Type 1 diabetic diagnosed 6 years ago at age 40

Hi
Can you tell us what your diet is and what insulin you take, it might be as easy as changing the amounts

Welcome to the forum. I'm sure there will be lots of type 1s here who can help you get to the bottom of this. Hang in there, help is on its way!

kevinmartinuk_ said:

Please can you help me. I still cannot control my sugars after 6 years.. I have about 4 hypos a week & when my BG is not too low its too high.
Please help me & tell me what I am doing wrong. I would like to chat directly to other type 1's to find out why I am doing so badly.My girlfriend says
she knows two type 1's at work & both of them don't have the same problems as me so please please where am I going so wrong ??????????
I am at crisis point so any help however small will be so appreciated.

Click to expand...

Can you advise what your daily routine is, so what your eating, how much insulin your taking and what type of insulin ? Are you carb counting ? Are you under a Diabetic nurse/consultant ?

been type 1 diabetic for 30 years now, and it does get easier with time. The key is to understand what efffects the food you eat are having on your blood sugar . ( how quickly or slowly the glucose enters your system after eating)

Best way to proceed is probably to use less insulin. This probably doesn't sound right, but to gain better control you have to avoid hypos. Once you have a hypo your body reacts to protect you from more hypos by making you insulin resistant (like type 2s). What this means is that it becomes very hard not to spike after a hypo. If you set yourself the goal of having fewer hypos and get some success by actually not worrying about running high for some days or weeks then you can gradually try to target controlling the highs. Going on a course, like Insight, or reading up on carb counting will help.

If you are having a lot of hypos, then it suggests that your insulin levels aren't right. It usually suggests that either your insulin regime is not right for you or that the one you are on has the wrong amounts of insulin.To help us, @kevinmartinuk_ , please can you let us know whether you are taking two insulin shots a day, using something like humulin, or whether you are using Multiple Daily Injections (MDI) and if so, what the insulins you use for that are?

If you are doing MDI, then I would recommend that you undertake a basal test before making any changes. Details can be found here : http://www.salforddiabetescare.co.uk/index2.php?nav_id=1007

Whilst this describes what to do for a pump, the principle on MDI is very similar. It's very simple. If your blood glucose level drops more than 1.7mmol/l over a fasting period of 6-8 hours then your basal insulin level is too high. Once you have established that your basal levels are either correct or adjusted them following a test, then you can look at your insulin:carbohydrate ratio. For many people this changes once you change basal rates.

While it might seem to be a pain to do all this work, it will make control a lot easier and is well worth it.