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Does insulin contain sugar?

S

Sesquipedalianism

Member
Messages
12
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Insulin
This is a trend ... after taking insulin I notice that my blood sugar level starts to rise even though I do not eat anything.

Here is an example this morning. At 7:24am my BG was 9.9 mmol/L. I took 85 united of basal insulin and 6 units of bolus for a BG correction ... to nudge it downward but 2 hours later it has risen and all I did was drink water and drove to work. I ensured that I was not injecting into any fatty lumps ... it was a pristine area of my belly.

More often than not this is what happens. Why is that?


 
Insulin does NOT contain sugar.
However, there are many things that can affect our BG and cause it to rise.
For example, it may be Dawn Phenomenon - your liver is dumping glucose as it thinks you are starving because you have not eaten. I find a small breakfast stops this rise.
Or maybe you were stuck in traffic on your way to work and the stress caused your liver to dump more glucose (as a fight or flight reaction).
 
I have experimented with higher corrective doses but the behaviour remains the same ... anyway, nothing major.

Thanks for your reply.
 
Sesquipedalianism said:
I have experimented with higher corrective doses but the behaviour remains the same ... anyway, nothing major.
Click to expand...
Have you experimented with a small breakfast to convince your body you are not starving and stop the liver dump?
This does not have to be a huge fry up. It could be a handful of nuts or half a tub of yoghurt

Does it happen every day or only when you have to drive to work?
 

What I am enquiring about is the medical reason why blood glucose levels increase in the seconds and minutes after taking insulin. It increases no matter what the activity.

Here is another example, I took 90 units of Tresiba at 7:49am when my BG was 9.5mmol/L. As you can see - 9 minutes later it is 10.8mmol/L and from the arrow you can see it is rapidly rising. Eating food at this point will not affect it as Tresiba is not a fast acting insulin. Even a fast acting insulin will take 15 mins to work and I expect a gradual increase of about 0.6mmol/L every 15 mins but as you can see there was a big increase of 1.3mmol/L in 9 mins ... that would happen if I ate a glucose tablet. As I am writing this it has now increased to 11.9 and rising fast.

There has to be a medical reason.


 
Sesquipedalianism said:
What I am enquiring about is the medical reason why blood glucose levels increase in the seconds and minutes after taking insulin. It increases no matter what the activity.
Click to expand...
My guess (and this is only a guess) is that you do not like injecting and it causes stress.
There are many things that cause our BG to rise including stress, exercise, pain, food, ...
 
Sesquipedalianism said:
I've never had a problem with needles.
Click to expand...

Perhaps you are stressed without realizing it. (Apparently 'subconscious anxiety' is a thing!)

Or perhaps you are stressing about your blood sugars going high after an injection or about why your blood sugars are rising. (As far as I know, stressing about their levels is one of the reasons some doctors recommend some type 2 diabetics not to check their blood sugars so often!)

How long has this been happening?
Both of your examples are for the morning, does the same thing for other times?
Are you injecting immediately you get up?
Have you tried leaving your injection for an hour to see if the rise is definitely linked to the injection?

> There has to be a medical reason.

I share your frustration. My blood sugars jump around quite a bit and it feels like everyday I have some rise or fall that I just can't explain, and if I can't explain then I can't do anything about it. So I concentrate on trying to spot trends.

But one trend that I have noticed is that if I get up with my blood sugars at 5, then they will usually rise to about 6 within 2-3 minutes and then continue to rise to around 7 before I have take my breakfast. (That is a rise of about 2). But if I wake up with my blood sugars at 8, then will usually jump to 10 immediately and rise to about 12 before breakfast (which is a rise of 4). In other words the higher my BS are the higher they go on their own.

In other words, for days that I wake up at 8 or higher, my graph would usually look like something similar to yours, even if I don't eat or inject at that time.
 
Sesquipedalianism said:
What I am enquiring about is the medical reason why blood glucose levels increase in the seconds and minutes after taking insulin. It increases no matter what the activity.
Click to expand...
I second the comments from @sgm14 that you have only shown examples in the morning and not answered my questions about stopping DP with a small snack.
The "medical reason" for DP is the liver dumping glucose to give you energy to start your day. This can continue if you do not eat breakfast because it then responds to a "starve reaction".

Like you, I am only a sample of one but I do not experience a rise in BG when I take my insulin. I do not believe it is a common reaction which is why we are suggesting other reasons.

I favour the DP response to the reaction to the insulin as you mentioned that it happens within seconds. However, CGMs measure interstitial fluid which delay their reaction to BG rises by 10 to 15 minutes. Although the algorithm attempts to predict this, it does so by extrapolating the current trend so the rise in your last screenshot is unlikely to be due to the insulin dose.
 

I get all of that … I did not go into copious explanations and exhaustive examples because my post would have been toooooo looooong …. So I focused on what I wanted to know

The trend is throughout the day. Eg I am at work. At 1124am my blood BG is 9.0 and in preparation for lunch at 12 noon on I took 8 units of NovoRapid and at 1129 BG has increased to 10.0.

Time doesn’t matter. Activity doesn’t matter. I am seeing a trend. Even though I am only now asking, it did not just happen. It’s a normal feature for a couple of years now.

Just curious.
 
Believe. It or not I have a similar reaction. Always have. The rise doesn’t hang around long but it is obvious whenever I stick a needle in. I definitely am not worried about injecting,to be honest it is so routine I’m hardly aware I’m doing it. I’ve put this rise down simply to trauma of the needle piercing the skin. Suits me to rationalise it this way.
 
Could it be coincidental as you take your basal on the morning? That a morning rise, not associated with carb intake, takes place and you inject mornings as well. I do my basal evenings now, and I get a similar rise to you in the mornings where it will rise, and then fall again?
 
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