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Question about insulin absorption and basal rates

michaeltankard

michaeltankard

Newbie
Messages
2
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Pump
Hey there,

I am a pump user, using a Medtronic Veo with Humalog.

I understand that when you bolus for a meal, there will generally be active insulin having an affect on blood sugar levels, even if you were to be disconnected to the pump.

However, lets say it's been about 4 hours since I've last eaten, and the only "active" insulin I have running though me are my basal rates, and lets say my basal rates are 1 unit/hour.

I was wondering if anybody knows how long this it would take for that insulin to stopped being absorbed after disconnecting from the pump.

Thanks,

Mike
 
On a pump the basal and bolus insulin are the same insulin with the same profile of absorption and action. Absorption does not take very long, a few minutes maybe. Then you have the duration of action of the insulin which in the case of Humalog is going to be around 4-5 hours.

However you should not really be taking the pump off for that duration of time, you would begin to risk DKA. An hour or two hours is fine but you may see a slight blip in blood sugar.
 
Spiker said:
On a pump the basal and bolus insulin are the same insulin with the same profile of absorption and action. Absorption does not take very long, a few minutes maybe. Then you have the duration of action of the insulin which in the case of Humalog is going to be around 4-5 hours.

However you should not really be taking the pump off for that duration of time, you would begin to risk DKA. An hour or two hours is fine but you may see a slight blip in blood sugar.
Click to expand...

BUT, when dealing with such a comparable small amount of insulin (1 unit per hour), would the effects be almost unnoticeable?
 
Depends upon how your body reacts... We are all different. I certainly knew if I had a bad set as my levels could go up from 5.0 to 15+ in 2 hours. Others would take 5 hours to get to the levels I would in 2 hours.

I fine tuned by "acting time" getting my basals perfected. Then I ate 10g of carbs without a bolus and got higher levels within 40 minutes. I then did a correction and monitored it every 30mins for 5 hours to find out whether my correction dose was right... But also to see how long it was until my levels balanced at normal. This then told me how long fast acting insulin that was pumping through me lasted in my body.
 
miketank said:
BUT, when dealing with such a comparable small amount of insulin (1 unit per hour), would the effects be almost unnoticeable?
Click to expand...
Well the absence of that 1u/hr is enough to hospitalise you in as little as 24-48 hrs. Even a couple of hours disconnect will have a noticeable effect on BG.
 
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