BG is high! Not sure help!

Hi,

What were you before your meal and what have you eaten?

If you have eaten something that has a highish sugar content it may come back down quite quickly. If it was a regular meal you have just eaten too many carbs for the number of units you injected. If you give us an idea of how many carbs you have eaten and what you injected we can maybe help. It may be that you need an extra unit or two to bring it down but not too much so that it goes low overnight. Do you inject your basal in the evening too?

HTH
Angie

Hi laurenk. I am just recently diagnosed type 1 and my BG still exceeds 21 quite often, I think its just a matter of time when your dose can be adjusted, from what I have learnt it can be a little hit and miss at first. The same as you I do have regular headaches sometimes lasting several days, but I am sure once the correct dosage and BG levels drop that these will decrease so I would worry yourself too much, things will get better.

All the best

Simon aka Cobra3164

Hi,

If I were eating pizza and chips I would need to inject more than 4 units of fast acting insulin. But I wouldn't eat pizza with chips because I have learnt to carbohydrate count and to know how much insulin to inject for the carbohydrate content of each meal. It is early days for you and your health team are there to advise you how to work out your insulin dose for what you are eating.

You will get headaches if your levels are running high. Once you get the hang of adjusting your units they will go.
Many people find 1 unit will cover about 10g of carbs as a rough guide (but everyone varies). If you make a note of how many carbs you are eating for the meal and then your levels before and after you will see how the 4 units are dealing with it.

I started insulin early August and my DSN after a couple of weeks said if you feel comfortable altering the doses do so, (can't go on a carb counting course until after Christmas). So I have been changing mine and am gradually getting to grips with it all.

It will be trial and error for a while but writing it all down will help and then you will begin to see how much you need for each meal.

Do your levels usually go down overnight at all? If not and you are not having your lantus until morning it may help if you have an extra unit or two this evening and see how much it takes it down. If you do keep a check on it for a couple of hours to make sure it's not going to bring it too low for bedtime if it usually goes down overnight.

Regards
Angie

4units of novo rapid b4each meal

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Did they tell you to eat specific meals?

In the long run, you'll probably learn about carb counting (e.g. have a look if you want to peek) because fixed insulin doses for each meal don't work very well.

In this case, your high BG simply means that you don't take enough insulin for the meal in question*. Have you been told to adjust your doses yourself? If not, I'd suggest that you contact them sooner rather than later because the doses are clearly not working atm.

* Basically, you need to have both enough insulin to meet your cells' energy requirement and to move all the excess glucose out of the bloodstream. Lacking enough insulin for the former can be very dangerous and leads to DKA - but your negative ketone test rules this out.

It's also possible to have a "correction dose" to correct for high BG (e.g. if you misjudged the size of a portion), but you should probably discuss this with your DSN first. I'd estimate 1u of insulin to lower your BG by 3.5mmol/l (=100/(16+4+4+4) by rule of 100), so a reasonable correction dose might be 4u.

The above is, in more detail and with pretty flowcharts, summed up in this document.

I think its just a matter of time when your dose can be adjusted

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To be honest, I'm not sure I agree with this. Dose adjustment isn't rocket science (it would just take a phone call), and I don't think it's acceptable to leave a newly diagnosed diabetic with a dose that is, at best, nominally educated guess for two weeks. I don't think that it's OK to send people home without knowing that the insulin doses are appropriate if you haven't told them what to do if they're not and leave them with 20+ BG for weeks.

As above it sounds like you need more fast acting Insulin. Pizza and chips make my blood sugars rocket, 4units of Insulin would barely do anything depending on how much you ate.

What you'll find is different foods have different effects on your blood sugars.

For example if I drink a can of coke I can handle it with x amount of Insulin, but if I ate a bunch of oats which contain the same amount of carbs for whatever reason I need more Insulin to counter a spike in blood sugars.

You'll learn about your blood sugars and how they react over the next few weeks, try to keep a log so you know how your body reacts.

I've got to the point where I have a set ratios depending on type of foods and now working out Insulin dose is a walk in the park, in other words things will get a lot easier with time :thumbup:

Hi

Typically I would find I need 4 units per slice of pizza and 6-8 units for a portion of chips, so for example 3 slices of pizza and one portion of chips would be 17 units

Of course everyone is different and I have done the DAFNE course (carb counting etc, def do it if you get the chance, its really worth it) so I would not advise following what I do unless advised to by your health team.

Also I personally found 1 dose of Lantus every 24 hours did not work for me as I was going low overnight as it spiked and high in the day as it ran out, if this happens to you ask if switching to Levemir (2 doses, 1 every 12 hours) would work for you. Obviously your health care team will kow what is best for you but as you get more used to things you may be able to work some things out for yourself. It's your body afterall but make sure you know what you are doing before making any changes on your own.

Good Luck

You need to get off taking the static amounts per meal and ask to have your background adjusted accordingly and you need to start carb counting.
Nobody told me to do any of this when I was diagnosed I just read up about it and started doing it. Got some advice from my diabetes nurse over the phone and I was away and never looked back since.

Pizza and chips for me needs about 12 units to cover and my background is now up at 30 starting from a stated dose of around 8 when fist diagnosed over a year ago.

Hope this helps

Anybody got any advice on how to bring high levels down please


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zoecrean said:

Also I personally found 1 dose of Lantus every 24 hours did not work for me as I was going low overnight as it spiked and high in the day as it ran out, if this happens to you ask if switching to Levemir (2 doses, 1 every 12 hours) would work for you.

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Or Lantus twice a day. Worked well for me.

Dominoes said:

Anybody got any advice on how to bring high levels down please

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Hi Dominoes

Alex posted some good links earlier in this thread, including this one

http://www.diabetes-scotland.org/ggc/documents/pdf files/Insulin Dose Change.pdf

Are we talking high after meals, high in the morning, or high all the time? And how high?

I was advised to get the carbs and cals book from amazon by the hospital, useful for carb counting and working out your insulin

Carbs & Cals Flashcards: A Visual Guide to Carbohydrate & Calorie Cou…
Buy new: £9.98
30 Used & new from £4.90
3.5 out of 5 stars (11)



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