Hi everyone

[Matthew James Hardy]

This may sound a silly question to most of you but how long after breakfast should you leave taking your lunchtime insulin like for example if i had a lie in till 10am then had my breakfast and was hungry day at 12 or half 12 am I still okay taking the lunchtime insulin or do you have to wait a period of time before having lunch

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

I sometimes only leave 3 or 3 and a half hours between meals, but not as few as 2 or 2 and a half. I'd be a bit concerned about doing that, tbh, because of the amount of insulin still active in my system. I think it would be possible if you knew what you were doing in terms of calculating the carbs and the insulin, but if you're only recently diagnosed (sorry if you've had diabetes for ages, I'm going by when you joined the forum) it would be better to try to leave at least 3-4 hours between meals and ideally 4-5 hours, at least for now.

There's no reason you can't have a snack 2 or 2 and a half hours after breakfast, without any insulin, if you're hungry though, and then have your lunch and lunchtime insulin a bit later. If your blood sugar's lowish you could have a biscuit or something that's about 10g of carbs with no insulin, and if your blood sugar's higher you could have some cheese or nuts or something low in carbs like that.

 

[mikeyB]

No question is silly, Mathew. To an extent it depends on the insulin you use, but Humalog and Novorapid reach peaks after about an hour or so, and drift along for 3-4 hours to negligible levels. There will be some insulin left in your system, but theoretically that is coping with the breakfast carb intake.

If you inject for the carb intake of lunch, that should theoretically be the normal dose for that carb intake, but you will be adding to insulin already in your body if it’s only two hours later. You will then get a higher peak of insulin but how high is in the lap of the Gods, and nobody will be able to tell you how high. So nobody can tell you how much less to inject to avoid a hypo, or even if you need to.

You’ll just have to suck it and see. If I get up late, I just skip brekkie🙂

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Agree with others, the potential problem is going to be the stacking of insulin doses one one top of another. And if activity did outrun the carbs you might end up treating a low BG with fast acting carbs, only for your lunch to eventually arrive some time later.

Of course this may not happen. Or it may happen some times, but not others.

All you can do is try to understand the theory, and then see how it works for you in practice. That’s pretty much always the way with Diabetes!

 

[trophywench]

Each person has to simply 'suck it and see' - but as per flippin usual in diabetes conundrums - we just have to test, test, test whilst we're doing it !