Blood sugar won't stay up! (T1)

[cjmags]

Pretty much as it says on the tin. 23 Y/O T1. On Levemir & Novorapid injections.

Injected just before dinner when BM was 12.6. Blood sugar rapidly dropped from 7.1 an hour after dinner to 2.6. I took glucose as per usual, it rose again. Now it's fallen to 3.5 :-(

Does this happen to anyone else? I.e. blood sugar won't go up and stay up?

C x

 

[Squire Fulwood]

I will page @azure since I think she knows about these things.

 

[therower]

Hi @cjmags . Before we can offer advice or reasons for your problem we will need a bit more information.
How long have you been diabetic?
Do you carb count and adjust your insulin dosage accordingly?
Are you suffering with any other health issues at the moment?
Is this a common occurrence?
What is your diet?
If you can give a bit more information I'm sure they'll be someone along to help and advise.

 

[cjmags]

Hi @cjmags . Before we can offer advice or reasons for your problem we will need a bit more information.
How long have you been diabetic?
Do you carb count and adjust your insulin dosage accordingly?
Are you suffering with any other health issues at the moment?
Is this a common occurrence?
What is your diet?
If you can give a bit more information I'm sure they'll be someone along to help and advise.

Of course! 9 years a diabetic. I don't carb count, but I've got an HBa1C of 7.3% and am otherwise well controlled. No other health issues & a pretty balanced diet!

 

[azure]

Of course! 9 years a diabetic. I don't carb count, but I've got an HBa1C of 7.3% and am otherwise well controlled. No other health issues & a pretty balanced diet!

@cjmags If you don't carb count then that could be a large part of the problem you're having. Your bolus insulin will cover a certain amount of carbs for you. If you don't eat that correct amount of carbs, your blood sugar is going to be unpredictable. If you inject and eat too few, you could be struggling against lows for a few hours.

My advice for now is to eat some longer acting carbs and keep testing.

Long term, you really do need to carb count. It's crucial for good control. If you can't get help from your DSN, then there's an online course you can do:

https://www.bertieonline.org.uk

And if you don't already have it, I recommend the book Think Like A Pancreas - because that's what you have to do.
.

 

[therower]

@cjmags . Thanks that helps. I think we can rule out the honeymoon period.
I would suggest you try to learn about carb counting i and a lot of others find it invaluable, I suspect though that you may well be half way there if your control is good. I did a DAFNE course after 20yrs + of being diabetic and learned so much.
It would appear by what you've described originally that you haven't either eaten enough carbs/ food to cover the insulin you've taken on board or you've injected to much insulin for the carbs/ food you've eaten. Same problem but looking at it 2 ways.
A carb counting course would explain ratios and give you a better guide to matching insulin to carb requirements.
As for now have some complex carbs ( cereal, brown bread or the like ) to raise your levels and stop you from keep dropping.
Good luck.

 

[DiabeticDadUK]

Pretty much as it says on the tin. 23 Y/O T1. On Levemir & Novorapid injections.

Injected just before dinner when BM was 12.6. Blood sugar rapidly dropped from 7.1 an hour after dinner to 2.6. I took glucose as per usual, it rose again. Now it's fallen to 3.5 :-(

Does this happen to anyone else? I.e. blood sugar won't go up and stay up?

C x

It sounds like you may have taken too much Novorapid for your meal (was it as carb heavy as you thought?), then perhaps didn't cover the drop off with enough glucose after you went hypo at 2.6. What did it rise too before falling to 3.5 again? Did you give yourself some hypo-recovery time or do anything physical soon after? even some light activity can cause your sugars to drop again unless you just chill out for a while and recover.

 

[t1_lada_32]

I had the same thing last night @cjmags, levemir and novorapid, two hours later I felt weird, tested and was 2.7. I had to eat solidly for an hour to get the reading above six - loads of glucose tablets, sweets, juice, all sorts of stuff. It went up REALLY slowly. I was sick in the morning because of all the sweet stuff. Now I'm worried the same will happen tonight. It was the first use of a new levemir pen but that is the only thing I can think of. Did you figure out what caused this with you?