Quick question ....basal testing

drink lots of water can reduce your reading

 

Decaf coffee will be fine, you could even put cream in instead of milk if you wanted to.
No drink will lower your levels but sugar/caffeine feee drinks won’t affect them at all.

Good luck with your testing! I hate basal testing

 

A black coffee should be fine for a basal test.....how many hours are you doing....

 

No it won't reduce your reading, the OP is type 1.

 

Hope it goes quick for you!

 

Well, I hope it goes steady for you...

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Diabetes.co.uk Forum mobile app

 

Coffee always spikes me, so I would avoid it when basal testing. I'm not averse to a mug of hot water if desperate!



Edited to say - just under an hour to go, @Postleneo - hope all's well!

Edited again as I reread OP and realised it's decaf coffee rather than the high octane stuff - to be honest I would probably still stick to water.

 

Hi, I keep reading about basal testing. What is this, I've never heard of it?

 

Basal testing is when you don’t eat carbs for a few hours and test your BG every hour to make sure your basal rate is working properly.
E.g. carb free breakfast at 7am, test every hour until 1pm when you can have normal lunch. You would then do the same for lunch and dinner on different days.

Bg is much easier to control when you’re basal is right.

 

Your bolus, fast acting shots take care of meals, whereas your basal long acting takes care of stuff between meals. If your basal is set right, it should hold you steady at about the same level for hours on end if you're not eating. If it's too low, your levels will rise even without food. If it's too high, you'll drop and need to snack between meals. So, it's a good idea from time to time to do a basal test by, well, just sitting around for eight hours and not doing much and see if your levels stay about the same. Wait until your last bolus has worn out, usually about 4 or 5 hours, don't eat anything. I often just have a long lie in on a Saturday and then see how it's panned out overnight - easier with libre or cgm but you can do it with strips too. Or just miss evening meal so that your lunch bolus has worn off and you have no fast acting insulin on board and sit in front of the telly with a box set, test every hour or so for about 6 to 8 hours and see if it holds steady.

 

Thank you for your replies, this makes sense! I have been diabetic for 26 yrs and have never been told to do this!! I will try it next weekend.

 

Like you no Consultant/DSN/Doctor ever explained to me about basal testing. I've been diabetic for almost as long as you - perhaps we just fell in an education "black hole". I only learned it from forums like this.
Getting the correct basal dosage is so important, unless that is right, everything else is just an impossible uphill struggle.
It should be the first item in any form of diabetes education.
Having a CGM/Libre makes basal testing much easier & more accurate.

 

I have always found my levels easy to control, but the last couple of years have been struggling. Hopefully this will help me sort them out!

 

I am currently testing my Basal at the moment. Here's what i am seeing, let me know your opinion.

14Units of Levimir at 10pm, seems to raise my blood sugar from 1.5 to 2.5 overnight.
6Units at 7am, I seem to stay stable until 1pm until lunch.
What I noticed today was that my correction did drop me by about 5mmol after about 3hours, but from the 4th hour onward, I think my levels are raising slightly until dinner time.

Is it possible the morning Leimir is running out after 8-9hours and needs to be upped? I guess the next step is a no carb lunch, and see how levels are going to dinner then...


Sorry, don't mean to hijack the thread.

 

For me, I drink normally.... coffee with milk whenever I normally do..

My personal feason for this is that it doesnt matter what I do I always have copious amounts of beverages...

There is an exception to this... only for operations at hospital and for those occassions I then do copious amounts of basal testing the two weeks before my ops are due without eating or drinking for extended times beyond basal testing... ie stomach investigations can have greater impact on insulin needs due to the bowel emptying procedures the patients have to do before hand. Otger ops when I know I wont eat from (for example) 6pm the night before to 6pm the night after then I basal test that time fully...

I foubd that adding my copios amounts of beverages in each day really affected my basal testing... there was no way it was accurate..

I actually mainly only eat once a day anyway so pretty much basal test naturally. If I then altered my insulin to without the beverages it would be totally wrong.

 

I am testing my basal this morning, do I have to drink water or can I have sugar free squash?