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JoRicco

JoRicco

Well-Known Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
Good afternoon all. my pre breakfast reading was 5.9, had 2 scarmbled eggs with abit of cheese in at apr 9am. Went food shopping at 11 and by 11.30 ( at the checkout) i went all shakey , sweaty and a bit weak, had 3 jelly babies, came home and tested and i'm 8.0 ??? why did i feel like that when i've been good ? I'm not even in my first week yet LOL. started insulin wednesday .TIA
 
Hi @JoRicco - what insulin are you taking? Did you take any before your breakfast as it doesn’t sound like you had any carbs then So any insulin would have dropped you down from 5.9 into a range where you would be hypo, especially if walking around?
 
Yes, no carbs and insulin won't work.
Why did you try that regime, did you have any guidance from your HCP beforehand?
 
Eternal422 said:
Hi @JoRicco - what insulin are you taking? Did you take any before your breakfast as it doesn’t sound like you had any carbs then So any insulin would have dropped you down from 5.9 into a range where you would be hypo, especially if walking around?
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Hi i'm on novorapid before meals (which i took ,4) and Tresiba 10 with last meal.
 
you had a very low carb breakfast for which it sounds like that amount of insulin was too much. Is that a normal breakfast for you or are you trying to do a low carb diet? In any case you need to take both hypo treatment and a means to measure your blood glucose everywhere you go
 
travellor said:
Yes, no carbs and insulin won't work.
Why did you try that regime, did you have any guidance from your HCP beforehand?
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Ahhhh .. i'm yet to see anyone in depth. i was diagnosed in A&E wednesday and just told to inject before meals unless having a salad and such like .x
 
So am i right ... i haven't taken any insulin before lunch as i've had a tuna salad ? 🙂
 
Saoirse said:
you had a very low carb breakfast for which it sounds like that amount of insulin was too much. Is that a normal breakfast for you or are you trying to do a low carb diet? In any case you need to take both hypo treatment and a means to measure your blood glucose everywhere you go
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I just fancied scrambled egg, I'm learning. Thankyou
 
I was worried that they had started you on too much insulin and you would end up hypo! It really is not good to drop your levels down into range so quickly.

Well done for dealing with it so well. Hope you are feeling better now. The jelly babies will have brought your levels back up to 8 but it definitely sounds like you were hypo and that is because you injected insulin when you were not eating any carbs..... eggs and cheese are pretty much carb free, if you didn't have them on toast or some other carb rich food.

I hope you weren't driving after your shopping trip. If so, please learn about the rules around driving and testing. A hypo essentially grounds you for at least an hour which is a pain but important to the safety of yourself and other road users. As others have said, you need to carry testing kit and hypo treatments with you at all times. Shopping is one of the activities which seems to cause hypos more frequently than you might expect, but the insulin with no carbs at breakfast will have been the cause on this occasion and probably your basal being a bit too high for this early stage in your diagnosis, as it has dropped you into range a bit too quickly and left you with no wriggle room for error with the NovoRapid. If you had woken up on 12 or 13 this morning, you may well have got away with your insulin injection for the scrambled eggs, but 5.9 didn't leave you any margin or error.

Anyway, it sounds like you managed it really well and 3 jelly babies was spot on, so give yourself a big pat on the back!

Yes, you will not need insulin for a tuna salad unless there is pasta in the salad or you are having bread or a baked potato with it. You need to start familiarizing yourself with which foods contain carbs, as this is all part of the process you need to learn working towards carb counting.
 
JoRicco said:
Ahhhh .. i'm yet to see anyone in depth. i was diagnosed in A&E wednesday and just told to inject before meals unless having a salad and such like .x
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There are some excellent insulin users on here, they'll be along to give you some good advice.
 
rebrascora said:
I was worried that they had started you on too much insulin and you would end up hypo! It really is not good to drop your levels down into range so quickly.

Well done for dealing with it so well. Hope you are feeling better now. The jelly babies will have brought your levels back up to 8 but it definitely sounds like you were hypo and that is because you injected insulin when you were not eating any carbs..... eggs and cheese are pretty much carb free, if you didn't have them on toast or some other carb rich food.

I hope you weren't driving after your shopping trip. If so, please learn about the rules around driving and testing. A hypo essentially grounds you for at least an hour which is a pain but important to the safety of yourself and other road users. As others have said, you need to carry testing kit and hypo treatments with you at all times. Shopping is one of the activities which seems to cause hypos more frequently than you might expect, but the insulin with no carbs at breakfast will have been the cause on this occasion and probably your basal being a bit too high for this early stage in your diagnosis, as it has dropped you into range a bit too quickly and left you with no wriggle room for error with the NovoRapid. If you had woken up on 12 or 13 this morning, you may well have got away with your insulin injection for the scrambled eggs, but 5.9 didn't leave you any margin or error.

Anyway, it sounds like you managed it really well and 3 jelly babies was spot on, so give yourself a big pat on the back!

Yes, you will not need insulin for a tuna salad unless there is pasta in the salad or you are having bread or a baked potato with it. You need to start familiarizing yourself with which foods contain carbs, as this is all part of the process you need to learn working towards carb counting.
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Thankfully i wasn't driving, my friend was . I'm learning every minute. Thankyou for your advise and very kind pat on the back 🙂 x
 
JoRicco said:
I just fancied scrambled egg, I'm learning. Thankyou
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That’s fine of course but as explained above by @rebrascora probably caused to feel hypo. Some people new to diagnosis try to cut carbs which can be a valid approach if not on insulinor other blood glucose lowering medicine. Some type 1s also choose to do low carb (though there Is no necessity to) but todo this successfully you need to know howto carb count and adjust insulin appropriately. as someone newly diagnosed it’s likely you are still producing some of your own insulin which complicates things too. it’s a lot to take in after less than a week but it will get easier !
 
We all know that it is a massive learning curve at the start and in some respects you learn more from these mistakes.... not that you knew you were making a mistake, it was just lack of sufficient information... than you do from getting it right all the time. The positive to take away from it is that you have experienced a hypo and handled it brilliantly. You have learned why it happened and are already thinking about preventing it happening again by asking about whether to inject insulin for lunch, so lots of positives.
I do just worry that they have brought your levels down much to quickly and that does create a risk to your sight as well as a concern that you might hypo overnight at this early stage, which can be more challenging. Do please keep hypo treatment and test kit on your bedside table. Waking up hypo and wandering around the house half asleep and shaky with a hypo looking for something to eat is not to be recommended, especially if you sleep upstairs, so please keep stuff close to hand, especially at night.
 
rebrascora said:
We all know that it is a massive learning curve at the start and in some respects you learn more from these mistakes.... not that you knew you were making a mistake, it was just lack of sufficient information... than you do from getting it right all the time. The positive to take away from it is that you have experienced a hypo and handled it brilliantly. You have learned why it happened and are already thinking about preventing it happening again by asking about whether to inject insulin for lunch, so lots of positives.
I do just worry that they have brought your levels down much to quickly and that does create a risk to your sight as well as a concern that you might hypo overnight at this early stage, which can be more challenging. Do please keep hypo treatment and test kit on your bedside table. Waking up hypo and wandering around the house half asleep and shaky with a hypo looking for something to eat is not to be recommended, especially if you sleep upstairs, so please keep stuff close to hand, especially at night.
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Thankyou ... I have jelly babies in every room and by the side of my bed in the drawer, and in my car. I might ring the clinic Monday and ask for my appointment to be brought forward ( not that i've received one yet ) . Had a telephone call yesterday to give my readings and i'm to do the same next Wednesday .
 
As others have said, the rapid reduction in glucose levels is something to raise with the clinic. Both for the potential of a night time hypo & the general practice of gradual reduction. When I first went on to insulin it took 10 days before I saw single figures, & that was increasing doses every three days.

How much basal insulin are you taking at night & which one?
 
@JoRicco The 4 units of Novorapid you’ve been told to take before breakfast will cover a certain amount of carbs. We don’t know how many yet because it’s an individual thing and you’ve only recently been diagnosed. If you eat too many carbs, the Novorapid won’t be enough to cover them and if you eat too few, then you’ll hypo. It’s all about balancing the two.

Your body needs carbs to rebuild itself and for daily living. The diet recommended for Type 1s is a normal diet, including a wide variety of carbs like cereal, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, quinoa, etc etc. I’m a bit concerned that you asked why you felt hypo “when you’ve been good”. Type 1 is not about going on a diet or avoiding carbs. Be very careful to look at the diabetes type of people here talking about what they eat. Type 1 and Type 2 are very different conditions. Type 1 is ‘simply’ about taking over the job your pancreas used to do. It is not caused by poor diet - it’s an auto-immune condition. You don’t manage it by depriving yourself of carbs, but by managing your insulins correctly.

I hope you’ve recovered from your hypo ok. Far better to be a bit high than hypo, especially early in diagnosis when you’re getting used to things. Take it easy this afternoon x
 
RBZ5416 said:
As others have said, the rapid reduction in glucose levels is something to raise with the clinic. Both for the potential of a night time hypo & the general practice of gradual reduction. When I first went on to insulin it took 10 days before I saw single figures, & that was increasing doses every three days.

How much basal insulin are you taking at night & which one?
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I take 10Tresiba with my last meal x
 
as an aside @JoRicco you may want to update your profile information, it currently says "at risk of diabetes" and as you are now on insulin I'm guessing you have been diagnosed with one type or another of diabetes (it sounds like maybe Type 1 given the insulin doses you have mentioned?)
 
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