Lantus shouldnt bring you hypo level within an hour of taking it... had you had 5 hours clear of any bolus prior to those incidents? Or are you sure your timings are right for taking it?
Most insulins.. (I cant recall instructions) would warn of alchohol intake as hypos can be mistaken for drunk and vice versa.
I know it shouldn’t, the only common thing in each instance was doing my Lantus 30-60 mins before. Yesterday I had 1 pack of quavers and 1 unit on Novorapid at 1pm with a blood sugar of 13 then Lantus at 5 and an hour later I was hypo needing 2 330ml cans of coke to bring me back up
Been thinking about switching to this as currently on Lantus but had 4 instances where it has brought my blood sugar down dramatically within an hour and I’m not comfortable using t anymore. However, when looking it up it states ‘Do not drink alcohol while using it’ is that true?
This is exactly the reason I switched to tresiba (degludec). I only had one of those lantus-hypo's and afterwards my lantus scared the **** out of me.Been thinking about switching to this as currently on Lantus but had 4 instances where it has brought my blood sugar down dramatically within an hour and I’m not comfortable using t anymore. However, when looking it up it states ‘Do not drink alcohol while using it’ is that true?
This is exactly the reason I switched to tresiba (degludec). I only had one of those lantus-hypo's and afterwards my lantus scared the **** out of me.
@donnellysdogs , lantus can do this. The reason that it works slowly is that it somehow chrystallizes with your fat cells (or something like that, can't rememder exactly). The breaking down of those chrystals, if thats what they are, takes time, and therefore this insulin works for about 20 hours. Should you accidentally shoot some in your blood stream (hit a small vein), the stuff doesn't have time to react with your own tissue and it basically acts like short-acting insulin.
I'm happy I'm still alive, I'm sure I've been unconcious for about an hour and a half, after eating and drinking a lot of fast carbs, undressing because of the sweating and heat, and lying naked in front of two fans on the cool floor. Last thing I remember is thinking that I shouldn't close my eyes and keep drinking undiluted lemonade and checking my bs. Closed eyes for just a minute, but in the morning saw there were almost two hours missing on my meter, which I was using about every ten minutes. I guess I had already taken enough sugar to let me wake up again. I live alone.
After I found a few others with this experience on the internet, and found they all had taken lantus shortly before their hypo from hell, I moved everything to get tresiba whithin days.
Apart from this one time, I've never had a hypo I couldn't easily fix myself, not even after accidently injecting short-acting instead of long-acting (well, that one was not easily fixed, but in the end I managed it myself anyway, after organizing people to watch me).
Tresiba works in a different way (forgot how, as it sounded a lot safer), and as a bonus it doesn't sting like lantus, and my sugars are much more stable!
@matthewwallis , About the alcohol, it will say that in the leaflets for every insulin. It's because alcohol can give you a hypo hours later, because your liver won't dump glucose when you need it, as it's busy getting rid of the alcohol. I'm a heavy drinker and I haven't noticed a difference between lantus and tresiba with alcohol.
Good luck!
This is exactly the reason I switched to tresiba (degludec). I only had one of those lantus-hypo's and afterwards my lantus scared the **** out of me.
@donnellysdogs , lantus can do this. The reason that it works slowly is that it somehow chrystallizes with your fat cells (or something like that, can't rememder exactly). The breaking down of those chrystals, if thats what they are, takes time, and therefore this insulin works for about 20 hours. Should you accidentally shoot some in your blood stream (hit a small vein), the stuff doesn't have time to react with your own tissue and it basically acts like short-acting insulin.
I'm happy I'm still alive, I'm sure I've been unconcious for about an hour and a half, after eating and drinking a lot of fast carbs, undressing because of the sweating and heat, and lying naked in front of two fans on the cool floor. Last thing I remember is thinking that I shouldn't close my eyes and keep drinking undiluted lemonade and checking my bs. Closed eyes for just a minute, but in the morning saw there were almost two hours missing on my meter, which I was using about every ten minutes. I guess I had already taken enough sugar to let me wake up again. I live alone.
After I found a few others with this experience on the internet, and found they all had taken lantus shortly before their hypo from hell, I moved everything to get tresiba whithin days.
Apart from this one time, I've never had a hypo I couldn't easily fix myself, not even after accidently injecting short-acting instead of long-acting (well, that one was not easily fixed, but in the end I managed it myself anyway, after organizing people to watch me).
Tresiba works in a different way (forgot how, as it sounded a lot safer), and as a bonus it doesn't sting like lantus, and my sugars are much more stable!
@matthewwallis , About the alcohol, it will say that in the leaflets for every insulin. It's because alcohol can give you a hypo hours later, because your liver won't dump glucose when you need it, as it's busy getting rid of the alcohol. I'm a heavy drinker and I haven't noticed a difference between lantus and tresiba with alcohol.
Good luck!
Diabetic nurses don't know everything, and in this case you can not even blame them. It's not a very well known side effect, and most of them have never experienced a hypo like this. I guess it's the experience that motivates us to dig down to the deepest parts of the Internet to find our answers!Thanks for the response. Very worrying that it can happen, the first time was in Spain which scared me a lot. Seen other people mention it about Lantus before, told my diabetic nurse who just dismissed it ‘It’s a long acting insulin, so it can’t happen’. Luckily my doctor mentioned it the other week about changing so I’ll give them a call tomorrow
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