Type 1 My blood sugar stays low for a while

[Dontberudd]

So I would get a hypo and then I take my regular hypo sweets and my blood sugar doesn’t go up. I take it again once more, it stays like that. I try something else and it goes up a tiny bit then goes back down. This lasts for a long time. Then I just decide to just leave it cause it makes no sense for me to be eating all that sugar for me to still be low. I then go to bed or do something for a couple of hours and my blood sugar goes to extremely high lengths. It’s like the glucose goes somewhere else for a bit then decides to go into my bloodstream all in go making it so high.
I don’t get what this is.
I’ve had diabetes since I was 1 years old so it’s been a while. I don’t know if this means my body’s shutting down

 

[EllieM]

Hi @Dontberudd and welcome to the forums. Can I ask what sort of insulin regime you are on? Given that you are in the UK I'd hope that you might become eligible for a pump? I assume you've got a cgm? Would it help to start treating at a slightly higher level?

I must admit my hypo treatment seems to take longer to act than it used to, but having a pump (last 5 months) does seem to make them easier to handle and that could be a reason to put to your diabetic team if you want one but don't have one.

The other point is that cgms tend to lag behind real life so make it look as though your bg is still low when in fact it's on the way up?

I assume those are hypos when you feel hypo and not possible erroneous ones from your cgm??? (My dexcom has a bad habit of reading low and it's really easy to overtreat a hypo, even with a pump.)

Hopefully some other T1s will have suggestions, but once more, welcome.

 

[Dontberudd]

Hi @Dontberudd and welcome to the forums. Can I ask what sort of insulin regime you are on? Given that you are in the UK I'd hope that you might become eligible for a pump? I assume you've got a cgm? Would it help to start treating at a slightly higher level?

I must admit my hypo treatment seems to take longer to act than it used to, but having a pump (last 5 months) does seem to make them easier to handle and that could be a reason to put to your diabetic team if you want one but don't have one.

The other point is that cgms tend to lag behind real life so make it look as though your bg is still low when in fact it's on the way up?

I assume those are hypos when you feel hypo and not possible erroneous ones from your cgm??? (My dexcom has a bad habit of reading low and it's really easy to overtreat a hypo, even with a pump.)

Hopefully some other T1s will have suggestions, but once more, welcome.

Hi and thank you

I am on carb counting so I take it 10:1 ratio. Toujeo once in the morning for the long term insulin and fiasp everytime I eat. I also take metformin 2x a day cause I’m insulin resistant

I have a freestyle libre and you’re right. It could just be the machine but I also still feel low. I can try checking the machine too cause it may just be in a innacurate

So I have been waiting for a pump and they said I’d have to wait for a few months for it to be issued! But how would that help me with this issue?

 

[EllieM]

So I have been waiting for a pump and they said I’d have to wait for a few months for it to be issued! But how would that help me with this issue?

You get less hypos on a pump because it suspends insulin delivery when it predicts that you are going to go low.

How confident are you that your insulin ratios and basal rates are right? ( To be honest, an insulin ratio of 1 to 10g doesn't sound that insulin resistant to me, that's the starting ratio that they tend to use for new diabetics.) And if your ratios and rates are wrong that makes everything much harder to manage, including hypos.

How about your blood sugar after meals? Are meal carbs being absorbed slowly?

 

[Deleted member 527103]

CGMs can make hypos appear to last longer due to the way they predict the interstitial fluid delay.
Therefore, it is ALWAYS recommended to check hypo recovery with a finger prick.

 

[Dontberudd]

You get less hypos on a pump because it suspends insulin delivery when it predicts that you are going to go low.

How confident are you that your insulin ratios and basal rates are right? ( To be honest, an insulin ratio of 1 to 10g doesn't sound that insulin resistant to me, that's the starting ratio that they tend to use for new diabetics.) And if your ratios and rates are wrong that makes everything much harder to manage, including hypos.

How about your blood sugar after meals? Are meal carbs being absorbed slowly?

But if I am not on metformin 2x a day, the 10:1 ratio doesn’t work and it would be much higher

Even after I eat an apple, it absorbs very quickly and it goes up a couple of numbers before going down on its own very quickly. So it goes up to 12 or 13

 

[Dontberudd]

CGMs can make hypos appear to last longer due to the way they predict the interstitial fluid delay.
Therefore, it is ALWAYS recommended to check hypo recovery with a finger prick.

This also happens with my finger prick too sometimes

And if I’ve eaten a very high sugar couple of snacks the night before, my blood sugar would be stable since I took the right insulin but same thing in a couple of hours, it shoot’s up so fast to extremely high

 

[SimonP78]

Do you still have IoB when you're going hypo? If so it can take ages to come back up and once this happens whatever hasn't been used to counter the hypo helps to make you hyper.

 

[Jasmin2000]

Not sure if relevant but when I have a low at night it takes 2-3 times longer to come back in range than during the day. Digestion shuts down after you stop eating and needs to reboot - I can literally hear the stomach gurgling start about 30 minutes after taking some sugar for a nighttime low.