Best time to take Lantus

Hi @fiona35

Is lantus the only insulin you are taking or do you take a short acting one as well?

As a T1 who takes both, and adjusts both, I personally find my lantus works better if I split it. But I don't make any of my own insulin whereas many T2s do.... (And before I split it I did take it at night to try to counteracrt the dawn phenomena, where my blood sugar rises first thing in the morning).

I find that lantus doesn't quite work 24 hours so splitting it works well (for me).

But it may just be that you need to change your lantus dose? What do your team say?

There are a few things with Lantus which could impact when you take it
- it has a bit of a spike in performance at around 5 hours
- it often does not last a full 24 hours

I could understand how this could be causing you an issue if you were still taking it with breakfast.
However, you are seeing the opposite which suggests your basal requirements are higher overnight.
The risk of taking more Lantus is hypo during the day if you are currently reasonably stable.

Would you and your nurse be open to considering a different type of long acting insulin such as Levemir which is taken twice a day. The advantage of this is that you can take different doses morning and night to accommodate your body's different needs at different times of the day.
Splitting Lantus is an option worth trying although it is not usually used that way. You may find you need a different dose in morning and night.

Changing the time you take it to dinner time is unlikely to help with your higher needs at night.

How late are you eating your evening meal, and what kind of food?
If it's something protein/fat rich and/or late, that rise for the first part of the night could be a delayed rise from dinner.
For me when eating 3 meals a day the rise from dinner is usually slower than other meals whatever I eat. A late heavy dinner is often problematic, and I find shifting more of my calories to earlier in the day makes things easier.

fiona35 said:

I usually eat my dinner around 7pm, then I’m afraid I’m a bit lazy before going to bed around 9.30pm.
I take onboard your comment about shifting my meals around, maybe I do eat too late.

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I would not interpret this as eating too late (I eat later). But I do agree that it is worth considering whether your night time rise is due to insufficient bolus (NovoRapid) with your evening meal rather than due to insufficient Lantus.
Do you carb count for your NovoRapid or take fixed doses?

Could well be that your evening NovoRapid dose is not high enough.
I would be nervous about increasing your Lantus if it is ok during the day, especially if you see the rise every evening.
There some times seems to be an assumption that carb counting at the start will be too much for us. However, this can cause more problems unless we eat very similar meals every time. I remember a nasty hypo when I was on fixed doses and had quiche and salad for lunch instead of sandwiches.
As a starter, you may find it helpful to keep a note of the carbs in your meals so you can see (and share) the variation with your nurse. This will be be useful to compare with you nights when your BG goes higher.
It is definitely not the right thing to try to use Lantus to make up for the lack of NovoRapid.
At first, this could be a bit of a pain to check packets or Carbs and Cals app but it soon gets easier.