Greed, high GI and basal rates!

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Jeanne

Jeanne

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Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
Hi there. I have a couple of questions...

Does anyone else find that their basal rates differ HUGELY on days when they are active and days when they are not?

Does anyone else find that if they eat food that their body doesn't really "need" out of greed, or habit, or comfort eating etc (as in you eat a really good lunch and are full and then decide out of sheer greed to eat a big snack in the afternoon like I did yesterday!) then their BGs rise, despite the bolus wizard?
Is this my body's way of complaining or is it just my basal rate is wrong?

Oh, and does anyone else find that despite bolus wizard, high GI foods still spike them?

Thank you!!
 
Well, I'm not on a pump but I can say yes to pretty much all of this. Certainly my basal tends to be too high on active days, but being on injections I can't easily change it. Also, if you are having a much larger amount of carbs than usual this can affect your carb:insulin ratios and you may find you need more insulin if you are overloading on the carbs than you would for a normal meal at that time of day. As for high GI foods, I've never really subscribed to the idea that you can 'bolus for a biscuit' as you still need to plan ahead a little to give the bolus time to start peaking before you consume the high GI snack or drink, which will hit your levels almost immediately (hence why we use such stuff for hypos and expect it to raise levels almost instantly! 🙂)
 
Thanks Northerner! Further to this, does being high already before bolusing also seriously muck about carb-insulin ratios?
I've had diabetes for 25 years and I feel like I've only just been diagnosed!!
Jeanne
 
If you can stick around for a while Jeanne, we can hopefully give you some helpful pointers that will make everything a bit easier to predict.

I felt the same as you last year. 30 odd years and not a clue until I joined here and discovered the reality of diabetes.

Rob
 
Jeanne said:
Thanks Northerner! Further to this, does being high already before bolusing also seriously muck about carb-insulin ratios?
I've had diabetes for 25 years and I feel like I've only just been diagnosed!!
Jeanne
Click to expand...

It does depend on the individual, but I have heard people on here say that, for example, they need a bigger correction ratio if their levels are particularly high, so I imagine the same would apply to boluses too. There is so much that is new when you go on a pump, but I am sure that once you have cracked it you will be able to manage things much better 🙂 Do you have the book Pumping Insulin by John Walsh? It's been highly recommended here 🙂
 
Thanks everyone, yes I have the John Walsh book, it arrived on Saturday. Now I just need to read it!! Jeanne
 
Jeanne said:
Hi there. I have a couple of questions...

Does anyone else find that their basal rates differ HUGELY on days when they are active and days when they are not?

Yes, I even had two profiles for working at the kennels, then at times depending on what dogs we had in at to resort to the TBR! Ironing I now turn my pump off

Does anyone else find that if they eat food that their body doesn't really "need" out of greed, or habit, or comfort eating etc (as in you eat a really good lunch and are full and then decide out of sheer greed to eat a big snack in the afternoon like I did yesterday!) then their BGs rise, despite the bolus wizard?

Rare occassions, we'll human after all and I'm no saint

Is this my body's way of complaining or is it just my basal rate is wrong?

it's sort of the body complaining, we all have a natural point of carb consumption that if we eat carbs within a certain range we can reasonable perdict what insulin we need and out come etc.. when we go above this range everything becomes unperdictable, due to a large pool of insulin doesn't always asorb at an even paced rate as a smaller pool, similar with our digestion above a certain point it does it's own thing at the time.

If you basal rate is out, you would see a pattern to every meal or within a fasting test


Oh, and does anyone else find that despite bolus wizard, high GI foods still spike them?

Yep it can, it's very difficult to pitch the timing of delivery of insulin


Thank you!!
Click to expand...

When you start pumping, it can feel as though you are starting diabetes all over again, but over the years it's because you've created your own personally technical manual of control... And with the better delivery system of the pump, you sort of got to rewrite the manual again, it feels like a very big ask to start off with, but after a while when you get to a position that you can edit from the information you've already got..
 
Thanks Ellie, that's very helpful and reassuring! I have now started reading the John Walsh book and it's going to be great, I can just tell! It makes real sense that we would all have a point of carb consumption, I'm going to use his calculations to find mine in a minute.

I want his smartchart! Is it available to download anywhere? I'm so desperate for it I think I will start a fresh thread!

Jeanne
 
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