Type 1 Day 2 low carb, but still needing large levels of insulin? High BG levels

I'm a type one diabetic.

Last night I gave myself 45 units of levirmir. Slightly reduced from my 55 I was giving.

Ok so today on day 2

I woke up this morning with blood glucose of 6.9. I injected 12 units of novorapid. And made a 3 egg cheese omelette for breakfast with 30grams of carb free cheese, and 20g of peppers. Roughly 2g carbs. I had a decaf tea with a dribble of milk and 2 sucrose sweetners.

I then after 30 minutes went to do a 60 minute high intensity class at the gym. I tested my glucose levels after 30 minutes and they were 11.1. I then immediately injected 11 units of novorapid.

After the gym I ate 25grams of peanuts then went to the cinema. I had a medium coke zero drink. My glucose levels rose to 11.1 again and I've just injected another 15 units of novorapid. Waiting for them to come down.

Edit - since giving myself the 15 units of novorapid over 2 hours ago my sugars are now 13.2 this is bloody ridiculous, how can this be possible on virtually no carbs? Just given myself another 6 units

How and why is this happening on such a low carb diet? I'm giving myself higher doses of novorapid than I normally do eating wholemeal bread.
I'm hoping it's just my body releasing stored glucose or something or am I wrong on that?

I'm not sick and had a good sleep?
Thanks in advance.

Brunneria said:

Hi @Serial45

I’m sorry you haven’t had many replies.
I think that maybe the reason is because you haven’t fully completed your profile, so members don’t know which type of diabetes you have. Answers will probably vary hugely depending on that.

In light of this, we don’t know enough to offer much help.

The first thing that ran through my head while reading your post was to wonder how much insulin resistance you had before starting low carb, and then the second thing was what your blood glucose usually does when you exercise? Particularly the type, duration and intensity of exercise. Also, have you increased protein intake significantly? And some people experience bg impact and increased insulin resistance from artificial sweeteners. All variables, but I have no idea if any of them apply to you.

I’m diet controlled, so my experience is in controlling bg without medication, so I have no experience of insulin, but the usual questions probably also apply; insulin deteriorating, injection site issue, pen problem, and so on.

How did things go today?

Click to expand...

I'm a type one diabetic. After my dinner I ended up going low so had to take some carbs to offset this. I did increase my protein intake yesterday.

I'm really active and do a lot of high impact exercise, I find morning exercise can spike my BG levels a little.

I've just read dr Bernstein's book, which basically promotes high protein, medium fat low carb. With the testimonials etc I wanted to try it out immediately.

Not feeling stressed at the moment I'm pretty chilled out.

In response to to my diabetic nurse she is for the most part useless, I seem to understand far more about the condition than she does. When I mentioned the low carb diet she told me to completely avoid it. She thinks hba1c results of 7.0 are good. She keeps trying to get me to go onto a carn counting course, and says I can eat all the carbs I want within reason and adjust my insulin doses, and I keep telling her that I already adjust my doses based on my levels and what I eat.

My last one was 39 so 5.7, she said this is the lowest she's ever seen from a type 1 diabetic.
But even with this due to eating carbs I often see results in the 8-12 range and get a fair few lows. Dr Bernstein has really opened my eyes to the damage that can be caused when the spikes happen, so I completely want to change this and get back into normal range.

Juicyj said:

Hello @Serial45

I am type 1 and still take insulin if I eat low carb, particularly eggs, protein turns to glucose in the absence of carbs, it's called gluconeogenesis so there really is no such thing as a free lunch, so you will still need to take insulin to cover this, otherwise you will be correcting later.

Exercise also causes a spike too, I went out for 2 hours in a road bike yesterday, turned my basal off as I use a pump and almost immediately afterwards I spiked to 15mmol/l, i was down to 7mmol/l 2 hours later after corrections but during exercise hormones are released such as adrenaline and cortisol, low impact exercise does very little but high intensity does cause me issues, have a look at runsweet.com in regards to diabetes and exercise.

Click to expand...

Yeah I totally understand that protein can still require insulin. But I was lead to believe this would drop significantly. I took around a 1/3 more insulin yesterday than a day when I ate over 130 grams of carbs, this is what I just don't understand. Yesterday I only ate around 20grams of mealtime carbs. I did end up having a low of 2.4 2 hours after my evening meal so ate an additional 40grams of carbs to catch this up.

I've woke up this morning with a reading of 11.1 mmol so given myself 17 units if novorapid to bring this down.

I think I have some serious insulin resistance.
I'm 35 and 5"10. I'm around 186 pounds or 85kg so around 26.1 BMI.
I've read that lowering weight lowers resistance to insulin, so really keen to lower this.
I'll check out runsweet. I do a lot of high impact exercise so it's really important to me that I keep this up and want to work out how to make this balance for me.

Thanks

Mel dCP said:

It’s only the first day and you’ve made a massive change. It could be that your liver is dumping out its stores of glycogen as your body is panicking at the lack of carbs. Have a look at the diet doctor website, iirc it recommends not doing heavy exercise for a few days while you adjust. All that extra insulin will put the glycogen you didn’t use back in your liver if it wasn’t used by your cells and you need to give it a few days for that to get depleted. You won’t just flip your metabolism from glucose burning to fat burning in a day, it can take a couple of weeks of sustained low carb to do that. I don’t know aboub the effects of exercise but the Ketogains site and Facebook page should be able to advise you there.

Click to expand...

Thanks for this. I'll avoid any high impact exercise over the next 3 days and see how I go.