Drinking Alcohol with a Pump

[Ova]

Hello all, first post as a pumper!!!!

I have very recently started on the Accu Chek Combo Pump and I have sorted out my basal rates, carb bolus and correction rate, but I am having trouble when I go out drinking. When I was on MDI (22 units of Lantus once a day, and then counting carbs for my meals) I reduced my carb bolus for meals the following day by around 60% and this stopped me going hypo and I never went high. However now I am on the pump when I try and do the same with my bolus I always end up high around 15+ two hours after a meal. I have tried setting a temporary basal rate of 120% whilst I am drinking to keep me in range and that worked, however when I stop drinking to go home and go back to my normal set basal I am constantly correcting lows or chasing highs even though I am very good at not over-correcting a hypo. And so I can't work out what to do during/after drinking and the following day because almost without fail I will go low or be chasing highs for the rest of the day..

So after all that it may seem like I am asking what to do myself but I am actually more curious to know what you more experienced pumpers do when you know you are having a night out drinking (I know we are all different!), as in do you increase the basal during drinking then drop it overnight or do you keep the basal the same and work out a reduced/increased bolus percentage for the day after or even bolus per drink!?!? So far everthing I have tried has either sent me low or high or as I said before jumping between the two.

Even with the change and upheaval compared to MDI I already love my pump and count myself incredibly luck to be one of the very very few in Northern Ireland to have one. Pumping is bliss....

Thanks!

Ova

 

[Brava210]

I tend to do a combo bolus, extended through the night.
I seem to go high for some reason.
But this doesn't always work.
It's very hit and miss.
Do you eat differently when you are out drinking?

Gary

 

[MushyPeaBrain]

I don't drink very often but when I have on the pump I have had really erratic BG, mainly high. I got so fed up with it I've stopped drinking so I'm very interested to see what other pumpers do.

What are you drinking? I almost always drink spirits and on MDI I mixed things with fruit juice as I was told alcohol lowers BG. So for example I'd have malibu and pineapple or archers and full sugar lemonade. This always seemed to work out.

On the pump my BG went mental!! I was so high. I changed to the diet lemonade but I still was so high after drinking. If I did anything to try and counter it I went badly low. When I had malibu and pineapple I tried to bolus for the pineapple juice but I just couldn't seem to get it right. My DSN was rubbish and suggested I stick to wine, which I don't like but I still tried and still had high BG :roll:

 

[Brava210]

I do know lager, cider etc has a lot of carbs..
Red wine doesn't have any, so these alone would make a big difference.
I currently stick to wine but love cider.
Spirits are usually low in carbs.

 

[IanD]

Sorry, but I can't get past the thread title : Drinking Alcohol with a Pump :thumbdown:

I would recommend a glass .... :roll: but then I don't drink alcohol.

 

[Grazer]

I use a drip-feed myself! :lol: incidentally, spirits have ZERO carbs so can only lower BG - providing you don't put mixers with carbs in.

 

[johnny37]

I wouldnt drink alcohol with a pump. I usually do it with a glass.

 

[Cheryl]

Subcutaneous alcohol; now that sounds good! Seriously though, I had 2 bottles of lager today whilst watching the footie, I shot up 3% really quickly but dropped back just as quickly to where I was before.

I tend to ignore alcohol from my calculations, unless I have cider which needs a tiny bolus. It seems to work out on it's own; any short term high is counteracted by a later low, do by ignoring the high, I don't go too low later on.

 

[sugar2]

I don't drink much,,. and when I do I srink wine, and this has very little effect on my BG, and I don't need to do anything different with my pump. I am an old lady now though..when I was young, and used to drink more often, again, I would try and stick to wine, so no real effect.

Sorry, not much help..but at tlast I din't try and be funny and fail!

 

[jopar]

Drinking with using a pump..

There's a couple of things that you've got to keep in mind... The carbs value of the drinking and the underlying action of the Alcohol...

Your basal is set to work with how your liver is dribbling glucose into your blood stream at any one time, as your liver is dribbling in the glucose it is also reblemishing the back up store in the liver, once it starts to process the alcohol in your system, it stop producing/storing any glucose for the back up store, but will keep dribbling the remains of this store until it's all gone.. It won't start to reblemish this store until it's cleared all the alcohol out your blood stream, which it take a hour to dispense with 1 unit of alcohol for on average...

So when you liver stops dribbling glucose into your blood stream, your basal effectively becomes an bolus insulin..

So you need to work out, when this changes from basal to bolus, then back to basal again which theoretically could be well into the next day depending on how much alcohol you drink..

I know the theory, but as I'm not a drinker I've never tested it out..