Insulin suddenly MUCH more effective??

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Austin_98

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The last few days the insulin is having a MUCH more profound effect on me?

I usually take one unit of novorapid per 10mg carb and as a corrective when my blood sugar is very high, I have always needed one unit per 2 numbers to bring it down. For example, if my blood sugar was 16, I would take 5 units to bring it down to 6,.

Yesterday, my blood sugar was 16 and on top of that I ate a meal with 60g carbohydrates in. I've suddenly started having hypos over the last week or so after not having any for several weeks, so I only took 6 units (for the food) but nothing as a corrective, meaning if things went as normal, my blood sugar should stay at 16. But instead I felt shaky/clammy so checked my blood sugar and it was 3.4 and going down rapidly.

This afternoon, my blood sugar was 25.6. Given what has been happening, I SEVERELY underdosed and took only 4 units.I just got a low blood sugar alarm and my blood sugar is 3.8 and going down rapidly.
Has anybody every experienced this or have any idea what is happening? Surely my pancreas hasn't just REPAIRED itself?
 
Where are you injecting @Austin_98 ? I suddenly found I couldn’t use my tummy. Try injecting in a different body area. What I did initially was split my bolus, so I had half as usual then waited to see what happened before injecting or not injecting more.

If this continues, they’ll probably want to rule out a couple of medical conditions that can cause this.

Finally, swap your insulin. I know it’s not supposed to happen but occasionally I have some that seem stronger or weaker.
 
Inka said:
Where are you injecting @Austin_98 ? I suddenly found I couldn’t use my tummy. Try injecting in a different body area. What I did initially was split my bolus, so I had half as usual then waited to see what happened before injecting or not injecting more.

If this continues, they’ll probably want to rule out a couple of medical conditions that can cause this.

Finally, swap your insulin. I know it’s not supposed to happen but occasionally I have some that seem stronger or weaker.
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It IS a new pen I just started using maybe 5 or 6 days ago. I'll bin it and start a new one, I have another 5 so I won't run out or anything.
I normally inject in my love handle area. Not sure what it's called..."flank", maybe?
But now that you mention it, these times I've had a hypo I think with all of them I injected in my stomach.
 
Austin_98 said:
I normally inject in my love handle area. Not sure what it's called..."flank", maybe?
But now that you mention it, these times I've had a hypo I think with all of them I injected in my stomach.
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I think you have your answer there @Austin_98. If your stomach is "virgin" territory then it's likely to be more absorbent.
 
Yes, when I went on the Omnipod the rep told me (during the video training course) to put it on the back of my upper arm and warned me that if I'd never used that site that the insulin would doubtless be more effective. She was right.
 
PattiEvans said:
Yes, when I went on the Omnipod the rep told me (during the video training course) to put it on the back of my upper arm and warned me that if I'd never used that site that the insulin would doubtless be more effective. She was right.
Click to expand...
Yes my arms are more effective, and some parts of the top of my legs are slower, I do have some scar tissue from my pregnancy so I still use them as sites but I know I need to give it longer to work.
 
I had a spell a couple of weeks ago when my Fiasp started kicking in much quicker on a morning for no apparent reason and then became much more effective than normal at other times of the day too. It lasted for just over a week and really threw me as I have needed 45mins prebolus time for years for breakfast and if levels were above range I could be waiting hours for them to come down before breakfast, but then suddenly after 20-30 mins I was dropping fast even when I woke in double figures. No obvious change in routine or exercise or anything else. Back to normal now but it really threw me having to readjust everything and of course I resisted changing because I assumed it was a one off thing until I hypoed the next day and just caught it the third day.
It's quite hard to break and adjust habitual routines so suddenly and unexpectedly.
 
Sorry to hear about the hypos @Austin_98

So annoying when diabetes moves the goalposts!

Hope that it does turn out to be a site issue. However it is getting warmer (slightly!) and the days are much longer, which I usually find means I need to adjust my bolus ratios and correction factors - warmer weather/temperatures can increase sensitivity to insulin, and I am generally more active in longer and lighter days. So the change of season could also be contributing?
 
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