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Pre meal testing

S

sw11bloke

Well-Known Member
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Location
Battersea London
If you test your blood before a meal and your reading is say 10 or higher, Do you inject and then wait till your blood sugar is under 7 and then eat or do you just inject and eat?
I want to hear from type 1's who have an HBA1C of 7% or under.
 
Hi

Using a pump if my bg was 10mmol or higher, I would deliver the correction first and then wait about 1-2hrs for the bg to drop to at least 8mmol or a bit lower and then bolus for the carb.
 
iHs said:
Hi

Using a pump if my bg was 10mmol or higher, I would deliver the correction first and then wait about 1-2hrs for the bg to drop to at least 8mmol or a bit lower and then bolus for the carb.
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Interesting... I've never heard of that before. Why do you do that? And how do you manage the self restraint?!?

Wrongly or rightly I would do the correction with my meal bolus and continue to eat as normal. Usually if its a free meal BG test my meal is on it's way in the next 10-15 minutes so delaying by an hour or two would leave me starving!
 
Yup, I do the correction with the meal. As I'm using Accu-chek, it's all kinda automatic anyway. Personally (for what it's worth) if I'm on my own & it's above 13(ish), I probably don't need a meal & it can wait a bit for the correction to start.
This is much the same as you're doing, but with a bit more "relaxed" threshold. That said, since I've been on a pump (3 months ago), it doesn't go up that high anywhere near as often & I'm pretty aware of it going above 10 with "listless arms" & hot sweaty bouts.


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I think its because I've been type 1 for a very long time now that I don't like to chance 'rocking the boat' too much so I would rather wait a bit for my bg to lower and then eat a meal otherwise I dread just how much I would spike having a carb meal on 10mmol within the first 2hrs even though a correction would be delivered with the meal bolus. My correction factor would still give me a bg level of 10mmol or just under, 1hr after delivering it without the meal bolus.

I tend to test my bg levels about 20mins before eating a meal so that if I do have to do a correction, I can delivered it early. I would love to be able to eat whatever amount of carb I wanted even if my bg levels were high just by delivering the correction and the meal bolus and hey presto bg levels all fall back to normal within 4-5hrs. If only bolus/basal was that good..
 
I wouldn't worry too much. I've been T1 for 39 years, so it's all kinda "second nature" now. You're probably more than expert to sort things out. I gotta say, a pump still seems pretty good after spending 5 years trying to get one!


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sw11bloke said:
If you test your blood before a meal and your reading is say 10 or higher, Do you inject and then wait till your blood sugar is under 7 and then eat or do you just inject and eat?
I want to hear from type 1's who have an HBA1C of 7% or under.
Click to expand...


Wherever possible I try and test my bg half an hour before eating, if it were 10 then I'd take a correction does straight away then inject for my food 10-15 mins before eating(depending on the food), with two injections being a small time frame it's not problematic postprandial but does seem to counteract a big bg spike.

It's only my experience and may not work for everyone....
 
I'd try to avoid that situation entirely - test after eating, and don't wait until the next meal which is hours away to correct a high.

Yes, I know DAFNE is big on testing before meals rather than testing after meals but I disagree - if post-meal BG is fine then so will be the BG before the next meal but you needlessly delay a correction if one is needed.
 

Testing 2 hours after you still have active insulin. If you take a correction you risk a hypo before your next meal
 
In your "usual day" how do you "do" lunch, say? What's the procedure you find works?
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Dunno - have breakfast at 7:00, test BG at 9:00, eat lunch at 13:00, test again at 15:00. If BG is high after a meal then I use a correction dose and test again later.

Testing 2 hours after you still have active insulin. If you take a correction you risk a hypo before your next meal
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Obviously one would include that in the calculation, duh.

If you have good control then you know that your BG has to be 7 mmol/l, say, after a meal to fall to acceptable levels before your next meal. You know that if your BG is 11, say, mmol/l then it will still be high before the next meal. You also know how much insulin you need to inject to lower BG by 4 mmol/l.
BG does not fluctuate randomly - if you record your BG results then you have hundreds of data points that show how BG changes, and when it needs to be at certain times of the day.

In any case, it also ignores the obvious: you would obviously test your BG again, and correct the correction if necessary.
 
I've just completed the DAFNE course and the advice from there is to do correction with your dose for meal and eat straight away. Works well for me and the others on the course with me



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As others have said, correction dose with mealtime injections is fine. If I find myself at 7 or 8 between meals (I.e. 2 hours or more after eating) I'll give myself a unit because I know that 1 unit will drop my BGs by 2mmol/l as I'd rather be at 5 or 6 instead of 7 or 8. I'd only recommend doing this if you are not prone to swings. I'm not, so its a-ok!
 
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