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Immediate advice, please!

C

chocoholic

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I have a bit of a dilemma. My pre-dinner reading was 3.6 just now and the dinner I was literally about to eat consisted of a large pile of raw spinach leaves, cucumber, a large juicy salmon fillet, small portion of cheese and spoonful of mayo. So IF I had injected insulin, it would have made me go even lower and as there would not be much in the dinner for the insulin to work on, I could see no point in having any. Although, in theory, this sounds great,(isn't it what we all dream of) I'm really nervous about not having had it.I use a long-acting and short acting insulin mix (Novomix 30) but am unsure of if I'll be okay from now, right through the night without any insulin.
Should I just monitor my readings every few hours and see how I go or am I doing something too risky? What if I need to eat something later, if readings dip further, do I then have some insulin?

I was going to go for a walk, as it's a nice evening but know that would bring me down even lower. Any suggestions folks?
 
Thanks, Sarah. I've just taken another reading and it's still 3.6.Okay, if I have something small to correct the hypo but don't have any carbs though for insulin to work on, won't my readings just level out? I'm sorry to ask so many questions but I don't want to mess up and start my readings swinging like they used to before I cut down on carbs.
 
Hmmmm

Its debatable exactly how much insulin you actually need to cover your meal but if you dont inject any at all, then you are going to find yourself most likely with high bg later on in the evening or probably in the middle of the night as you've got no background insulin about.

I would eat some carb if I was you and inject ????? amount of novomix.
 
Thanks. I'll take another reading before bed and think I'll do as you and Sarah suggest, have a small amount of carbs with small amount of insulin to avoid any trouble in the night. Seems almost going against what I'm trying to do but I've not the courage to go without altogether.
 
Wise decision lol

I know that you want to go low carb but using novomix demands that you do eat some carb in order for it to balance out your bg. I should inject it now if I was you and eat something. Its fairly late so do get up in the middle of the night and test again. Do you know the exact carb content of your evening meal and for the average eve meal how much novo do you normally use? You should be able to work out the dose of novo that you need to use for the meal youve just eaten and also for the snack you are about to eat.
 
I could be wrong, but I don't think it's possible to go low-carb on a mixed insulin.

The ratio of basal insulin to fast acting is fixed: so the amount of carb you have to eat in a day is also theoretically fixed.

If I were you I'd be banging on my diabetes specialist's door demanding to be put on a basal -bolus regime so I would have more control over my blood sugar levels.
 
l0vaduck said:
I could be wrong, but I don't think it's possible to go low-carb on a mixed insulin.

The ratio of basal insulin to fast acting is fixed: so the amount of carb you have to eat in a day is also theoretically fixed.
Click to expand...

No you're not wrong. You can within reason cut down on the amount of carb eaten and inject less insulin but the carb reduction has to be spread out (less carb eaten for main meals and less carb eaten for snacks) otherwise biphasic insulins don't like it.
 
Right, just tested again as I had a headache and it's jumped to 7.6. Now taken 4 units of my insulin and had a slice of seeded bread with cheese spread. Thanks for your advice guys.All good fun!
 
Ahhh

See, we were right :) Do test again about 3am. I dont think you will be hypo but you never know.

Its entirely up to you but if you want to persue low carbing, then you will get much better control by switching to MDI but it does mean doing 4 or 5 injections instead of 2.

I'm off to bed lol. The foxes kept us awake all flaming night :x
 
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