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Food spikes

MushyPeaBrain

MushyPeaBrain

Well-Known Member
Messages
647
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Pump
I'm using the Libre alongside my pump and have been very interested to watch trends in my BG. Some foods cause my BG to spike from pre meal around 4 to 9-12!! I hate being this high and feel rough - how can I best avoid this on a pump please?

Also I've been doing my usual set rotation making my way along my hips round to almost my back. The current set seems to be spot on for basal but spiking much more with every meal. Is this due to poor absorption? Are there any other reasons?
 
see your nurse to do your insulin carb ratio again, to work out what you need for your carbs, from what I've read here, it even changes for breakfast and tea, as well as where you inject it
 
dose well in advance, and by that I mean 10 minutes minimum.............you can then increase that time, use some trial and error to find a happy medium........

different types of foods/combination of foods will get absorbed at different speeds so over time you should build up a memory database of what groups of foods my need more time before injecting in order to match up the insulin profile with the digestion......

the pump has the dual wave function also but I would think if you could reduce the spike just with a timing change first then that's better than trying to work out a split dose percentage and duration..........:)
 
I pre bolus as often as possible. Breakfast that's a minimum for 30 mins before the meal as it's usually high GI. lunch and dinner about 15 minutes if I'm at home.

It's trial and error for how much you need to pre bolus.

I also use the dual and square wave functions for some food
 
Thanks for the replies :)

Have been bolusing a good 10 minutes before to try and improve spikes and it's not helping much. Maybe I need to do even earlier then? I have different carb ratios already in place for different times of the day too.

The weird thing is I always have the same thing for breakfast - one 20g crumpet. I wasn't getting any spikes with this until the latest cannula. This morning the spike was horrendous. In fact my soup at lunch (22g) spiked as well from 4 to 8.5 very quickly. So think part of it must be the site?

What is considered an acceptable spike as well?
 
I always bolus 30 mins before I eat unless it's a fatty meal then I bolus the same time as I eat. This way I find it eliminates the spikes for me.
 
Because I always eat around the same time day in day out, I have just got a slightly raised basal rate that hour after I eat...
So like tonight I had cheese salad (some quince jelly!!) and berries and cream then 1hour after food I was 5.0 and two hours after I've just done and its 5.2 and it stays static.
If for some odd reason I don't eat say for basal testing the little increase in basal does not knock me down too much.. About 0.6 last time I tested.

Depends how boring your life is with eating though.. And whether you eat at the same time. I only do this for evening meals as I rarely eat more than twice a day my breakfast times vary enormously from 6am to noon...
 
Good suggestions here, but surely to make sense of the suggestions we need to know what type of insulin people are injecting, and maybe the type of diet they are on too.
 
Sorry.. Just assumed novo as in a pump...
 
Ah you see I have Humalog in my pump. (Or as my phone's autocorrect calls it, Bumalot.)
 
LOL Spiker!!! I'm on Novorapid. Since bolusing 20 minutes before eating I have found my spikes are not quite so bad. The libre has given me so much insight to what different foods do to my BG.
 
ImageUploadedByDCUK Forum1416313132.355546.jpg

Breakfast was 55g, bolused 45 mins ahead (with novorapid) and spike was only up to 8.6 before heading back down again (started at 5.3 I think)

It's incredible what a bit of insight can do to my pre bolusing and hence give these results!
 
However if you eat your breakfast at same day each day then you could minimise that spike even more by just a minimal 0.01 increase 2 hours before that spike.
Theres more ways to consider when skinning a cat....
 
donnellysdogs said:
However if you eat your breakfast at same day each day then you could minimise that spike even more by just a minimal 0.01 increase 2 hours before that spike.
Theres more ways to consider when skinning a cat....
Click to expand...
However if you are on MDI, then the most flexibility you might have is 0.5u in a pen or syringe, and frankly, I wouldn't want to get up 2 hours before breakfast to give myself some extra insulin....:stop: You pump user you... ;)
 
I use evrrydsy essentials cheapo porridge oats Aldi aanc using 3 small dsp in bowl topped up with boiking kettle water to judt covrr it, I calculate at 12g csrb with a tsp of plain yogurt. Bolus 15mins before eating and bg rises to 2.5mmol above target but that suits me as I dont need a snack and fall back to target level again by the yime 4hrs is up.
 
I eat berries n chia n flax seed and cream; never raise more than 0.3. ---Unless a set fails which at the moment is every other set!!!!:((
 
Spiker said:
Aargh sorry to hear that DD. :-(
Click to expand...

Pain in bum literally at the moment!! -lol.. Have tried both bum cheeks and still every other set occluding...it is a new box... Any more and I'll report. So far 3 out of 6. One of them was during the night. I stopped the alarm and went back to sleep. Levels stayed good and didn't't alarm anymore. Due for a change in a while... Got to point of dreading it... Hey ho..!!
 
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