As I've been running the hybrid closed loop for a little while now, I thought people might be interested in the variation in basal requirements over the course of a few days where activity, food and sedentariness were all very similar. It's really quite startling and gives good insight into how difficult it is to match what the body needs with the basal insulins that are part of the MDI regime.
In the picture below, the blue skyscrapers show the insulin delivered by the HCL system at any point throughout the day, by means of adjusting the basal rate. My basal rate (the dotted blue line) is already configured to take into account my insulin variation. The column on the right show the variation in Basal insulin by absolute units. There's around an 8% variation over the three days. For me what was most noticeable was the vast difference in how the loop increased and decreased insulin over the course of the day and how I needed different amounts of bolus for what amounted to similar foods that in theory shouldn't make a difference.
Anyway, enough of my waffling. It's an interesting insight into what we're trying to replicate with basal insulin!
In the picture below, the blue skyscrapers show the insulin delivered by the HCL system at any point throughout the day, by means of adjusting the basal rate. My basal rate (the dotted blue line) is already configured to take into account my insulin variation. The column on the right show the variation in Basal insulin by absolute units. There's around an 8% variation over the three days. For me what was most noticeable was the vast difference in how the loop increased and decreased insulin over the course of the day and how I needed different amounts of bolus for what amounted to similar foods that in theory shouldn't make a difference.
Anyway, enough of my waffling. It's an interesting insight into what we're trying to replicate with basal insulin!