Glucose level fluctuations

[The_Bowlii]

Hi there lovely people. Diagnosed 11 days ago, taking fixed basal and bolus units as advised by the diabetes nurses. My levels are coming down gradually so blood glucose about 11-12 in the morning before breakfast. I do, however, seem to get a spike after lunch to 15-17 units albeit better by dinner time. Is this normal or do I need to speak to the nurses about increasing lunchtime insulin doses. Thanks!

 

[helli]

Whilst this is a spike, it is common to conservatively start us off on lower doses to avoid hypos and issues due to reducing BG too fast.
Everyone will spike when eating (including those without diabetes). If your levels return to the same ball park as your pre-meal level within 4 hours, your lunchtime dose is likely to be close to what you need.

 

[The_Bowlii]

Whilst this is a spike, it is common to conservatively start us off on lower doses to avoid hypos and issues due to reducing BG too fast.
Everyone will spike when eating (including those without diabetes). If your levels return to the same ball park as your pre-meal level within 4 hours, your lunchtime dose is likely to be close to what you need.

Thanks @helli - pre-dinner levels usually ok so that puts my mind at rest. Every day is a learning day right now…

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Still very early days for you @The_Bowlii and as @helli suggests it’s not unusual to be started on fairly modest doses - partly to avoid the risk of hypos, but also to bring down your levels gradually. If you’d been running very high levels for a while before diagnosis (which is pretty usual), then suddenly crashing down to the ‘healthy’ range can be a bit much for the very fine blood vessels in eyes and supplyng nerve endings, and you can trigger some short term retinopathy or nerve pain, sometimes called ‘treatment induced neuritis’.

Best to let things coast down gently over a few weeks and allow your body time to adjust and adapt 🙂

 

[The_Bowlii]

Still very early days for you @The_Bowlii and as @helli suggests it’s not unusual to be started on fairly modest doses - partly to avoid the risk of hypos, but also to bring down your levels gradually. If you’d been running very high levels for a while before diagnosis (which is pretty usual), then suddenly crashing down to the ‘healthy’ range can be a bit much for the very fine blood vessels in eyes and supplyng nerve endings, and you can trigger some short term retinopathy or nerve pain, sometimes called ‘treatment induced neuritis’.

Best to let things coast down gently over a few weeks and allow your body time to adjust and adapt 🙂

Thanks @everydayupsanddowns and @helli. I see stuff on the forums where people are panicking about being up at 8 or 9 in the morning while I’m typically 11-12 albeit reducing slowly. I guess patience is another thing I’m going to have to learn! Just downloaded Carbs and Cals to log my food and carbs so I can discuss with the dietician in a couple of weeks. Hopefully will see some correlation between carbs and BG and develop a plan. Meant to be getting a Libre 2 fitted at the same time so this might reduce the stress a little. Hey ho…

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Of course!

Long term you’ll want to be aiming for 4-10 for as much of the time as you can manage (this is the recommendation for continuous data from Libre etc)

The general fingerstick glucose targets were always 5-7 before breakfast, and 4-7 before other meals. Then no higher than 9.5 by 2hrs after meals.

But there’s no screaming hurry to hit those levels to begin with, and actually you can be above 10 for about 25% of the time in your Libre data and still have an excellent HbA1c that will guard against long term complications 🙂

See: International consensus recommendations for Time in Range