Bolus type

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Maryanne29

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Type 1
The other evening we had fish and chips for dinner as I was too tired to cook. I counted the carbs and had the bolus calculated by my Insight. I tested about 2.5 hours after, before going to bed and was 6.0. I thought this was good as that's about the level that works for me at bedtime. But I clearly got it wrong as at 7.00am I was 16 - unheard if for me in the morning.
My question is, which bolus would have been best to use - extended or multi wave? I very rarely eat such a high carb meal in the evening, hence getting it so wrong.
Any suggestions please - other than don't eat fish and chips! :confused:
 
My approach for those kind of fatty, mega carb blowouts (Indian takeaways too) is to add approx one third to my estimate of the carb count and dual wave over an extended period. Partly I'm likely to simply get the count wrong by at least 20%, and partly to allow some of the extra fat and protein room to convert if they need to.

The real snag is that you have to find your own split/duration. For me I tend to go either 60:40 or 40:60 over something like 2.5 or 3.5 hours, but I only came up with that after experimentation. If I go to bed relatively in range I recognise that I will often need a good 2-3 units still active (which is a bit unnerving to say the least!).

Hey ho.... Looks like the takeaways near you will be doing good business while you work out your best approach 🙂

Other people go for a regular Bolus and hefty increased TBR to offset the delayed carb kick.
 
Hi Maryanne

Unfortunately I think it's all down to trial and error and the fact that we are all different!

However we nearly always use multiwave, it makes sense to me to have at least some up front to deal with whatever fast-burn carbs are in the meal. How much up front is also a matter of trial and error, we usually do 50/50 unless it's something ridiculously slow-burn like porridge, and then might do a bit less up front.

I only ever use extended bolus a) if daughter is slightly hypo at mealtime, rather than faffing about with glucose and retesting I just reduce the bolus by 10 and then extend it by half an hour or so so that her BG can come back up again while she's eating her meal; or b) if she's ill and only picking at food. Otherwise always multiwave and it seems to work.

To find what works for you though you might have to experiment a bit (sounds like a good excuse for more fish and chips :D )
 
Thank you for that - but I really must NOT have fish and chips too often! I do love it though. 🙂
 
Every meal I have is a multiwave & its only the % that I alter. Takeaway stuff is always hard to carb count & it depends what time of day etc. Depends on reading before meal & what I am having to the higher or lower %. But never the same 🙂
 
The spike probably happened about 6 or 7 hours hater Maryanne. That's always the way with pizza for me.

Always a multiwave for me too - but if it's an evening meal - too scared to let it go on beyond bedtime. So I just do it over a couple of hours or 3. Then correct at bedtime, and just deal with the morning in the morning.

I treat these as 'specials' as they really don't happen all that often - and don't worry about them overmuch.

If I wanted to eat stuff more frequently - as is the case with chilli & rice, lasagne and Grandad's spaghetti (a family speciality!) - then I just tried different things till I got them right!
 
Other people go for a regular Bolus and hefty increased TBR to offset the delayed carb kick.
Click to expand...

Yup that's what I do, plus for peace of mind also set alarm and test in the middle of the night. I have different TBRs for differing lengths of time dep on type of food..sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but still much better results than on MDI and I keep reminding myself of that when it hasn't worked so well, like the fact it is an enormous shock now to have a reading above 20! 😱
 
Thanks all. I'll try multi wave next time and see how it goes. But it is rare to have such a meal so I'm not going to worry too much.🙂
 
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