I have always had high HbA1c readings, but was recently offered a diabetes awareness course by our local diabetes support team, aimed specifically at type 1 sufferers. It was over four weeks, with one day a week attendance, and it opened my eyes considerably, as a iot of the information I had been given over the years was either wrong or more aimed a type 2 diabetics.
As well as diet, exercise, stress and other factors, they taught a small group of us how to calculate our basal dose correctly, and then how to calculate the bolus units to carbohydrate intake. These values are different for everybody with diabetes, and it turned out that the reason I was going high was due to injecting too much basal insulin (which was completely counter-intuitive to me).
Basically, ensure that you eat at least 4 hours before going to sleep (and drink only water). Prior to sleeping, measure your blood sugar and note the result. Then test again immediately on waking and see if your blood sugar is at the same level, give or take a bit, as the previous night. Testing over a week, this allowed us to judge whether our basal amounts were right: if the morning values were lower, then we were injecting too much; higher values indicated not enough of a basal dose. By adjusting in one or two unit increments over the next week, we were all pretty much consistent.
For the duration of the course, we also had to keep food diaries, noting total carbohydrate intakes (from the nutritional values printed on packaged foods and from reference publications), along with times of eating and bolus injection times and amounts. We were then able to work out what our individual carb to units values were, with guidance from the diabetes nurses and dieticians. These can vary depending on food GI values, stress, exercise, etc, but this should then give you a better idea of what to inject and when.
There was a lot more information on the course, and the guidance we all received on our own individual diabetes was amazing. If your LHA can offer you a similar course, then I would advise anyone with type 1 to take advantage of it.
For me, the end result is that my HbA1c has dropped 13% in the past 5 months, and continues to do so. Whilst still too high, I am feeling a lot better and more in control of the condition.
If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to provide my attempt at answers (I'm not a trained healthcare provider), or try to point you in the right direction of someone who can.