I had a hypo on Monday 1st Feb at 5am. I ate a roll and cup of tea. When I took my reading at 9am before breakfast it was up in the high teens. Since then despite trying hard with my food, my readings are always in the high teens or low twenties. I usually take 7units Novorapid at meal times and 18 units Humulin at bedtime of the slow release insulin. Should I have a big dose of Novorapid - perhaps 16 units - before my next meal today, to try to get my readings back down ?
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Type 2 Advice about insulin please
- Thread starter lynbrown
- Start Date
- Messages
- 5,227
- Location
- Worthing, UK.
- Type of diabetes
- Type 1
- Treatment type
- Insulin
- Dislikes
- Not being able to eat as many chocolate digestives as I used to.
Hi @lynbrown,
I know that you're probably desperate for answers but you really should be discussing this with your medical team. Do have a diabetes nurse or clinic looking after you?
Even if you are confident in adjusting your insulin I would not advocate going from your usual 7 units to 16 units in one jump.
Hopefully you'll get some advice from a few other forum members soon.
I know that you're probably desperate for answers but you really should be discussing this with your medical team. Do have a diabetes nurse or clinic looking after you?
Even if you are confident in adjusting your insulin I would not advocate going from your usual 7 units to 16 units in one jump.
Hopefully you'll get some advice from a few other forum members soon.
BooJewels
Well-Known Member
As a T2 on insulin, I've experienced all sorts of weird readings in the last month - but I would never make changes with my insulin dose without talking it over with my DN first. When we chat, which is every Friday at the moment, we'll agree a course of action for the week ahead, with contingencies of how I might make minor adjustments, depending on the results I get.
The only significant adjustment I made on my own was when I stopped it entirely when I was away from home recently and having several hypos a day and she wasn't available to talk to for a couple of days and the other DN was off sick. When I told her subsequently she concurred I'd done the right thing, but that's the only decision I've made without her and I was with my sister who is a senior clinical nurse who encouraged me that stopping was the safer option - in the circumstances.
As it happens, my recent experience is similar to yours, in that I was having hypos and in between was going very high (double the figures of the week before), which was suggestive of too little insulin overall. But actually, when I reduced it, the range narrowed significantly. At present, having stopped for a few days and titrating it back up VERY slowly, I'm currently on a very small dose, yet my BG is lower overall with a narrower range than when I was on much more. It appears that with too much, I go erratic, rather than just low - some sort of rebound effect - so I'd worry that you might be the same and actually increasing your dose might just make things worse.
Whilst high BG is far from desirable, it's preferable from a safety point of view to plunging too low - maybe at speed if you double your rapid. So it would be my advice to take professional advice before changing anything - certainly before increasing it.
The only significant adjustment I made on my own was when I stopped it entirely when I was away from home recently and having several hypos a day and she wasn't available to talk to for a couple of days and the other DN was off sick. When I told her subsequently she concurred I'd done the right thing, but that's the only decision I've made without her and I was with my sister who is a senior clinical nurse who encouraged me that stopping was the safer option - in the circumstances.
As it happens, my recent experience is similar to yours, in that I was having hypos and in between was going very high (double the figures of the week before), which was suggestive of too little insulin overall. But actually, when I reduced it, the range narrowed significantly. At present, having stopped for a few days and titrating it back up VERY slowly, I'm currently on a very small dose, yet my BG is lower overall with a narrower range than when I was on much more. It appears that with too much, I go erratic, rather than just low - some sort of rebound effect - so I'd worry that you might be the same and actually increasing your dose might just make things worse.
Whilst high BG is far from desirable, it's preferable from a safety point of view to plunging too low - maybe at speed if you double your rapid. So it would be my advice to take professional advice before changing anything - certainly before increasing it.
Daibell
Master
Two things. Your DN should advise you on Correction doses and there is a 'rule of 100' that guides you on this (Google it). A Correction dose of Rapid depends on your total daily insulin dosage. You don't appear to be carb-counting? This is very important when on Basal/Bolus and again your DN should advise you; mine did when I started insulin. When carb-counting you vary the Bolus to match the carbs in a meal. This minimises bs swings and hence hypos.
