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Injecting before or after meals
- Thread starter Don66
- Start Date
porl69
Well-Known Member
I nearly always inject before meals as it stops/prevents and spikes in your BGs (as long as the timing is right
)
K
Knikki
Guest
I agree with @porl69 I think best practise is to inject before a meal depending on what insulin your suing it can be anything up to 20minutes before eating.
Saying that if I am really low like 2.9 and about to eat then no I will inject afterwards.
D
Deleted Account
Guest
Whilst the "best practice" is to inject before eating, this is not always possible. For example, if you are eating out and don't know if you will like what you have ordered. I don't think it is not going to kill you or lead to any major complications if you sometimes inject after eating.
Fast acting insulin does not act immediately and the speed at which it acts varies from person to person. Food is not digested immediately ... and different food are digested at different rates. In an ideal world (and with a healthy pancreas) the insulin peak should match the food peak to avoid any BG spikes (and lows).
With some experience you may start to notice foods which appear to take longer to digest resulting in a BG spike. Some people split their insulin to match the later spike. I would say this is Advanced insulin injecting which few people do at the start of injecting and many people never do.
Fast acting insulin does not act immediately and the speed at which it acts varies from person to person. Food is not digested immediately ... and different food are digested at different rates. In an ideal world (and with a healthy pancreas) the insulin peak should match the food peak to avoid any BG spikes (and lows).
With some experience you may start to notice foods which appear to take longer to digest resulting in a BG spike. Some people split their insulin to match the later spike. I would say this is Advanced insulin injecting which few people do at the start of injecting and many people never do.
Don66
Active Member
Thank you for this info
Ideally you are matching the insulin activity to the release of glucose into the bloodstream.
Different insulins have different activity profiles - each manufacturer provides a pretty graph of available insulin vs time for each insulin they make. NB these graphs are averages over thousands of measurements and probably won't exactly fit you
Our glucose, well my glucose anyway, comes mostly from carbs, and they vary as to how fast they produce glucose. If you're going to eat pure sugar (as fast as it gets) inject way ahead of eating. White bread is faster than brown bread etc. For me, cheese delays glucose production enough that if I eat fondue I can't inject before eating. YMMV
And the absolutely most irritating thing of all? It's all entirely dependent on your metabolism, which means something that works for one person may or may not work for you.
Injecting after meals? Test your blood glucose and see how high you spike, then decide if you are OK going that high.
Different insulins have different activity profiles - each manufacturer provides a pretty graph of available insulin vs time for each insulin they make. NB these graphs are averages over thousands of measurements and probably won't exactly fit you
Our glucose, well my glucose anyway, comes mostly from carbs, and they vary as to how fast they produce glucose. If you're going to eat pure sugar (as fast as it gets) inject way ahead of eating. White bread is faster than brown bread etc. For me, cheese delays glucose production enough that if I eat fondue I can't inject before eating. YMMV
And the absolutely most irritating thing of all? It's all entirely dependent on your metabolism, which means something that works for one person may or may not work for you.
Injecting after meals? Test your blood glucose and see how high you spike, then decide if you are OK going that high.
