Cold Symptoms

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mscharlottek

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Type 1
Hi all!!! I'm a newbie here, I've been type1 diabetic for 14 years. When I was diagnosed, one of the main symptoms was cold/flu like symptoms. I still have a cold almost constantly. I'm wondering if it's sugar related. Does anyone else have this issue? Constantly fatigued, snotty and coughing. X
 
Hi and welcome.

Goodness! Do you mean that you have been suffering cold/flu symptoms persistently for 14 years and no one has investigates them? No, I have never heard anyone mention such symptoms related to diabetes.
What is your diabetes management like? Are you on a pump or MDI? Which insulins do you use and have you always used the same insulins? Just wondering if it could be some sort of reaction to a particular insulin.
Do you have Freestyle Libre or other CGM? Are you managing to keep your HbA1c or Time in Range if you have CGM at a reasonable level?
Are you able to get out for exercise like a walk regularly. I know my lungs will clog up if I don't get enough exercise but if i walk plenty I don't need my inhalers.

Anyway, if you can tell us a bit more about your diabetes management and what if any investigations have been done with regard to your symptoms, it may ring a bell with someone.
 
Thanks for replying! I may get a week or so respite between the cold symptoms but most of the time I'm struggling and it makes me so tired and weak. I've tried so hard to get someone to listen to me, I have been lost in the system since an error was made when I was pregnant with my son, since then I seem to have been dropped like a hot potato. That was in 2015. I've changed drs surgeries twice, I've sent in emails begging for help with no avail. Finally after complaining to the NHS governing body I am back on the list and have regular check ups. I have trouble with my tummy which I wonder if it's gastroparesis. They have poked my tummy and said well it feels fine... Had three doctors do this and still no further ahead. My diabetes control is absolutely awful. I'm really trying, it's all I think about all day every day is how to control it. My sugars bounce from 27 down to 1.9 and I'm just exhausted. I wonder if the cold symptoms could be me just being very run down... I have been begging for a pump for years as I think it'd really change my life, I'm finally on a waiting list but no idea how long it'll be. I'm on tresiba and humalog at the moment. I have a dog, so I walk him twice a day , but it's honestly a struggle. Always breathless and exhausted. I have breakdowns every so often as it's ruining my whole life. I also have bipolar disorder and the two together are just impossible to control. I have a freestyle libre and most days are less than 40% in range. I've been emailing the diabetic nurses and when I go in I tell them how awful I feel. I just want to wake up and feel like I've slept and have the energy to do what normal people do. I think I've just got to the point where I feel like being ill all the time is how every diabetic is. Its obviously not the case and I'm not really sure what to do about it now. I struggle to play with my kids because I get so out of breath and exhausted so quickly. The only way I can control my sugars is to go on a starvation diet, but that's obviously not a good thing to do x
 
That sounds horrible.
Is it possible it is an allergic reaction to the insulin?

The rollercoastering BG is likely to cause the tiredness but not the snotty coughing. On the other hand if your body is reacting to the insulin, it would make it harder to manage your BG.
I am, of course, just speculating.

Unfortunately, unless you have closed loop, I do not know how a pump would help. It is just another way of administering insulin.
Have you been on a DAFNE course? It is a pre-requisite in my area for a pump and may give you. some more insight.
 
Ooo I hadn't thought of that. I tried taking antihistamines to see if it was something I was allergic to, but it never crossed my mind that it could be the insulin. I'll bring that up on my next appointment for sure!! My rattly cough is like a tracking device. Everyone knows when I'm there
 
mscharlottek said:
Ooo I hadn't thought of that. I tried taking antihistamines to see if it was something I was allergic to, but it never crossed my mind that it could be the insulin. I'll bring that up on my next appointment for sure!! My rattly cough is like a tracking device. Everyone knows when I'm there
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Worth asking your GP about. Also perhaps your pharmacist. For example, if you take an ACE inhibitor (for BP) that can cause coughs.
 
helli said:
That sounds horrible.
Is it possible it is an allergic reaction to the insulin?

The rollercoastering BG is likely to cause the tiredness but not the snotty coughing. On the other hand if your body is reacting to the insulin, it would make it harder to manage your BG.
I am, of course, just speculating.

Unfortunately, unless you have closed loop, I do not know how a pump would help. It is just another way of administering insulin.
Have you been on a DAFNE course? It is a pre-requisite in my area for a pump and may give you. some more insight.
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Sorry I only saw half of this message. Yeah I've done Dafne twice to get on the pump list. Some days my 1:13 ratio works great and other days not at all.
 
Bruce Stephens said:
Worth asking your GP about. Also perhaps your pharmacist. For example, if you take an ACE inhibitor (for BP) that can cause coughs.
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That's great thank you. I take mood stabilizers so I'll mention It to them that it could be this. All these suggestions are so helpful, may help the Dr too x
 
How did you manage during your pregnancies and did you use the same insulins then?

Have you done a basal test recently to see if Tresiba is holding you steady in the absence of food and bolus insulin?

Tresiba suits some people but not others.

Is your ratio 1:13 for all meals ie breakfast lunch and evening meal as that would be quite unusual?
 
I also want to send virtual (((HUGS))) because you are clearly going through a really rough time and diabetes definitely should not be like that. I think there may be ways that we can help you with your diabetes management to help you improve it, with tried and tested tricks which we have found work. The persistent snotty nose and coughing is definitely not normal and you need to keep pushing for help. Do you mind saying what other medication you are taking if any, as some can certainly cause a cough.
 
Ahh thank you so much. I only signed up today because I was feeling a bit helpless but already, with the support here I'm In a much better mood. During my pregnancys my sugars were perfect without even really trying. They wanted to c section at 30 weeks as they were concerned my sugars were so good and thought there was a placenta issue. There wasn't. I was using novorapid and humalog back then. How do you do a basal test? Is that where you wake between 1-3am to test? Again, completely random outcomes. I can have the same amount 12 units and one morning be low and the next really high. Just can't get my head around it. Consultant said probably dawn phenomenon as I've changed my dose up and down to see if that helped. Yeah, course. I'm on lamotragine and sertraline. Mornings are 1:10 as they are pretty stubborn in the mornings then 1:13 for the rest of the day x
 
Mscharlottek: So sorry to hear you've been having such a rough time! And with three different things: your T1D, your bipolar disorder, and your cold-type symptoms.

Your doctor should be thinking about all three of those things together, in case there may be some relationships between them. For example, might the medications you take for your bipolar disorder affect your blood-sugar control? Or might they affect your cold-type symptoms? You need proper doctors to help you with all of this.

One thing that occurs to me, though, is something quite separate: For years I had a frequent cough, stuffy nose, runny nose, etc, year-round, and of course that can affect how well you sleep. ... And then eventually my GP diagnosed allergic rhinitis (https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/allergic-rhinitis/ ). 'Hayfever' is one form of allergic rhinitis, but hayfever is easy to recognise, because you only get the symptoms at particular times of year; when you not only react to all kinds of pollen but also house dust and all sorts of other things, it's harder to work out what's going on. GP prescribed beclometasone nasal spray, and that did the trick.

And-- when you say you're struggling with breathlessness, I'm wondering about asthma too; asthma and allergic rhinitis often go together. Another thing to ask your doctors about! Fingers crossed they can find some answers and help for you, and all the best.
 
mscharlottek said:
I was using novorapid and humalog back then.
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NovoRapid and Humalog are both short acting (bolus)insulins so I am wondering if you were meaning it was Humulin I that you were using as a basal insulin and if so, was that once or twice a day?
Also was there a particular reason why they changed you to Tresiba? Some clinics seem to think that Tresiba is the best thing since sliced bread but it doesn't suit everyone and I very much doubt I could get it to work for me because my basal needs vary significantly between daytime and night and I have a very varied lifestyle so some days I can be really active and other days much less so and I need to be able to adjust my basal to cope with that. Also, as a woman you will likely have variation in basal needs throughout your cycle. Tresiba provides a steady, uniform rate of basal cover day and night, but not many human bodies are uniform or consistent in their needs and therefore it isn't really flexible enough to allow you to adjust it when you need to. The advantage is that it is just one injection a day instead of 2 but that is not a benefit if you can't make it match what you need. when you need it.
I find a shorter acting basal like Levemir or I imagine Humulin I is similar, is much more flexible and I can adjust it more to suit what my body needs. It is a bit of a half way house to having a pump. You can adjust your day and night doses separately with Levemir whereas you adjust your basal needs by the hour with a pump, so the pump can be much more closely fine tuned, but with a shorter acting basal you have a lot more flexibility than you do with Tresiba.

Would you like to post a couple of photos of a typical Libre graph to see if we can spot any obvious issues.

There is a sticky post in the pumping and technology section about basal testing which I will try to link. Basically you skip a meal a day in rotation over several days to see what your levels are doing during those periods in the absence of food and bolus insulin. With the advent of Libre and other CGM there is no need to be setting alarms and testing through the night anymore because CGM captures far more data than an odd finger prick in the middle of the night.


Can I ask what you have your Libre alarms set at? Going so high and so low seems quite shocking when we have the technology we now have so I wonder if your alarms are not working or you don't have them set at useful levels. I know we all occasionally miss an alarm and if you have them set at the wrong levels and they go off too frequently, you get desensitized to them and start ignoring them or thinking you will deal with it in 5mins when you are finished what you are doing and then sometimes you get distracted and forget and I imagine with children and not feeling well in yourself, it is easy to get distracted. Maybe some adjustment of the alarm levels might be helpful, but it is quite a personal thing as to what works well for an individual, but worth giving it consideration as some people just leave the "factory settings" or whatever their DSN suggests, which might not be best for you as an individual.

Anyway, lots of little things to think about and possibly tweak. After basal testing, depending upon the results, you might want to request a change of basal insulin back to your previous one or Levemir or perhaps just a slight tweak of the dose will help. It will take a bit of time to iron things out as there are so many variables with diabetes, but you need to start with basal because if that isn't right nothing else makes sense and you will get erratic results.
 
mscharlottek said:
When I was diagnosed, one of the main symptoms was cold/flu like symptoms.
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If this was a symptom that prompted the diagnosis, so before you started insulin, then it won’t be an allergic reaction to the insulin.
 
I have something called LPR, it’s silent reflux. I don’t get traditional heartburn pain but I get a sore throat, horse voice, sore sinuses ringing ears dry eyes and post nasal drip. It’s strongly correlated with my sugar spikes and was present at diagnosis. Maybe something you could look into. Roughly half of all diabetic have some kind of digestive issue so it’s possible this could be a culprit
 
Plus sorry if it’s already been mentioned (haven’t read the whole thread) breathlessness was a big issue for me, turns out I had iron deficiency anaemia
 
EmmaL76 said:
I have something called LPR, it’s silent reflux. I don’t get traditional heartburn pain but I get a sore throat, horse voice, sore sinuses ringing ears dry eyes and post nasal drip. It’s strongly correlated with my sugar spikes and was present at diagnosis. Maybe something you could look into. Roughly half of all diabetic have some kind of digestive issue so it’s possible this could be a culprit
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My mind is blown as I have some of these symptoms and when I actually do get indigestion from an obvious trigger it is next level of dreadful … just looked this up and have quite a few of the other symptoms too; maybe worth keeping an eye on - thank you for this!
 
pawprint91 said:
My mind is blown as I have some of these symptoms and when I actually do get indigestion from an obvious trigger it is next level of dreadful … just looked this up and have quite a few of the other symptoms too; maybe worth keeping an eye on - thank you for this!
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your welcome ! I love spreading the joy lol
 
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