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Understand How Basal Works

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azizdhl

Well-Known Member
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Hi guys,
I am really confused
does lantus maitian you currnet bg after any meal or keep it at certain level based on daily units?

to be clear, if I take 20 units in the morning daily, lets say my current bg is 140 then i ate my usual lunch with the exact insulin to cover the meal, so 4 hours after the meal my bg would stay at 140 exatly if my lantus dose is correct?

and lets say with the same scenario but my bg before lunch was 200 and i took the same lunch and the same insulin, so after the meal my bg would stay at 200 or it will go down to 140?
 
azizdhl said:
Hi guys,
I am really confused
does lantus maitian you currnet bg after any meal or keep it at certain level based on daily units?

to be clear, if I take 20 units in the morning daily, lets say my current bg is 140 then i ate my usual lunch with the exact insulin to cover the meal, so 4 hours after the meal my bg would stay at 140 exatly if my lantus dose is correct?

and lets say with the same scenario but my bg before lunch was 200 and i took the same lunch and the same insulin, so after the meal my bg would stay at 200 or it will go down to 140?
Click to expand...
Basal should keep you stable by theory. In practice, this is not always true because we don't live in a perfect world anyway. It should stay 140 and in second case, if you didn't correct, it should stay 200. Anyway, I personally find it difficult to achieve very stable BG with Lantus so I have to sleep at a certain level to wake up in range.
 
It'll stay up. Lantus doesn't know the BG level it's aiming for, it's just a slow steady release of insulin for your body's slow steady basal requirement.

If you came in high before lunch, you'd want to include a correction with your bolus.
 
Let's simplify it.

Pretend you wake up tomorrow and you decide you are not going to eat anything all day.

You take your lantus at the normal time you always do.

If your dose is correct, your blood sugar will hold steady between the target range you set for example 4.0 mmol/L - 8.0 mmol/L all morning, afternoon and night.

If you do the same thing the day after and now add in food, and your blood glucose fluctuates.. very simply your dose is incorrect or your dose/meal time is incorrect.

Eating with an already high blood sugar is a bad idea. You should pre bolus in these situations but be sure to track and record your results and gradually increase / decrease bolus times depending on the results!
 
In theory, it should maintain BGs at a constant level. I don't think fasted tests, i.e. inbetween meals, are accurate because presumably you're doing stuff in between meals. The best way to test that your basal dose is correct is to test overnight - don't eat or inject at least 3 (ideally 5) hours before bed, don't drink any booze and don't have a meal high in protein. if the results are consistent, then your basal is correct. But for every 1.6 mmol/l change, your basal needs adjusting by 10%
 
All cells of our body need a little inslin to get energy into them, regardless of the energy coming from from blood glocose, fat, or stored glycogen. Without this inslin a person's cells all slowly dies, (think of the photos of children with diabetes before inslin was discovered). DKA is also due to cells not being able to get energy into themselfs.

The Basel (background) inslin does this job.
 
If you ate nothing, did not exercise, were not ill, slept well, drank no alcohol in the last 48 hours, were not stressed, were not too hot or too cold, ... your BG should remain at exactly the same level if your Lantus dose was correct.
As others have mentioned, slow acting insulin like Lantus assumes we need a constant amount of background insulin at all times. Unfortunately, even if all the caveats I mentioned above are satisfied, our bodies’ needs are not constant for 24 hours. For example, many people experience Dawn Phenomenon which is our body releasing glucose to give us the energy to get up each morning.
To check we have the right dose, the aim is for our BG to remain stable when it has no external input. A good time to do this is at night whilst we are sleeping.
 
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