Charles Robin
Well-Known Member
Hi Char, welcome to the thread. First off, I am not a doctor, and this advice is based purely on my own experiences. That said, here is my advice!
I found things very up and down for the first week or two. Your body is used to running on carbs, but it can run just as well on fat and protein. However, your cells need time to get used to this. This can lead to all sorts of temporary side effects, including wierd blood sugars, digestive discomfort and dehydration (this last one is really important to watch, make sure to massively up your plain water intake, I speak from personal experience here).
In terms of insulin, it is very likely you will need to reduce your dose, certainly of basal, and perhaps also of bolus. The key here is to test, test, test. I wanted as much info as I could possibly have, so 100 test strips is lasting me about 8-9 days at the moment. Experiment with reducing your dose a bit at a time, keeping your blood test meter and a source of glucose nearby at all times (I use dextrose tablets). In theory, your basal dose should keep your blood sugars constant, providing you are not eating or exercising. Therefore, if it has been more than 4 hours since you last ate and you are hypo, unless you have been exercising the chances are your basal dose is too high.
Make small rather than large adjustments at any given time. A quote taken from Dr Bernstein is 'small mistakes have small solutions.' If you are only a bit hypo, try taking just one or two dextrose and testing 15 minutes later, to make sure you don't overshoot and go high. That said, in the early weeks I have not worried about running into the 9s and 10s, so long as I knew what caused it and what I would do differently next time.
Hope that helps, and best of luck!