Hello - I've just been on a 3 hour refresher pump course to talk us through some of the options available to us that none of us in the group (around 10 is us) had tried / knew about. It was really useful, so now I have set different insulin sensitivity rates for day and evening and over the weekend I set a new basal pattern to differ from weekdays and weekends. I normally need about 20-30% more during weekdays and have been using a temporary basal rate to deal with this additional insulin.
My question is, I have 10 basal rates set-up through 24 hours on my origanal basal pattern. When setting another basal pattern do people tend to stick to the same time slots as on their normal patterns and just increase the basal within those slots or do people tend to have to create a whole new set of times as well as basal rates?
It really depends on when you see the specific change in your blood sugars. for example if its only evenings that you see an increase in blood sugars then change your settings to comply with this time frame. if however you find that during working hours in the week you are goin low then you will need to decrease your basal rates to co incide with your working hours. look at how the change from your week day differs from your weekends and work out what time these changes occur this is when the cahnges in your settings should occur. there is no use sticking to the same profile pattern if it does not correspond with any relevant change in your activity.
heres an example: during the week you have set up a profile that takes in to consideration how active you may be at work and has a pattern that works during nine to five but with an increase in basal from 5 through till 10pm lets say to compensate for your evening relaxation.
however lets say on a wednesday only you go to a martial arts class between 6pm and 8pm for this you could create a secondary profile on your pump that keeps your work settings the same but drops the basal down 1 hour prior to going to the martial arts class and then resumes to its normal dose some three hours later compensating for your increased level of activity and its after effect.
the next day (thursday) you can revert back to your normal working profile to coincide with your routine activity.
Hope this helps
2 year pump user (very happy with vastly improved blood sugar readings)
Thanks Jon, I was hoping that I could get away with just raising the week slots between 7.30 and 4.30 at a block increase of say 130% (I know this is about right). But, because I run about 5 different rates normally just in this time I wondered whether my weekend rates could be similarly reduced over this period without having to mess around with the time slots if you see what I mean. I was just wandering if this is what others do or does everyone go back to scratch on times as well as rates when setting up different patterns? This question is based on the assumption that your weekdays and weekends and more or less similar I know. It's just with 10 different time slots to taken me a long time to get there and I'm hoping that others may just use the same time slots for different patters and make it work by tweaking the insulin. Sorry if this is not making sense. :crazy:
I know to reduce my basal if we're going out walking or excercising.
Thanks Riri
I have found that with my pump i have a profile set that generically speaking works for a wide spectrum of daily activity ranging from going to work or going shopping with my wife to taking my baby girl to the park. however when im running out my bouncy castles for hire the energy exerted requires me to switch to alternate profiles for short periods these profiles may have exactly the same time frames attached but the value of insulin reduced - for example my current all round profile goes as follows: from 12 midnight to 10am i have a fixed rate 0f 0.75 units per hour at 10 am through till 12midnight it is fixed at 0.80 units per hour this has proven to work for my build type (stick thin and stupidly under weight lol) however my profile for heavy exercise is from 8am till 7pm 0.65 units per hour then from 7pm it goes up to 0.8 units per hour until 11pm when it drops to 0.70 until 8am again. however i only use this second profile when i know im going to be using up lots of energy relevant to my day. what i mean is the 0.8 units per hour at 7pm until 11pm is because of relaxing and taking an evening meal around this sorta time. but then going to bed just after 11pm means i no longer need the 0.8 units and have gone for a reduction down to 0.7 not only to prevent me from going hypo in the night but also to allow for the after effects of heavy exercise which could last a good few hours even after youve stopped exercising.
you can use temporary basal rates for shorter periods of time lets say an unforseen run from A to B that was more exercise than normal you can drop your basal rate to accomodate for it on a temporary bases and not have to change your settings for your day to day profiles.
the best way (unfortunately) is to fast and take lots of blood tests to identify your natural peaks and troughs in your blood sugars. they say doing one every 2 hours n thats fine but if your worried about hour on hour changes you may need to take more than one test every two hours. its a pain because of the pain involved in testing so often. however i know of other people on my course whos profiles look like a series of waves going up and down over twenty four hours and when their circumstances change the wave can either simply shift what hours they fall over or more waves appear more frequently if you catch my drift?
out of intrest what pump make and model have you been issued?
To set a weekend/day off basal all you do is set up another profile move all your everyday basals across then basal test at the weekend. You will then know what needs to be changed
