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Treating low BS when you've had a big meal beforehand

P

pinewood

Well-Known Member
Messages
792
Location
London
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
I had an uncharacteristicly large and fatty meal out last night and had a rubbish night's sleep as a result of it. I did a 5km run right before eating so I was conscious of injecting too much NovoRapid so had just 1.5 units beforehand. My levels were 4.6 before dinner and after the run. After dinner my levels were creeping up and hit 6.5, so I had another 1 unit. They then carried on rising and hit 12mmol, so I had another 2 units and my Lantus before bed.

I woke 3 hours later in the middle of the night hypo at 3.9. Had a glucojuice and 2 biscuits (slow realease carbs/16g) and re tested 15 mins later and I was 5.5. I then woke up again after another 2 hours and my levels had shot back up to 10.9!!

Should I have ignored the 3.9 reading in the knowledge that I'd had a high-carb/high-fat meal and that therefore my levels would have been likely to slowly rise back up anyway?

I guess my question is, when you enter the hypo zone after a large/high-fat meal, should you be more cautious of treating it in the knowledge that it is likely to correct itself and your sugars
likely to rise by themselves - and treating it could just make things worse, like the rebound that I experienced?
 
2 schools of thought on this one.

medical community ( docs , DSN's , etc ) would definitely say to treat

personally i like your outside the box thinking on this and with a very high fat meal you could have been ok with no remedy.
( i am not familiar with glucojuice ? do you mean lucozade ? )
i would be interested to know the total amount of CHO you treated with as i always try to under treat wherever possible
so for a 3.9 in the middle of the night it would have been 10 CHO maximum and test after 15 minutes
 
Having looked at glucose juice http://www.boots.com/en/GlucoJuice-Berry-Burst-flavour-60-ml_1285141/ it states 25.4 carbs so if that the case plus the biscuits then you had over 40 carbs for a hypo :) that would be the cause of your high blood sugar I would have thought plus the lingering fatty meal still being digested.
Edit to add the above is for 100ml not the bottle.
Below is the bottle amount
GlucoJuice is a fast-acting dextrose liquid
  • GlucoJuice comes in a 60ml bottle, each 60 ml bottle contains 15g of fast-acting carbohydrate
  • GlucoJuice contains no gluten or caffeine
  • Each 100ml of GlucoJuice consist of: 402kj of 95kCal, 0.1g protein, 25.4g carbohydrate of which 25.4g is sugar, 0.1g fat of which 0g is saturated, 0.1g fibre and 0g sodium
  • Ingredients in GlucoJuice: water, dextrose, citric acid, natual flavouring, preservative E202 and E211, carrot and blackcurrant concentrate.
So you had in effect 31 carbs to treat your hypo biscuits and juice so that would be more than double that I would have used :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
No, each pot of glucojuice is only 15g of carbs, then I had the 2 slow release Belvita biscuits which were 8g each and release carbs over a 4-hour period.
 
pinewood said:
No, each pot of glucojuice is only 15g of carbs, then I had the 2 slow release Belvita biscuits which were 8g each and release carbs over a 4-hour period.
Click to expand...
We crossed posts as I edited mine after hunting down another link. :)
So as you had the biscuits and they were slow release then that would be your problem as the juice obviously worked after the 15mins to get a reading of 5.5
 
CarbsRok said:
Having looked at glucose juice http://www.boots.com/en/GlucoJuice-Berry-Burst-flavour-60-ml_1285141/ it states 25.4 carbs so if that the case plus the biscuits then you had over 40 carbs for a hypo :) that would be the cause of your high blood sugar I would have thought plus the lingering fatty meal still being digested.
Edit to add the above is for 100ml not the bottle.
Below is the bottle amount
GlucoJuice is a fast-acting dextrose liquid
  • GlucoJuice comes in a 60ml bottle, each 60 ml bottle contains 15g of fast-acting carbohydrate
  • GlucoJuice contains no gluten or caffeine
  • Each 100ml of GlucoJuice consist of: 402kj of 95kCal, 0.1g protein, 25.4g carbohydrate of which 25.4g is sugar, 0.1g fat of which 0g is saturated, 0.1g fibre and 0g sodium
  • Ingredients in GlucoJuice: water, dextrose, citric acid, natual flavouring, preservative E202 and E211, carrot and blackcurrant concentrate.
So you had in effect 31 carbs to treat your hypo biscuits and juice so that would be more than double that I would have used :)
Click to expand...
Thanks. I thought you should also always have some slower acting carbs once you've treated the hypo with fast acting glucose if your next meal isn't for a while? But I realise that in hindsight, given I had the high fat meal earlier that night, it probably wasn't necessary this time
 
pinewood said:
No, each pot of glucojuice is only 15g of carbs, then I had the 2 slow release Belvita biscuits which were 8g each and release carbs over a 4-hour period.
Click to expand...


Still that's 31g of carbs, perhaps the glucojuice would have been sufficient or the juice and one less biscuit.
 
pinewood said:
Thanks. I thought you should also always have some slower acting carbs once you've treated the hypo with fast acting glucose if your next meal isn't for a while? But I realise that in hindsight, given I had the high fat meal earlier that night, it probably wasn't necessary this time
Click to expand...
Must admit in 50 years of diabetes I have never followed up with slow acting carbs, from what I understand this was a newish idea (last 20 years) but now been debunked as not such a good idea. Obviously though if a lot of basal swimming around then it does need soaking up. Even though you have ended up high like that, inmho you played safe and had the extra. Better to be a tad higher for a little while than being found unconscious due to a delayed reaction to the exercise. :)
 
pinewood said:
Thanks! All makes sense. Should have just had the juice I think. Cheers
Click to expand...

It's a learning curve, your always better to test your bg following a hypo and see what results you get from treating it, we are all individuals and some require less or more glucose to treat a hypo.
 
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