomes a problem.

Same with developing lows. I've had lots of occasions where if I'd been on strips alone, I wouldn't have spotted the hypo until it happened, and then I'm maybe going to accidentaly overtreat to get out of it, then I end up on a high/low rollercoaster.

But with sugar surfing, I can see me starting to edge down below 5, if it looks like it's going to carry on to 4ish, it's amazing what only 3 or 4g will do to just nudge back up to say 5.5. So, I've managed to avoid what would probably have been a hypo without any fuss.

It's just really about being able to gently steer bg to keep in line instead of using a sledgehammer to sort after it's out of range.

Sure, it requires a bit more attention, but after just being on strips for 29 years, the novelty value of getting a heads up from cgm is strong and I don't mind doing it. Maybe it'll wear off after a while, who knows.

Might mean an extra couple of injections a day, but I've never been bothered about injections.

There's a lot of politics going on at the moment about libre on the nhs. I'm hoping the funders will realise that making this sort of thing available will have longer term benefits in reducing the cost of treating complications through us having a tool which massively improves the odds of staying in range.

 

[novorapidboi26]

It's from Stephen Ponder's book Sugar Surfing.

He's an endo is also T1 and has been using cgm for years.

It's just really the notion that with cgm it's pretty easy to glance at the monitor every now and then and if there's suggestions that it's starting to go out of line in a way that would eventually take you out of range, keep a closer eye on it for the next 15 to 20 minutes or so, if the suggestion is confirmed, then think about a small nudge, say 1 or 2u to pin it from going higher, or 5g to stop it going lower.

As you know, getting an already high bg back down into range can take time and often a bit of rage bolusing (I think we're both in Scotland? Should that be "radge" bolusing?!).

But with sugar surfing, you're spotting the developing high and pinning it in tracks with 1 or 2u before it gets anywhere near out of range so it never actually becomes a problem.

Same with developing lows. I've had lots of occasions where if I'd been on strips alone, I wouldn't have spotted the hypo until it happened, and then I'm maybe going to accidentaly overtreat to get out of it, then I end up on a high/low rollercoaster.

But with sugar surfing, I can see me starting to edge down below 5, if it looks like it's going to carry on to 4ish, it's amazing what only 3 or 4g will do to just nudge back up to say 5.5. So, I've managed to avoid what would probably have been a hypo without any fuss.

It's just really about being able to gently steer bg to keep in line instead of using a sledgehammer to sort after it's out of range.

Sure, it requires a bit more attention, but after just being on strips for 29 years, the novelty value of getting a heads up from cgm is strong and I don't mind doing it. Maybe it'll wear off after a while, who knows.

Might mean an extra couple of injections a day, but I've never been bothered about injections.

There's a lot of politics going on at the moment about libre on the nhs. I'm hoping the funders will realise that making this sort of thing available will have longer term benefits in reducing the cost of treating complications through us having a tool which massively improves the odds of staying in range.

Thanks for the detailed description,.....

Its great actually that this style of approach is being made a bit more main stream now that cgm and libre are becoming more regularly occurring.....its good to get people and more importantly, recently diagnosed people, in to this mind set early on....

I've not dipped my toe in the Libre pool just yet, mainly as I am already in the sugar surfing mind set already in a way.....but how accurate is its prediction of whether your going to go out of range or into a hypo...?

as you say, you would need to get the intel early on to make the small adjustment as it doesn't happen straight away.....

 

[Scott-C]

but how accurate is its prediction of whether your going to go out of range or into a hypo...?

Accuracy depends on a lot of things. Some libre sensors can be a bit ropey - most of mine run about 1 below blood, so that's easy enough for me to make an adjustment in my head. But with the blucon gadget I mentioned in that other thread you were looking at I can do a bg test then tell the app that reading so it knows for definite what my bg us and it'll then make mote sense of the readings it's getting from the sensor. Provided I calibrate it once or twice a day like that, results are surprisingly accurate. It woke me up a few weeks ago at 4am as it had gone below my 4.3 low alert. The app showed it at 4.2, checked blood and it was 4.3! First couple of weeks I had it, I tested a lot more than usual just to get an idea of whether I trusted it - vast
majority of readings were only like 0.2 or 0.4 out. Trust it enough now to bolus from it. So, yeah, if it tells me I'm heading towards a hypo, I'll pay attention to that, and I can always fall back on a bg test if there's anything "iffy" about it.

 

[Mrsrobbieswan]

My husband is type 1. I would urge you to just let it flow and ask away on this fabulous forum.