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TAKEN INSULIN BUT SUGARS KEEP RISING

N

Nicklenocky

Well-Known Member
Messages
56
Hi All

I am having one of those days where I dont understand a thing about whats happening with my blood (I seem to have them often!)

I went to sleep last night at 11.15pm with a blood reading of 6.7...from experience I know this will not get me through the night so as usual i have a small cup of porridge, no change to my routine.

This morning I wake up at 7.15am and its 10.3...I am distraught! I usually wake up in the 5's doing the same thing every day.

Since I am in this experimenting stage of my diabetes in a bid to get good control I thought that today would be a good time to see how much one unit of novorapid brings me down as I dont know exactly and it seems there is no risk of hypo with 10.3....so I took i unit of novorapid.

My readings so far:

7.15am- 10.3 take just one unit of novorapid
8.30am- 10.3
9.10am- 10.3
10.45am- 12.3!!! Gutted i take one unit of novorapid
11.10am- 13.2 Even more gutted!

Please note I havnt eaten a single thing....except a multi-vitiman and folic acid tablet.

I am racking my brains to whats gone wrong here....the insulin hasnt dropped my sugars at all...I am tempted to take more insulin now but I dont want to stack up the doses.

Can anyone shed some light here...I give up and think I will go have a biscuit!
 
How are you feeling otherwise?

It could be that you are ill, maybe fighting off a bug of some kind or other.
Illness does cause your sugars to climb and your insulin requirements can be quite spectacular when sick. I think my record was around 120U in a single 24 hour period when sick.

If you are feeling a little ill then you need to do a few things:
1) DON'T stop taking your insulin
2) Keep your fluid intake up, higher sugar will cause you to dehydrate a little faster
3) Test regularly
4) Check for ketones in your blood or urine.

If you aren't ill then continue as usual.

I have found that injecting anything below 2 or 3 units doesn't always seem to take.

What you can try in order to work out the effects of 1U is have your normal breakfast and usual dose then add the extra unit there. This will give you the data you are after and you can use it to get an accurate number.

One calculation I have seen, which seems to work, but no one has ever explained the logic behind it is.
100 / Total Daily Insulin

So if I were to take yesterday I would go:
100 / (12U Levemir + 5U Rapid + 5U Rapid + 9U Rapid + 32U Levemir)
so: 100/63 = 1.58mm/l per U
Now to be safe I round up and assume that 1U will drop my sugars by 2mmol/l.

This is actually not far off what my true value is, I work on 2mmol/l per U which works quite well.

One thing to bear in mind is that many of the quick acting insulins willl keep working for 3 to 5 hours so be carefuly you don't end up "chasing your sugars".

Best thing is track your sugars as you are but add the correction on when you have your next meal, unless your sugars are very high.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Good luck.

A
 
Hi Andy

Thanks so much for taking the time to write.

I am feeling fine at the moment, not ill, unless I am about to be ill...I hope not :sick:

I have to say that i usually find taking 1 or 2 units of quick acting works for me...I am usually able to correct highs with the odd unit or so, however this is always once I have eaten and there is the previous insulin injection still working.

I like your suggestion of adding extra to the breakfast to see how far one unit will bring me down, I suppose I just need to be very accurate when dosing insulin to my food so I can see the true effect of that extra one unit. It seems to be a hit and miss with me...I eat the same for breakfast and supper every day, sometimes my blood is great, sometimes I am a bit higher than usual, sometimes the breakfast seems to keep working longer than usual, sometimes it runs out after 2 and half hours...and then there are days like today where I am just clueless, really disheartening when you dont understand.

Anyway thank you for your input and I will try to give your suggestion a go.
 
Having that standard meal will help for the moment while you get to grips with it.
Carb counting is a skill that you will eventually learn. If no one has mentioned it ask at your diebetes clinic about getting on a DAFNE course.

In the meantime this is a very useful resource: http://www.bdec-e-learning.com/welcome.asp
It helped me a great deal in the first few weeks after diagnosis.

Another thing to remember is that even if you do have the same meal and same insulin things are different day to day. Your level of activity may be different, stress levels different or any of a load of other factors can have an effect on your sugars.

Good luck with it and don't sweat the occasional blip. If you control is generally good having a bad day shouldn't hurt.

Andy
 
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