What dose of Insulin are you on ?

A question from a type 2.
Have you thought of reducing your carb intake so that the insulin dose that you are currently taking matches the carb intake rather than increasing the insulin to match the amount of carbs that you are eating ?

I can see your point but eating what you like and covering it with insulin will lead to weight gain and eventual insulin resistance and cause you to need more and more insulin to cover your food.
Once you go on the carb counting course however, you will be able to match the foods that you do like with your insulin and maybe find a happy medium when you can keep the carbs down but enjoy what you eat.

Carb counting will help you adjust your insulin dose more accurately against what you're eating. But please don't see this as an opportunity to eat an unhealthy diet. Try to keep to a healthy diet with regular exercise, and allow yourself the occasional treat. I'm puzzled why you call healthy food horrible?

Hi Eliminator,

You're using 76 units of insulin per day? For a type 1, that's a big dose.
I'm not going to pretend I'm a good example of anything very much, but for comparison's sake, I use Humulin, Humalog and Levemir. My doses are as follows:
Breakfast - 3 units
Lunch - 2 to 3 units
Dinner - 7 units
Basal - 8 units (split into seperate doses of 4 and 4)

Please don't fall into the trap of assuming that insulin is a get out of jail free card which allows you to eat anything, it really isn't. Large doses of insulin bring their own problems in the long run, everything from insulin resistance and weight gain as Sue pointed out, right through to damage to the blood vessels, organs and nervous system.
Your blood glucose levels are still a fair bit too high, which is a risk in itself, and you would be well advised to think about what (not how much) you're eating rather than cranking up the insulin further.

All the best,

fergus

my dosage differs slightly day by day but i have 12u lantus, and under 10u novorapid daily, my last hba1c was 5.9 so yours does look like an high amount

3u am and 7u pm of humalog 75 pre-mix. Diagnosed July 2008. Low carbing.

last hba1c 5.4%.

Reagrds Caitycakes x

I'm slightly different again, using an insulin pump means that I don't use a long/background insulin only quick acting, which the pump delivers the quick acting insulin for my back ground every 3 minutes with my pump...

On adverage I use 17-20 units of insulin per day... covers both background and covers any carbs that I eat...

The basal/bolus method with carb counting can work pretty well but even though it can give a lot more flexability to how and what one eats at any point of the day... It's foolish to believe that it will cover anything that you decide to eat.. It can be far more difficult than a simple calcualtion then jab xx amount of insulin and eat!! Timing and know how certain carbs react in your body is all important understanding this, can make the difference between success and failure in control..

For example, Pizza, pastry high fat content foods, slow asorbing carbs such as pasta can take longer than one thinks to start to effect the blood glucose:

You've worked out the carbs that you have in your pizza, you calculate the amount of insulin you require to cover the carbs.. You inject but then find you suffering a hypo not long after you've eaten! this is because the insulin has hit the system before you body has really started to adsorb the carbs in the pizza..

When I injected if I had a high fat/protien content I used to have to spilt my jab into 2 parts, injecting one lot before I ate as normal, then depending on what I was eating inject the rest of the dose between 1/2 -1 hour after I finished eating...

Fast acting carbs (high sugar content) can have the oppsite effect, hitting the system before the insulin has a chance to work, giving quite a spike to the blood glucose before the insulin started to bring them back down again...

One of the problems injecting large amounts of insulin at one go, the rate of adsorbtion can change so destablising control as it becomes less effective..

Bu with saying all that, if you learn and understand how everything works, know when you need to spilt injection or inject and wait before eating and know your limits (portion size) for different types of carbs yep it can lead so good control along side giving you a more normal diet and normal eating patterns...

:? wish i hadnt read this it all sounds very confusing, son is just going on to basal/bolus soon .... mixtard sounds much easier!!

Breakfast - Bowl of cereal or toast, 2 - 4 units of Novorapid

Lunch - 2 Sandwiches, or a Tesco's cafe meal, 4 - 6 untis of Novorapid

Tea - Varies from pizza, gammon & chips, a whole cooked Tesco's chicken, chinese meal, macdonalds etc.. 6 - 10 units of novorapid.

At 22:00 every night I take 16 units of Levemir (when Im forgetful it's between 22:00 and 00:00)

Sometimes I will feel like being really healthy and aim to not eat any carbs in one day at all and not need any novorapid and my blood sugars stay between 4 and 7! (those days are rare though as I am trying to gain muscle)

Eliminator said:

Shazza said:

:? wish i hadnt read this it all sounds very confusing, son is just going on to basal/bolus soon .... mixtard sounds much easier!!

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Don't worry Shazza, everyone is different.
Mine is high coz I eat bad stuff all day, I don't eat breckfast (which you should to start your metabalism off) then I eat lunch (sometimes) then afternoon it's the bits I should not eat like choc, or biscuits, crisps right through to the night.

Funny thing though, I have never had a "lo" and I don't suffer any other symptoms of being high.

It's strange, I have never had a real side affect from diabetes other than the stupid numbers on the blood glucose machine. And I have had it 18 months.


I am not actually on 70units per day and most of the time I skip meals. My total daily dose is around 54 units on average.

I blame this on not being correctly diagnosed in the first place, and would like to know if taking metformin, gliclizide, some statin or other and whatever else **** the docs gave me, wrongly treating for type 2 for 15 months has caused any damage to the parts of my body that were working ???

Anyone know if this is possible, as I have been type 1 all along and should have been on insulin the whole time.

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No wonder, chocs and sugary meals all the time, your blood sugars ar probably always on an all time high you havent had the chance to feel a hypo! For the good of your health PLEASE eat healthy!!

I would recommend in the beginning to eat regular healthy meals until you get your insulin doses correct. Then you can experiment with skipping meals etc. I don't know how you'll get the insulin worked out properly if you're doing this on an irregular basis in the beginning. Also, just because you don't feel unwell with high BS's doesn't mean there isn't any damage being done, don't get yourself into a false sense of security.

If you want to know why T1s are concerned about high BGs and going to hospital, just search the internet for the term Diabetic Ketoacidosis and you will find out the harsh reality. No real need to go into it here with such a wealth of information already available elsewhere. At the levels you're running I'd suggest getting some ketone test strips from the Dr and seeing what's going on any time your sugars are above 13-15. You should aim for having no ketones at all. There's probably loads of threads about how to deal with them on this site.

The damage done to your circulatory and nervous systems occurs over longer periods of time. Ketones are not required to be present to cause this damage, any bg reading over around 7 mmol/l is too high. You may not notice many symptoms now, but in 20 years time (or maybe less) when you are blind, with amputations, kidney failure, heart disease etc you may wish that you had taken more care of yourself while you could...

If you persistently run bg levels too high, when you try to reduce this level you may experience hypo symptoms at levels other diabetics would consider "normal". You may need to bring your levels down slowly over a period of weeks in order to allow your body to get used to the new levels gradually.

My average TDD is 30 units.

My doses are
novarapid 130 unit 3 x a day
80 units lantus twice a day


sugars still in 20's