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Type 1 Getting ready for bed

P

Paul Heaton

Newbie
Messages
1
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Hi. I have been a type one for 13 years now and have recently changed my shift pattern back to 9-5 ish. I now train after work usually kick boxing or strength training but seems to be having a lot of lows during the night. Does anybody have any advice that they can over to avoid the dip? I find that if I have slightly too much before bed it sits high all night and slightly not enough I'm up all night for food and it's slowly killing me!

Thanks in advance :)
 
It's unusual that it's so different, does your choice of after-work exercise or what you eat for supper affect whether you tend to stay high or go low?

What do you take by way of basal and bolus insulin, when do you inject your basal? If you split your basal (which depends on what type it is) you could reduce your evening dose to avoid going low, otherwise an uncovered bedtime snack is the usual solution, but again if it's so finely balanced between then going high or low, it would be worth looking in more detail at any differences between those scenarios.
 
This is a common problem with exercise.
I think of it as the exercise using up the glucose which my liver drips throughout the day so it has less to drip at night.

Depending upon the insulin you take, you could reduce your basal.
Levemir would be great for this. I used to do the same with Lantus.
Because the long nature of Tresiba it can take 4 days for a change to take effect so not ideal.
 
Paul Heaton said:
Hi. I have been a type one for 13 years now and have recently changed my shift pattern back to 9-5 ish. I now train after work usually kick boxing or strength training but seems to be having a lot of lows during the night. Does anybody have any advice that they can over to avoid the dip? I find that if I have slightly too much before bed it sits high all night and slightly not enough I'm up all night for food and it's slowly killing me!

Thanks in advance :)
Click to expand...
Same here and it seems to be a consequence of late exercise as @In Response said. Tried everything to avoid the lows - including leaving out basal altogether - just to see what happened and still got a low at 2am! I don't want to get up at that time and spend an hour getting back in range so I looked for a long-term carb to kick in about 2am. The answer for me as a low-carb (50g/day) T1 was high-protein yogurt or quark (about 20g protein) which kicks in after 1-3 hours and maintains BG in range. If you're not low-carb this probably won't work.
 
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