Help With Eating Out And Adjusting Insulin

[smc4761]

I appreciate that we are all different so just looking for general advice and what you experiences have been.

I recently started with a Freestyle Libre and it is excellent and letting you know how the blood glucose figures are going

Last night around 7.15pm had a BG of 7.2, which is very slightly high for me but it was steady. I had an Indian meal, some pakora, chicken tikka, with curry sauce and smallish portion of rice so I reckoned around 100 g of carbs To cover that I am on a ratio of 1:5 so had 20 units of Humalog. I only had a diet coke to drink

Steadily through the evening, my BG dropped until around 10.30 it dropped to 3.9. My usual fail safe for a quick increase is cup of coffee, 2 sugar and a couple of ginger nuts. That worked well and within 15 minutes I was 4.8

I took my usual basal dose which always keeps me steady during the night

I woke at 2am and my BG was up at 13.1 and by 4.30 am it had gone up to 17. I took a correction dose of Humalog and by 9 am I was back down to 8.2.

So basically where have I gone wrong, should I have split the Humalog dose, say 12 units with meal and a further 8 before bed. I now know that high carb and high fat meals the sugars release much slower

Any advice greatly appreciated

 

[karen8967]

i would of split my bolus insulin like you have said half b4 and the rest about an hour after meal as the fat content will have slowed the carbs down and insulin would of peaked b4 the carbs x this works for me with fatty foods

 

[smc4761]

Thanks Karen, its all about trial and error isn't it

 

[urbanracer]

I too had an Indian meal last night but calculated my carbs at a little over 50g for which I took 6u. I was at at 7.3 before eating and 7.9 at the 90min mark.

I simply cannot handle a 100g of carbs in one meal anymore without going either high or low afterwards.

One additional point though, the Libre tends to read higher than actual blood glucose levels when you get into double figures, so did you cross check with a finger prick?

 

[smc4761]

I did do a finger test and it was pretty much the same as my Libre reading. Even though I am using Libre I am still doing some finger prick tests and to be fair they are nearly always on the same level as Libre

 

[Draco16]

Any advice greatly appreciated

Splitting the bolus would help - then trial and error to work out what split and timings as you say.

Or the compromise of eating fewer carbs, especially on a tricky meal like this.

Or eating it earlier in the day, either lunch or late afternoon. Reason being that when unusual things start to happen a few hours after eating it you are awake and - especially with the Libre - can take action, which we obviously can't when asleep.

I generally stick to max 50g of carb per meal, but a few times a year i'll have more indulgent meals, but I do it in the afternoon so that I can take action in the following hours.