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Help please with insulin and bg levels

M

murrayjohn

Member
Messages
11
Location
Lincoln
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Insulin
Hi, after a long battle to get treatment for ridiculously high bg levels post sepsis two years ago, I finally ended up on insulin (humulin I). This soon proved ineffective. I ended up on novarapid before meals, and tresiba 100 at bedtime. I went through all the tablets but due to allergic problems ended up on this treatment. Is the hospital supposed to advise how you work out how much to take?, because at the moment it's ring in the values every week, and they change a couple of units which make no difference. When I told my gp this he went ballistic and phoned the diabetes clinic. I'm still waiting for results. At the moment I take 30 units of novarapid minutes before breakfast, same at dinner and tea. I then have 54 units of tresiba 100 at bed time. However I'm waking up with bg levels of between 11 and 17. These usually get worse as the day goes on. I am waiting to see the specialist in November. Already though I have no feeling in my fingers and toes, I have stage three kidney failure and other problems too, attributed to uncontrolled and in diagnosed diabetes. I have low carb, no sugar meals as much as possible. The only other real factor is that due to disability exercise is out of the question. Does anyone have any advice on where to go from here?. With all the insulin I take, I have not ever had a low bg ( lowest being 7.9 once).
 
When I got diagnosed they didnt let me go from the hospital until I was all well educated about diabetes and carbcounting. Hope u get better, sorry I cant advice anything helpful, but definitely ur docs should help u with this !
 
@murrayjohn your avatar says you are type 1, but this post - http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/insulin-doses.124278/ - says that you have been type 2 for 10 years. Which is correct? If you are type 2, being on insulin doesn't make you type 1 it makes you type 2 treated with insulin.

Answers to your questions may change depending on type of diabetes and you can update the type shown in your avatar, or ask a moderator to do so, to correct it.

If you've recently commenced on insulin yes, your hospital should be giving you guidance on dosages. A phone call with your DSN to discuss this seems a sensible way of doing this. I certainly had a few nice games of blood sugar bingo in the first couple of weeks post diagnosis with my DSN.

But unless you are expecting a DSN to follow you round, hold your hand and dial up the pen for you it's probably a good idea to make some effort to understand how your insulin works and how to use it and make dosage adjustments of your own accord.

You're on a basal bolus regime.

Tresiba is the basal, the background insulin. The job of the basal is to keep your blood sugars steady when you aren't eating or bolusing. You can do some testing to see if your basal dosage is doing this by following the guidance here - https://mysugr.com/basal-rate-testing/ - be aware that if you are adjusting Tresiba any adjustment will need 4-5 days to settle before you try and analyse the impact of the adjustment.

Novorapid is the bolus, the fast acting insulin. The job of the bolus is to deal with food eaten or to correct high blood sugar. It sounds like you are on fixed doses of novorapid. Most type 1s will be given guidance on carb counting or attend a DAFNE course to learn. The bolus will deal with the blood sugar rise cause by carbs. Carb counting involves working out how many grams of carbs 1 unit of insulin can deal with and adjusting meal time doses to take account of how many carbs eaten. There is free NHS course on carb counting - https://www.bertieonline.org.uk

To correct highs you need to figure out how many mmol/l 1 unit will lower you. The 100 rule is a decent starting point for this - https://www.uclh.nhs.uk/PandV/PIL/P...ets/Correcting a high blood glucose level.pdf
 
hi there
your topic suggests that the levels of insulin you are taking are not keeping your BG's in range which further suggests you might not be type 1 as your avatar suggests.

I would urgently seek an appointment with your care team to discuss this.

clearly high BG's are not good for you !!

as a further question -- are you counting your carb intake per meal ?? ( or taking totally fixed doses ?? )

all the best !!
 
Supposing you were actually Type 2, high insulin doses would be making the condition worse, not better. In this case the only approach that would work would be to cut carbs drastically to 30 or 20 grams carb/day. Read Jason Fung on this. His style is a bit polemical, but he’s reliable. His blog: https://idmprogram.com/blog/
 
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You really need to have some kind of education so that you can adjust your own doses, regardless of type.........
 
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