Correction Doses And Low And Very Low Carb

[EllieM]

I'm on a relatively low carb diet (less than 100g per day), but I still have over 60% of my basal/bolus regime as bolus (I know 50/50 is more common). If I went for a higher carb diet I'd need way more bolus.

So ... when calculating the correction factor for bolus you take (total daily basal + total daily bolus), divide by 100, and that's the amount of insulin required per mmol/L that you want to reduce your blood sugar.

But I'm guessing that this is based on people not on low carb diets - does the formula still work for the very low carb crew?

 

[DCUKMod]

I'm on a relatively low carb diet (less than 100g per day), but I still have over 60% of my basal/bolus regime as bolus (I know 50/50 is more common). If I went for a higher carb diet I'd need way more bolus.

So ... when calculating the correction factor for bolus you take (total daily basal + total daily bolus), divide by 100, and that's the amount of insulin required per mmol/L that you want to reduce your blood sugar.

But I'm guessing that this is based on people not on low carb diets - does the formula still work for the very low carb crew?

EllieM - I can't answer your question, but will tag @NicoleC1971 and @Mel dCP whom I know both use an LC approach.

 

[LooperCat]

My basal/bolus ratios seem to vary between 70/30 (on days when I’m running high) and 90/10 (on days when I’m not) - seems to average out at 78/22 according to MySugr.

I’ve never used a calculation like that, I just went with the idea that if 10g carbs raises me by 3mmol, and 1 unit NovoSluggish drops me by the same amount because I’m on a 1:10 ratio, then that was a good place to start for corrections. I need more in the mornings, so I fiddled about and found that in the small hours/very early morning I need double that, tapering down to 2/3 as the morning progresses. So for early morning a unit drops me 1.5mmol; mid morning to early afternoon it’s more like 2mmol. Rest of the day it’s 3. I use a half unit pen, so as soon as I get to the mid sixes, I inject half a unit to nudge it down. I do a lot of it by intuition now, but I do have my scale printed out by my bedside for bleary eyes early morning corrections as the higher the BG is, the more I need to correct! I can just scan, read the number, inject what it tells me, and go back to sleep... no maths or thinking required.

I’ve only been doing this since I went VLC, so I don’t know if it would have worked before. It was the lack of carbs to contend with that enabled me to work it all out.