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Temporary Basal Rate on Pump

Tracyann35

Well-Known Member
Hi, when I'm setting a temp basal rate for exercise if I set it at 30% does this mean 30 % less insulin running through me? Having lots of issues with hypos after exercise anyone else have these problems with their pump?
tia
 
Hi @Tracyann35 , what pump are you on?

Mine's an Accuchek Insight, and the following is how mine works:
If you view your NORMAL basal rate as 100%, setting a TBR of 30% means you are setting it at just less than a third of your standard rate - so, 30% OF your normal amount, not 30% OFF your normal amount.

So if your normal basal is, say, one whole unit per hour, setting a TBR of 30% means you will be on 0.3 units per hour.

If you want to set a TBR which is 30% LESS than your normal amount, you need to set your TBR as 70%, i.e. 100% MINUS 30%.

Does that make sense?

Do bear in mind though that I only know about the Insight pump - other pumps might do this differently!

Once I've set a TBR, my pump's screen does tell me how that translates into actual units per hour, so that's a good way of checking that I've set what I intended to set!

Love Snapsy
 
I have an Animas. The way my temporary basal works is +30% or -30% (or which ever percentage you choose).
+30% will result in 130% of my usual basal.
-30% will result in 70% of my usual basal.

Not sure if this is the same on the Insight.
Is there a + or - sign? If so, likely to be the same
 
I wonder why they're not all the same?! With the Insight it's different to yours in that it's a plain percentage - so 100% is the whole rate, and you change the percentage in relation to the whole.

Would be nice if they were all the same?!

 
Tracyann35 said:
My dietician just told me reducing to 30% means 30% less? Or maybe I'm just having a blonde day!!!
Click to expand...
No, and please tell her to check! On the Insight, reducing to 30% means reducing BY 70%!

I don't have the manual to hand, I'm afraid. But if you're really not sure please give Accuchek a call and they can talk you through it.

For instance I'm on 0.60u basal at this time of day. Just to check I'm giving you the right advice, I have just set a TBR of 90%. The display then said it was giving me 0.54u. Now that means a reduction of 10%, right? And that 0.54u per hour is 90% of my normal (100%) basal rate of 0.60u, ie a 10% reduction.

 
tim2000s said:
@Snapsy Medtronic is also set TO a percentage of the whole.
Click to expand...
I find that way (Medtronic, Accuchek) arithmetically more straightforward.

I can see how confusion might arise for HCPs at clinics where they have patients on a variety of pumps, some with plus/minus percentages and some with a percentage of the whole.

Still, variety is the spice of life!

 
Correct @noblehead! Well, sorry, there ARE up and down arrows, but to add 30% you go up to 130%, to decrease by 30% you go down to 70%. I view it as de/increasing TO a percentage, rather than BY a percentage.

Basically there's an up arrow and a down arrow on the pump, and you just go either higher than the 100%, or lower.

I've just snapped a sequence to show you.

Pic 1 - normal display showing 0.65u/hr.


Pic 2 - the default on the screen when setting a TBR is 100%. Use the up or down arrows to change rate.


Pic 3 - I want to reduce it to 90%, so I've hit the down arrow.


Pic 4 - as you can see, the rate is now 90% of the full whack, ie normal basal rate MINUS 10%. You can see that, because the 0.65u has reduced to 0.59u.


And I've just realised that it would have been more helpful to illustrate this with the 30% scenario we were talking about earlier! Oooops!

 

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@Tracyann35 how long before your exercise workout are you setting your TBR? I've found that I need to set my TBR to the reduced rate about 2 hrs before I exercise and let it run at that rate for at least an hour after I have finished
 
Is there a way to increase basal using the temporary basal? During exams, because of stress, I go high so I'd like to increase my basal rate but I can't scroll higher than 100% (im on Medtronic 640g)
 
Hi @knipster The easiest way to do it is set up a new basal pattern rather than a temp basal rate which is only useful for short term basal reductions, or simply do correction doses, but if you do set up a new basal pattern run this past your DSN first to double check it, personally I would prefer doing corrections rather than a new basal pattern but it's your call.
 
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