crazy control

[jones_48]

This morning i woke and had breakfast at 10, blood sugar was about 8. I did a little less insulin as i had lectures until 4pm and dont tend to eat during them. However, feeling funny at 2pm my sugar was 2.6 so i had a nutrigrain cereal bar (no insulin), 3pm felt even worse - blood sugar was 1.8 so i had to run and get some chocolate (no cereal bars available!!)
Does anyone know why this happened?
a few months back i remember having half a pack of sugar tabs and it not affecting my blood sugar :S
:crazy:

 

[RussG]

I can't explain why your sugars were so low then, but what I would say is that cereal bars and chocolate are not really ideal hypo remedies as they take too long to raise your blood sugars. The usual advice is to use dextrose tablets or a liquid like lucozade or full fat coke and then have something longer acting like a cereal bar.

The most common reason for very low BG is too much insulin for the food you have eaten. Do you count carbs to match your insulin to your food?

 

[Herbie1972]

As Russ says, I think you'll need something quicker-acting than a cereal bar to sort out a hypo. Lucozade (small plastic cup size normally does the trick for me) should work, then eat the cereal bar (or half of it) to top up.

Sounds to me like your background insulin covered the cereal bar, so the hypo just ended up getting worse.

 

[AMBrennan]

Well, yes, but one hour is enough for the cereal bar to act; if your BG normally falls quite a bit between 2h post-meal measurements and the next meal then your basal dose is probably to high, otherwise I'd wait to see what happens tomorrow.

full fat coke

OK, I don't get it. Full fat fizzy drinks are a recurring theme on this board, but I am pretty sure that Coke contains only trace amounts of fat.

 

[sarahmunchkin]

I was told that jelly babies are amazing at bringing your levels up quickly.....this could just be a myth but I like the idea of it......

 

[mehdave]

Im sure they will be just 8 jelly babies have 39grams of suger in them seen it today while at my grans :shock:

 

[Sid Bonkers]

Your correct Dave roughly 5g per baby, so 3 jelly babies = 15g the recommended amount to lift you out of hypo territory.

@AMBrennan Full Fat Coke = Ordinary Coke as opposed to diet, just a euphemism for sugar. For full fat read full sugar :thumbup:

 

[noblehead]

Hi Jones,

Treating a hypo with a cereal bar isn't advisable as you need something fast such as liquid glucose or glucotabs/jelly baby's, once your levels return to normal it's advisable to eat a small carby snack containing approx 10g of carbs.

It may be possible that your hypo was due to your basal insulin being to high, does this happen often so long after eating?....... have you done any fasting checks to see what your bg is doing between meals?

 

[Fallenstar]

Hi Jones
If you are fairly new ,ie a couple of years to diagnosis then you may very well still be in the infamous "honeymoon" period. This for some people can go on for quiet some time and can be very sporadic.
If you did what you normally do within your regime and just found you had a one off very low day, then this could very well be the reason....If it is happening a lot then you are obviously on the wrong insulin dosage and will need to look at your doses with your DSN and work out some new adjustments to the units of insulin you have....very well could be too much Basal.

Hope it settles.

 

[jones_48]

Sorry for my late reply – I forgot my login details!! :S
Russ and Herbie – Reading what you said, I now remember being told that I can have 20g carbs (probably around that in a cereal bar :S ) without it really affecting my bg after 2 hours, so I will stick to the fast acting sugar in future!

I was told that jelly babies are amazing at bringing your levels up quickly.....this could just be a myth but I like the idea of it......

This is a great idea! And I think you can buy little packs of 4 or 5..

It may be possible that your hypo was due to your basal insulin being to high, does this happen often so long after eating?....... have you done any fasting checks to see what your bg is doing between meals?

It could be due to my basal dose, I have recently reduced it by 2 units after seeing my diabetes team but maybe I am still taking too much :S I have not done any fasting checks - I should but I am a little lazy when it comes to checking blood sugar..

Fallenstar – I’ve been diagnosed just over 9 years now so I doubt it’s a honeymoon period

My levels seem to be all over the place at the moment but I have a checkup tomorrow so hopefully they’ll be able to sort me out!

Thanks for all the advice

 

[noblehead]

Do the fasting check Jones_48, often they can be the cause of unexplained hypo's.

 

[saz_pul]

hiya i had a problem like this a while back, im on basil bolus insulin regime and i had to drop my background insulin by 12 units because i was continusly hypoing, what was happening was i was having to feed my insulin so much to be able to try and sleep through the night, when if i ate i wasnt managing it, every night around 2.30-3 i would wake up hypo, but the wierd thing is if i didnt eat before bed, i wouldnt hypo, the thing is that i wouldnt have any fast acting insulin from 3 o'clock that afternoon so that i would make it through the night. now what also happened is that i had a really bad hypo that lasted for hours i was 2.1 for 4 hours, no matter what i ate would touch it, even move it .1 now i went through 6 hypo stops in this time.
so after some collaberation with my nurse we soon worked out that we needed to drastically change my insulin to stop this from happening, now im on 24 units on a morning and i still think that this could be a little high. maybe its a similar problem with yourself?

 

[jones_48]

Wow, that sounds like an awful time! I'm glad you gto it sorted My problem could be similar to yours although my blood sugar seems to be fine throughout the night - it is mainly in the afternoon that my problems are. I thought maybe to reduce my morning bolus but my doctor has said to increase it :s Can i ask how many times a day you inject your basal and at what time of day? I have 37 units just before bed (3 units less than when i originally posted!), but apparently thats more than 'normal' for my size.