? hormones causing high bg

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Emily123

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Hi,
I have an 11yr old daughter who was diagnosed 3yrs ago. All of a sudden she is getting days of being really high all day but particularly before bed and over night.
So far the increases in insulin don’t seem to be making any difference at all, it’s like it’s just stopped working! Her consultant seems to think the likely cause of this is a surge in hormones. I just wondered if anyone else had come across a similar situation? She is getting so fed up with all the extra injections and feels hungry all the time!
 
No experience with it myself - BUT because BG levels can and do definitely change with surges of female hormones eg before periods and always when ladies already have diabetes in pregnancy, plus some ladies without any prior sign of diabetes both can and do get gestational diabetes - which simply resolves itself again once the pregnancy is over for them, it could well be the cause. I daresay you already understand the hunger part anyway. So - how long has daughter been menstruating?
 
Again, not sure how much help I can give - but I find that I have very random spikes in the evening that are unrelated to food, and my nurse told me that these are likely hormone related - she also said when your period is due (I have the implant so mine are harder to track) to expect some insulin resistance. I have tried overlapping my basal doses (so bringing it forward by an hour or two) and this seems to have combatted the random bedtime highs to some extent; but they do still happen for me at random times of the month!
 
Sorry to hear your daughter’s levels are playing up @Emily123

I find my settings need fairly regular tweaks - usually a few times a month, as life / stress / ambient temperature / season / the moon-in-jupiter ebbs and flows.

It’s the most infuriating thing about living with diabetes for me. There are no ‘right’ doses. Just more-or-less-OK for this week, then things drift, then I experiment with adjustments, then they begin to work better… and then off we go round the cycle again. Ugh! It’s exhausting!

And I don’t even have the excuse of teen hormones and growth spurts.

She has my sympathy.
 
Yes definitely! My daughter’s insulin requirements pretty much doubled when she was going through puberty, and have never really gone down again. Even if your daughter hasn’t started her periods yet, her body might be starting to get ready for them. We got cycles of apparently random lows followed by ridiculous highs a few times, I was just starting to try to work out whether it was a monthly pattern, and then found out that it was! But even before that we had to do massive basal increases.
All you can do is keep increasing the doses gradually until her levels stabilise. With the help of your consultant of course if you’re not comfortable doing it yourself.
 
At least D clinics are more aware and also willing to discuss, female hormonal problems. (It's no consolation of course that testosterone can also cause its own havoc too, but if I were feeling spiteful I expect I might say 'Serves em right!')
 
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