After carby meal , why 3 hours later is my blood pretty much optimal ?

[Grumpy Porridge]

About 3 o clock ( late breakfast I know !) had one Costa coffee bacon and one sausage roll ( with one mini ketchup shared on the two rolls ) and a medium cappuccino bit with almond milk so was only 11g carbs worth, one roll was 5 units worth and the other was 2

about 2 hours later my blood sugar was 9.1 and about an hour and a half later it was 4.8 then tested again straight after , 4.5

Is it normal to have that big a drop ( I had peppermint tea as well before testing that / guessing that wouldn’t do much )

and now I’m
Eating dinner which is sweet potato ( worth 6 units ( sardines in tomatoe sauce and salad leaves plus a few veg which I’ve added up altogether as 7 units ) plus 17g of dark chocolate which isn’t enough to dose for )

would it be anything to do with yesterday ( when I put in 25 units of insulin for dinner ( I deliberately put in that much as I was just going to eat loads of sugar after ) the dinner was a veg curry with 6 garlic bread dough balls ( the dough balls were 4units worth ) and I added up as I ate the sugar which was roughly equal to the amount . 2 hours later blood was 11 so I added an extra 2 units to lower it . Half an hour later it was 9.7

My basal is 28 every night

thank you !

 

[Grumpy Porridge]

And 2 hours after dinner , it’s now 4.8 ( I’m guessing I’ll have a hypo later if I don’t eat something now , so will have something

 

[EllieM]

And 2 hours after dinner , it’s now 4.8 ( I’m guessing I’ll have a hypo later if I don’t eat something now , so will have something

So it sounds like you slightly overestimated the carbs in your dinner?

Have your team explained to you how to carb count and do correction doses?
They should have given your two numbers
1) carb ratio , number of g of carbs for 1 unit of insulin - you divide the total number of carbs in your meal by this carb ratio. So eg if you're on 10g of carbs per unit of insulin, and you ate 60g of carbs, you'd have 6 units of bolus.
2) correction ratio, how munch does 1 unit of insulin bring down your bg levels.

Your basal is meant to keep you level when you don't eat (eg overnight), then if you do a blood test before you eat you'll take enough bolus for the carbs in the meal, plus a correction dose if your level before the meal was too high.

As you leave the honeymoon period, you'll find your ratios and your basal needs change, so don't be surprised if your team change the numbers.

It's nice to see that you're starting to calculate your doses, though I'm afraid I don't know what all your food items are and so can't comment on the actual calculation.

But the whole point of calculating insulin doses as a T1 is that if you get the dosing right, you can eat a carby meal and have a perfectly normal blood sugar afterwards. It's not like T2s who can't use their insulin to process carbs properly, you just need extra insulin because your body doesn't produce much (eventually any) in the first place.

Good luck with the carb counting and insulin calculating.

 

[stillgoingstrong]

Hi

It's all to do with balance. Eat a lot inject a lot. Eat little inject little. Simple! however if you don't get it right you get problems. Depending on which insulin you use the effective time it lasts in the body varies. Fast acting insulins start within 15 to 30 mins and last for about 5 hours.so taking more insulin in that first 5 hours is know as insulin stacking and not normally recommended. Try thinking of your blood level as a pendulum. Push it one way with carb and the other way with insulin. The food takes a while to be absorbed (about 2 hours) so testing is often recommended at this point to see how far you have pushed the pendulum. It is still on the way back down or maybe still rising. Hit a pendulum hard it will swing a long way up before returning but will also swing the other way too. Your body produces other chemicals to try and control swings. My specialist says there is always a high spike after a hypo! You may want to think about not hitting the pendulum so hard!