High blood sugar five hours after a large meal

Hi, I've noticed for a long time after eating a large meal on an evening my blood sugar level will be perfect (5-7mmol) when I test it two hours after the meal but if I wake up during the night and test my sugar level it will have rocketed to anything between 15-20mmol but I'm at a loss as to what to do to prevent this from happening. If I inject more fast acting insulin (Humalog) with my meal I have a hypo and my sugar level still ends up being sky high during the night and if I have more slow acting insulin (Glargine/Lantus) my sugar level won't rise as much as it usually does during the night but throughout the following day my sugar level will be dropping because of the excess insulin in my body.

This only happens when eating particularly large meals, which isn't very often, probably once every six weeks. My HB1AC was perfect last time I had it checked (I think it was 5.4) and I'm a very healthy person in general so my diabetes is under perfect control, it's just these high sugar levels that bother me.

Is this worth worrying about because at most my sugar level will only be high for a few hours as I always inject some fast acting insulin to bring it back down but it's rather annoying that I have to do this and it plays on mind as I'm going to sleep hence it affects my night of sleep.

Any help or advice would be most appreciated.

Cheers
Ian

PS.I'm 30 and have been type one diabetic for 14 years.

OK mate, will do.

Cheers
Ian

jopar said:

Are these meals Pasta and/or high fat meals as well as large!

And what do you call a large meal? As what I determine as being large meal, would probably me a small to standard meal for most people...

So you really need a carb count lot easier to visualise the size...

Quick basic answer, is food such as Pasta, Pastry, high fat meals are a lot slower at adsorbing and can continue to impact on your bg's hours later..

And onto this, the more carb content you have in a meal, the more insulin needed the larger the dose the more unpredictable the adsorption of the insulin can bit... Of meals such as pizzza, Chinese etc is splitting the dose in two, so you inject part of the injection before you eat, and then the rest after you've eaten... the time scales and dose of each split is something you need to work out what suits best, and testing...

Click to expand...

Yes they are high fat curry/chinese/pizza/pasta and by large I mean a full main course served up in a restaurant plus a starter, I've never needed to carb count so I don't know how many carbs are in these meals. Splitting my insulin dose in two is something that I've never tried before so I'll try that next time I'm eating a meal that I know will send my sugar spiralling. Thanks.

noblehead said:

IanPozz said:

Yes they are high fat curry/chinese/pizza/pasta and by large I mean a full main course served up in a restaurant plus a starter, I've never needed to carb count so I don't know how many carbs are in these meals. Splitting my insulin dose in two is something that I've never tried before so I'll try that next time I'm eating a meal that I know will send my sugar spiralling. Thanks.

Click to expand...

There lies the problem. You still need to estimate the carb value of the meal in order to give the correct ratio, as Jo says high-fat meals usually requires a split dose to cover the slow delay in digestion, I always have home-made chips on a Saturday night and always have to split my dose injecting appox 1/2 up front and the rest 90-120 mins later.

Ian, before contemplating split doses for yourself I suggest you speak with your diabetes team first and ask for advice on how best to approach this.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your advice