Hi , I’m travelling to Australia next week , can anyone advise how to manage my insulin with the time zone change? It’s the long acting I’m worried about . Any tips gratefully received.
Insulin management when crossing time zones
- Thread starter Don68
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Hi @Don68
Best way is to set an alarm for taking your basal, as it's a 12 hour time difference you will end up taking am vs pm or vice versa so it's an easy way to manage the difference without too much disruption.
Best way is to set an alarm for taking your basal, as it's a 12 hour time difference you will end up taking am vs pm or vice versa so it's an easy way to manage the difference without too much disruption.
What type of insulin, how often do you inject it?
You could otherwise get away with gradually moving the time by say 4h a day (or even more - I can have that much variability without travelling between an early start work trip or ride vs a lazy weekend, or at the other end of the day between early bed time as tired and a late home after a big night out - the latter is infrequent these days!)
On pre-covid trips to Australia and the USA (when I took a single dose of Abasaglar [lantus] in the evening, and wanted to keep it in the evening) I've started that process before I've left and then finished it once I've arrived. Alternatively if the trip is too short to allow this/the timings don't work very well/you don't want to have to wake up at odd times on the flights, I simply take a proportion of the basal insulin before I leave (the stress/activity of travelling tends to make me go low, so this works itself out quite well and I would prefer to not go hypo on a flight, that's not fun) and then reset the timing to the local timezone as quickly as possible being somewhat careful to reduce dosages across the board as the whole jetlag/stress/tiredness/temperature change messes things up no matter what happens.
Enjoy your trip
You could otherwise get away with gradually moving the time by say 4h a day (or even more - I can have that much variability without travelling between an early start work trip or ride vs a lazy weekend, or at the other end of the day between early bed time as tired and a late home after a big night out - the latter is infrequent these days!)
On pre-covid trips to Australia and the USA (when I took a single dose of Abasaglar [lantus] in the evening, and wanted to keep it in the evening) I've started that process before I've left and then finished it once I've arrived. Alternatively if the trip is too short to allow this/the timings don't work very well/you don't want to have to wake up at odd times on the flights, I simply take a proportion of the basal insulin before I leave (the stress/activity of travelling tends to make me go low, so this works itself out quite well and I would prefer to not go hypo on a flight, that's not fun) and then reset the timing to the local timezone as quickly as possible being somewhat careful to reduce dosages across the board as the whole jetlag/stress/tiredness/temperature change messes things up no matter what happens.
Enjoy your trip
