• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Newbee

B

burtybob

Member
Messages
24
HI all,very new to all this!! diagnosed type 1 on the 3-10-08, had a 5 day stay in hospital as i was very ill at the time. Im on lantus & novorapid & still trying to get my bs stable (failing miserably). i just cant seem to get my head round it all as there is so much 2 learn, does it get easier?

36 yo male
type 1
 
hya burtybob,
i too take the same meds as u ,you may be in the honeymoon phase which will make control harder,it does get easier in time,any questions u have please ask and someone will know the answer :D
amanda(also 36)
 
Hiya BurtyBob.
I have been type 1 for 28 years, personally i cant tell you its gets easier but you will get the hang of it, especially with the help of some super people on this forum.

You will probably gets lots of advice, some may even be contradictory , but the best way is to be informed and work out whats best for you..... this may take some time, I am still learning and changing things even now.

For me... I find the basic things that keep me stable are;
1) A daily routine ( keeping my eating ,injecting & exercise times & habits "similar" each day
2) Regular daily testing
3) Not too many Carbohydrates

But most of all dont panic and dont worry yourself too much , none of us are perfect and we have lives to lead !
My mum always said to me when i was little, "Dont lets diabetes control you, you control your diabetes"
 
thankyou 2 all replies, much appreciated, i have so many Q"s i dont no where 2 start!!
wot food should/shouldn't i eat? might be a good place 2 start i think. (put on nearly 2 stone since leaving hospital)
 
Undiaosed T1 makes you lose weight. Getting Bgs right will stop that. Insulin makes you gain weigght.
somewhere in ther is your answer.
A lot of us on here keep to a reduced carb diet. No sugar and as low as you can on starches. That reduces the insulin demand. Helps with the weight thing. Yes it does work for T1!!

What doses are you on? Were you shown how to get your bolus dose right or just told "take this much (and feed your insulin)"
You need to work out an appropriate Basal dose first and then adjust. It takes a while to get to grips with this. Try the D-solve site for guidance.
 
once again thanku all,its great 2 no im not alone!!!!

hanadr-i have 10ml of lantus & novorapid b4 breakfast,5 novorapid at lunch,16 at dinner and 50 lantus at bedtime. told 2 go & get on with it!!!

had a HbA1c test last week- 14.8
 
81 units overall is quite a lot of insulin. and no-one telling you how to match the dose to what you eat! Go yell at them and demand to be sent on the DAFNE course or whichever version of it your PCT runs.
Dose Adjustment For Normal Eating.
Unless you were so stunned you have forgotten something they told you, ( perfectly possible and understandable) what seems to have happened is that you have been thrown in at the deep end without a bouyancy aid. this isn't fair to you and doesn't comply with NICE guidelines. Start by looking on the D-Solve website.
You've so much to learn, it's difficult even to decide what you need first.
You need to try to get bgs into the non-diabetic range. You need a meter to see what your BGs are.Do you have one? You need a book. the best is Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes solution, but you probably need to know more before that would help you much. Look at David Mendosa's website. He has pages for Newbies. Don't get thrown off by the American units. the conversion factor is 18. Divide their numbers by 18( ?/2=x then x/9) Then there's Blood sugar 101 and D-solve. Between those you'll get information overload and then start to see the wood for the trees. Your final solution will be individual to you.
 
Hi burtybob,

It's a lot to take in at first, so take it at whatever pace you're comfortable with. Priority no.1 is to get those blood sugars down to a healthy level. From there you will beable to get them stable and predictable so diabetes doesn't get the better of you. The fine details we can sort out later.

All the best,

fergus
 
As Fergus says its bewildering at first, not least getting over the idea that you have type 1 (which I always thought only children got) I was diagnosed almost 4 years ago and remember being in a daze for much of the first few days in hospital. I was lucky though to have quite a lot of 'education' .

When I came out of hospital I had been told to eat regular meals. That is at regular times and with a fixed amount of carbohydrate in each meal. I wasn't too happy about it as I had an irregular lifestyle but it did enable me to learn to adjust my bolus and basal insulin according to my BG. I was told to test several times a day (fasting and 2 hours after breakfast, before and 2 hours after lunch and dinner and at bedtime, also before, during and after exercise ). Being consistant with the amount of carbs enabled me to get a grasp on what my body was doing and importantly just exactly how much insulin I needed for every 10 grams of carbohydrate.. As you will hear often, we all vary. I can now be far more flexible with both timing and amount.


The number of carbs you 'need' will depend upon your body, your ideal weight and your lifestyle. If you were not given any indication of the number, I would hope that someone at least suggested the type of meals appropriate for you or that you see the dietitian soon.

To work out the carbs contained in your meals you need to get hold of a book of nutrition tables as sold for dieters Try to get one that gives the figures as carbs per 100gms it makes a calculator less necessary. For processed foods you can use the figures on the packets. Use digital scales to weigh foods rather than guess at first. Its particularly necessary with foods such as pasta, potatoes, rice and bread which are carb dense

Rather than try to describe insulin adjustment . I suggest you add to your reading list and read this excellent page about how basal/bolus regimes work complete with charts on adjusting insulin according to results here.
http://medweb.bham.ac.uk/easdec/prevention/lantusnotes.htm


Its quite detailed so it needs very careful reading. As it is from an NHS source I would think that its methods would be acceptable, however, if you decide to try it , you should check with your doctor or nurse that this method would be appropriate for you (particularly that they agree with the amounts suggested for lowering, raising insulin for differing BG leves)


Thats enough, probably too much and probaly too diadatic (sorry!) As others say it does get easier, honestly it does. :)
 
Hi burtybob

The head spining does slow down, and yes you will get your head around it all... once you Know what carbs are and where the little demonds can be found and what quanitites of carbs and how they react to you individualy is the most important bit of how well you are going to control your diabetes....

So how does one find out the above information?

Good monitoring practices....

Not only recording the BG's that you've been told about, which are as follows before breakfast, 2 hours after, before each meal and 2 hours after and before bedtime...

But what is needed as well, is a dairy of what you eat at these meals and any snacks you've eaten in between, not only the the actual food/s item you eat i.e dinner was potatoes, meat and veg but xxx weight of mashed potatoe ect... and a carb count for each item.... and where the earth do you find about carbs and how to count them.... You need to buy a carb couting book that dieters use such as collins gem... And a set of scales is a good idea as well...

You also need to write down what you are doing i.e exercise, stress and if you are unwell, whether you are on a day off working etc, when I say exercise not just whether you've been for a long walk or on a tread mill for 2 hours but whether you've done all the houes work after your dinner... this all has a impact to how your body deals with both insulin and carbs within your body... Your diabetic team will love you for it, the more complete and comprehensive picture/daiary that you can show them the easier it is for them and they can help you so much more....

You will be able to see how any type of carbs raises your glucose levels, but how much a unit of insulin will drop your glucose level which is just as important to know... Then you can decide what you want to do with handling that particular carb, it could be that you are happy to cut it out from your eating plan, or maybe a cut in the portions size might work better... Or you could adtapt they way you inject your insulin to cover it etc....

As you look through the forum, you need to keep in mind that thre are both type 1 and type 2 which will have a slight difference in how one will deal with the answers to carbs within a diet... T2's are limited to how they might deal with certain carbs, such as potatoes, pasta, rice and bread as there problems stem from resistendance to insulin in there bodies, where T1's basically do not have insulin so we have to inject the insulin so with correct dose of insulin and how we inject we can more often than not still enjoy the foods that we always ate, either as normal or with some adaptation to portion size or how we inject to maintain a good BG levels...
 
No I don't mind you asking burtybob

I had major problems with control, which was based in the main with sensitivity to insulin, also my basal requirements actually change quite a bit to what I'm doing...

The smallest amount of insulin that can be delivered by insulin pen or syringe is 0.5 units at one go... My pump can deliver a 0.1u of insulin and I can program this to be delivered over a period of time to suit.. And for me it is suprising how much differece that this minute amount and it's timing can make in control...If you take into concideration that 0.5u of insulin can drop my BG by about 4-7mmol/l's can get pretty scary at times... the pump over comes this...
 
Back
Top