Difficulty with basal rate testing

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Ergates

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Type 1
I'm looking for some ideas on basal rate testing, because given my work and lifestyle, I have huge problems with missing sleep and with fasting. I ride a long way to work and back, and I do a physical job, and this means that I need to consume a vast amount of calories, as well as sleep very well every day. If I don't, within repeated days of not meeting my body's demands for rest and food, I'll crash and hit overtraining symptoms.

I guess you can see my problem - it's hugely difficult for me to fast for any length of time. Additionally given the large amount of exercise I'm doing, my basal rate is changing constantly anyway as it either gets more sensitive or slowly rises back to normal sensitivity over a period of days. This process can take 3-5 days to go from my most sensitive back to normal if I have a few days of little or no exercise.

I suppose it means that CGM is something that would work well for me?
 
Ergates said:
I'm looking for some ideas on basal rate testing, because given my work and lifestyle, I have huge problems with missing sleep and with fasting. I ride a long way to work and back, and I do a physical job, and this means that I need to consume a vast amount of calories, as well as sleep very well every day. If I don't, within repeated days of not meeting my body's demands for rest and food, I'll crash and hit overtraining symptoms.

I guess you can see my problem - it's hugely difficult for me to fast for any length of time. Additionally given the large amount of exercise I'm doing, my basal rate is changing constantly anyway as it either gets more sensitive or slowly rises back to normal sensitivity over a period of days. This process can take 3-5 days to go from my most sensitive back to normal if I have a few days of little or no exercise.

I suppose it means that CGM is something that would work well for me?
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Hiya,
you don't have to starve for hours on end 🙂 so you wont fade away.
Here's a link for basal testing http://www.diatribe.us/issues/13/learning-curve.php
as your days vary it means you will have to set up different profiles on your pump. So it will take a while to do this. But it can be done.
Have you invested in the book pumping insulin by John Walsh? If not well worth the money as known as the pumpers bible.
Bottom line though is if you don't do your basals and sort them, then you are wasting your time pumping. Because if they are not right then nothing else is. :(
Think positive :D you can do it.
 
Ergrat

Yep you will need different profiles for different days..

When I worked at the kennels I used to have 3 different profiles..

Profile 1 - rest day
profile 2 - main kennel block
profile 3 - Kennel block A & C blocks (worked these toghether)

It's difficult when you are trying to sort out the profiles..

I sorted my rest day profile and carb-insulin ratios first, this was in my case my kingpin to everything else..

My work one posed a lot more difficulties, as I couldn't fast and had to be extremely carefull concerning hypo's as I worked with dogs (they don't always respond well to hypo's )

What I did was, after copying my basic rest day profile into a new one..

I then set an TBR for an hour or two blocks (noting down the amount of insulin it was delivering) then I check every hour, to monitor what was happening, if I found this worked I then adjusted the profile to reflect the TBR, it took a lot of faffing doing it this way.. But did get there in the end.
 
Yes, I have my resting profile fairly spot on now. The hard part is getting the exercise days right, depending on how much exercise on the day, and how much accumulated exercise I have from prior days.

TBH I need help most from people with experience of a fairly heavy exercise schedule, as I have little to no spare recovery to spend on testing. This time of year I'm eating between 3,000-5,000kcal per day, and if I miss much food, or an hour's sleep two or three days in a row that has me straight to the depths of overtraining and a crash that means missing work for a day or more. I'm losing weight slowly too, even with eating this much.
 
Thanks Sue, good find there. Yes, I've been reading it, and I'm lucky enough to be under Dr **'s care. It's a 1.5-2 hour drive to get there, but well worth it as they are a superb team.

I'm doing some digging around and researching so that I can make the most of my visit to the sports clinic there next week.
 
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...and a loaned CGMS is the answer. Installed now, and it's already averted a low that I would have had.
 
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