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Very unpredictable blood sugar results

jonniey

Well-Known Member
Messages
266
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Are the properties of the insulin I use ever changing or are my injection sites bad?? I use lantus and humalog
 
Its not impossible to get a bad batch I suppose but its more likely there is something else at work.

your basal may need looked at...

carb ratios may have changed...

illness...

and as you say, your injections sites may be having an effect....

where do you inject normally....? do you think there is an issue, visually..?
 
I rotate injection sites as best as I can my skin feels normal but at certain places thick....
 
What exactly do you mean by unpredictable blood sugar results?
 
I mean sometimes I take for example 2 more humalog but then it's higher than I estimate sometimes I take 1 unit and then it's lower than I thought it would go
 
I mean sometimes I take for example 2 more humalog but then it's higher than I estimate sometimes I take 1 unit and then it's lower than I thought it would go

I feel like that too. My system seems to respond better to lower staggered doses then higher doses even though I could use the higher dose I don't get the results. It's almost like they make me more resistant. Sometimes I will see the drop but only to pop back up.
 
I could take 1 unit today and it will drop me a different amount to what it will do tomorrow. If I take 1 unit just after I've eaten or when I'm ill, or when I'm stressed it might have absolutely no effect or I could rise in spite of it. It depends on what else is going on in my body at the time.

If you're drinking 3 litres of beer a day and not eating proper meals you're probably under nourished and, frankly, alcoholic. That's going to have an impact on your insulin sensitivity factor. Our background insulin essentially works to deal with the trickle of glucose let out from our liver when we aren't eating. Your liver can only do one thing at a time so if it's busy processing alcohol, it won't be trickling out glucose. You might want to seek a liver funtionction test to check the impact of all that alcohol on your liver.

So if correction doses aren't having the effect you expect, you might need to recalculate your insulin sensitivity factor and maybe your I:c ratio. But neither formula is a fixed, set in stone thing. You might work out that one unit drops you 4, but it won't drop you 4 if you take it when you have just been for a rum and all the exercise has made you really insulin sensitive, or if you take it just before you get in a hot shower, or befor a really stressful meeting with your boss. Sometimes we are just more or less sensitive to insulin depending on what's going on, it's wise to change doses to take that into account and sometimes we just have to expect the unexpected. So blood sugars are inherently unpredictable.

If you really think it's a problem with your insulin, chuck it out and start a new pen/vial.
 
Insulin ain't cheap I use 2 humalog pens for a month sometimes I get results under 10 but they are mainly 15 and above and they fluctuate terribly I had a 'HI' yesterday....but I think it was from the beer
 
Insulin ain't cheap I use 2 humalog pens for a month sometimes I get results under 10 but they are mainly 15 and above and they fluctuate terribly I had a 'HI' yesterday....but I think it was from the beer
get help to drop the beer and you will have more money for meds. I take it you are not in the uk? Its great that you are reaching out here, you may need some medical or other support to change your habits, but people on here will help all they can.
 
No I live in Africa.....I want give up the beer been drinking since 2011
 
No I live in Africa.....I want give up the beer been drinking since 2011

Which part of Africa? How is your healthcare funded? If you are having to give up on an insulin pen because you think it isn't working I would have thought you coul just take it back to to supplier to swap for a new one

Is there a typo there? Do you want to stop drinking?

If access to insulin is an issue for you a basal/bolus regime might no suit you - fixed insulin for a set amount of carb taken in at set times might be better. Or if you only have a set number of bolus units to play with, you might have to limit your carb intake to match the bolus available to you.
 
No I worked the whole year I also had medical aid it wasn't a problem to get insulin but the medical aid doesn't want people to take more than they need....and I don't like wasting insulin because I know I have to pay for it.
 
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