Confused

[Inka]

I had about 25g carbs with my breakfast this morning... 20g in the black pudding (barley etc) and 5g in the salad. It didn't help at all. I had a 10g carb biscuit last night at bedtime to bring me up from 4.3 and half an hour later I was 10.4 with no other food in my system. My digestive system gobbles up carbs and turns them into glucose in my blood stream just from looking at them but I seem to be very slow to utilize insulin. We are all different and we do what works best for us as individuals.

My comment was aimed at the OP @rebrascora just to be clear 🙂 But I should have clarified that the total daily amount of carbs is important too in order to stop the insulin resistance, and, in addition, it doesn’t disappear immediately and it takes time to improve insulin sensitivity - ie a couple of weeks or so of a certain daily level of carbs.

But I think the OP should definitely look at basal first.

 

[Annemarie]

From advice in this forum I inched my Nova Rapid away from eating my porridge until I reached a point where my bs stayed at an acceptable level. I now leave an hour between them and that’s ok for me. As I prefer the taste of almond milk with porridge that’s what I use but when I ran out I used semi skimmed milk, that left my later bs score two points higher than with no sugar almond milk

 

[Pumper_Sue]

I had about 25g carbs with my breakfast this morning... 20g in the black pudding (barley etc) and 5g in the salad. It didn't help at all. I had a 10g carb biscuit last night at bedtime to bring me up from 4.3 and half an hour later I was 10.4 with no other food in my system. My digestive system gobbles up carbs and turns them into glucose in my blood stream just from looking at them but I seem to be very slow to utilize insulin. We are all different and we do what works best for us as individuals.

It's more than likely nothing to do with your digestion, just your basal needs. Being on MDI you obviously can not adjust your basal hour by hour as a pumper does.
As an example my basal rates vary from 1.10/hr down to 0.400/hr. I also know if I dip down to 4.3 then sit and wait for another 20 mins my levels will gradually start to go up and finish at 6.5 and stay there all evening and through the night.
If your GM or libre is reading 4.3 it's always worth checking with your meter as meter is a snap shot of that moment in time and not 15 mins behind as libres and cgms are.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Let us know how your experiments go @Lianne

It can be hard and frustrating to have to take on this kind of experimentation yourself, and it’s good to get ideas and input from your HCPs, but ultimately it is YOU who will have the most experience of managing your diabetes day-to-day, so get support from others (especially if you are finding it hard to see the wood for the trees), but trust your instincts and your ongoing n=1 experiments too.