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Overtreating Hypo what to do?

Spacebadger

Spacebadger

Member
Messages
23
Location
Manchester
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
I've massively over treated my hypo.... What should I do?? Correction dose? Or do I just wait... It's at 16 and still climbing :(
 
I fully understand it can be easy to get carried away when on a massive low..

When did you have the hypo? Are you on MDI?

Personally. if enough time has elapsed with no other issues? (couple of hours.) then correct.. But that's just me..!!

Always keep gauging with the meter!

I'll tag in a few other T1s. there may be a slightly different view? But thasallright. :cool:

@tim2000s @azure @June_C @Diamattic
 
I think you're on the right lines @Jaylee. @Spacebadger, how many carbs did you take in terms of over treating? If you can give insight into that then correcting would be easier.
 
Thanks Jaylee..

It's now at 18 was lowest at 18:25 so that's over an hour ago...

I'm not sure what MDI is? But I'm on humalog 3 times a day, or when I eat, if that helps.
 
I'm not entirley sure, I had 3/4 of a lucazade bottle, and a small chocolate bar, as I freaked out as It didn't seem to be making any difference
 
Spacebadger said:
Thanks Jaylee..

It's now at 18 was lowest at 18:25 so that's over an hour ago...

I'm not sure what MDI is? But I'm on humalog 3 times a day, or when I eat, if that helps.
Click to expand...
MDI?
Multiple Daily Injections. (Nothing too fancy!) Which sounds like it applies to your good self!

How low did you go?
 
Spacebadger said:
I'm not entirley sure, I had 3/4 of a lucazade bottle, and a small chocolate bar, as I freaked out as It didn't seem to be making any difference
Click to expand...
Golden rule is to wait 20mins for the lucozade to work and try not to panic. 100 ml of lucozade is about right and then after 20 mins do a bg test and then eat a 10g carb biscuit if the Humalog is still active. If its nearly at its end, then all that's needed will be the lucozade.

We all make mistakes though so you know now what to do.

You will need to do a correction because of eating the chocolate bar so use your correction factor dose to bring your bg back to your bg target. .....the 100 rule explains the correction dose so if you don't know, Google it.
 
Bit late here, but I'd correct too. If it was close to bedtime, I'd correct by slightly less to avoid the risk of a hypo at night, which makes me nervous. I'd also probably test at night if I'd corrected.

Lucozade is a great hypo treatment, but it's pretty concentrated so you don't need a huge amount. I find it starts working for me within five minutes (I timed its effect once) but continues to work for a while after.

I get how easy it is to eat too much, especially when it seems your BS isn't coming up. That's a frightening feeling.

I hope you're all sorted now :)
 
It looks like I'm odd one out here, but I wouldn't correct straight after a hypo! My BG reading before my next meal after treating a hypo is always slightly high, but I always wait until my next bg reading (second meal after hypo) before deciding whether to adjust or not. I've been told that it's ok that your next reading is high, as your liver will store a lot of this in its glucagon stores for next hypo/exercise. However, if you are sure that you have over compensated (and with a reading of 18 it sounds like that's the case), I think a (small) correction dose would be sensible, to ensure you aren't too high or low during the night.

I agree with the other commenters in that 100-150ml lucozade would be enough for me for a hypo of 3. I don't know how others judge it but if my hypo is between 3-4, I will have 100-150mls, if between 2-3, 150-200mls, and if under 2 I would probably have about 300mls (this could be too much, but with such a low reading, I would be comfortable over shooting the lucozade). Chocolate is not the best for hypos as it contains fat and so takes longer to absorb. After I've had my 'fast carbs' and are over 4, I have 'slow carbs' to avoid my bg levels dropping again. This can be my next meal, or a couple of biscuits depending on how close my next meal is. I have been guilty of eating more than my hypo needed on several occasions, sometimes a wee bit extra carbs just settles that shaky feeling :)
 
Hypos are tricky if you don't know the cause.. If you do know the cause - maybe to much basal/bolus, exercise etc. they can be solved with some math.

When you have a low and treat it, you still need to do your normal maths for checking bolus. If you are at 2.5mmol/L and you know 10g of carbs will raise you 2.5mmol/L then you need to you limit yourself to those 10-15g of carbs.

When I get a low and feel that ridiculous hunger, i will eat those first 10-15g of carbs, and then take an injection for the remaining pig-out session because i know over treating is a terrible feeling.

But you have have to either limit your treatment to the required amount and check again, or inject.

In your case, I would look back and try to count the carbs that you ate, and bolus for that (minus the 15g you needed for treatment) Once you do that all you can do is wait about 1-2 hours and check again and see if its going up, or down.. if its still going up wait another hours and check again, and treat for that number.
 
What I do in this situation is I estimate how many carbs I "actually" needed to normalise my sugar (e.g. 20g) and subtract that from how much I ate (e.g. 60g) and bolus for the difference (40g in this case).

Because of the effect of highs on my moods, I often bolus extra and have a snack later. This means I'm high for less time.
 
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