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Jet lag - Radical Changes in insulin doses, hyperglycemias...

bhk

bhk

Well-Known Member
Messages
49
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Hi everyone,


I tend to travel different time zones several times a year because I travel quite regularly, and I noticed that my body needs in insulin are always more or less unrecognizable.


I just travelled a "6 hours time zone" westbound, 4 days ago, and I am suffering from it. I eat basically the same food, I still train 6x/week, and I am injecting 200% of my lantus dose and 200% of my humalog doses, I am almost always in a light hyperglycaemia and I eat way less carbs than I used to. I am always hungry, loosing weight and wondering if experiences like that have happened to you when traveling across different time zones.


Thanks!
 
I've travelled a lot with mdi and not seen anything like this. Have you spoken to your diabetes team about what is happening?
 
I am seeing them in 2 weeks. Facts for this time is I travelled from Europe to Canada (where I live), where the weather is way colder and with a 6 hours time difference. To explain such an increase in the insulin needs, my hypothesis are :

- sudden change of temperature (10dgrs celsius to -17)
- a non apparent infection (not causing any symptoms, but affecting the hormonal system)
- a sudden production of antibodies that target insulin proteins
- most likely, a high production of cortisol, as I did some research on the web, reading parts of different university studies to find out that after an important time zone change, the corticosteroids (such as cortisol, which produce glucose) produced by the body are really high, and can take from 15 days to 3 months to adjust.

I might be somehow sensitive to this. If anyone has travel experiences like that, feel free to share please !!
 
I have had the same experience recently. I traveled from UK to Philippines, 8 hours difference, but I went from 4 to 32 degrees. I had to increase my basal by 50 % and bolus too, but still had some odd hypers. I lessened my carb intake, but nothing seemed to sort it out and stabilise it. I was there for 3 weeks, and it took another 2 weeks when I returned to UK to normalise my basal and bolus needs. I even took a new batch of insulin because I thought it might have been affected by the temperature ( even though I stored it in Frio wallets) but it didn't help.
 
I have different carb to insulin ratios for different times of the day and I find it takes 3-4 days for my body to adjust to the new time zone so I tend to work on uk time for a while.
It's a bit of trial and error.
Sorry prob not a helpful post, just my experience.


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