Libre, information overload?

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AaronH83

AaronH83

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Type 1
As the title says, basically. Got my Libre 3 weeks ago and to be honest I found it overwhelming. The first morning I woke and scanned only to discover that I'd been low the whole time I'd been asleep, which then led to some drastic adjustment of basal doses and a recalculation of my bolus ratio. I thought I'd had great control with my old meter but it looks like my good HbA1C was basically because I was dangerously low at night, compensated by some violent dawn phenomenon spikes. Now I'm spending about 90% of time in the 4-10mmol/L range which I suppose is good control.

Apologies for stopping by to rant btw. And apologies for disappearing for a few months, life got a bit hectic what with job hunting and trying to keep on top of my mental health as well as my diabetes, then there was a slight prostate worry but we're all good in the hood now. Hope you're all doing well! Especially my fellow Norn Iron T1s/T2s/LADAs/Gestationals, let me know if you're ever up for committing some HbA1Crime with a Tim Horton's donut and coffee!
 
This is the thing, you can get over obsessed with new tech like libre and think about diabetes more than you should do, been there and only realised this after taking a enforced libre break.

What khskel says is on the money, follow up with bg test when libre reads low.
 
AaronH83 said:
As the title says, basically. Got my Libre 3 weeks ago and to be honest I found it overwhelming. The first morning I woke and scanned only to discover that I'd been low the whole time I'd been asleep, which then led to some drastic adjustment of basal doses and a recalculation of my bolus ratio. I thought I'd had great control with my old meter but it looks like my good HbA1C was basically because I was dangerously low at night, compensated by some violent dawn phenomenon spikes. Now I'm spending about 90% of time in the 4-10mmol/L range which I suppose is good control.

Apologies for stopping by to rant btw. And apologies for disappearing for a few months, life got a bit hectic what with job hunting and trying to keep on top of my mental health as well as my diabetes, then there was a slight prostate worry but we're all good in the hood now. Hope you're all doing well! Especially my fellow Norn Iron T1s/T2s/LADAs/Gestationals, let me know if you're ever up for committing some HbA1Crime with a Tim Horton's donut and coffee!
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The Libre is great, but as you say it can give a bit of an overload.

@khskel is right that the sensor if squashed can read Lo, but that is less likely to show throughout the night, unless you sleep VERY still.

One thing I was advised is definitely to change one thing at a time. So where you changed both basal rate and Bolus ratio. It is worth changing one at a time to check which was causing the problem (this is from someone who is sat here having had a graph too close to the red all night and who has just changed TBR and correction/sensitivity ratio).

Like you the Libre showed me such big spikes between meals when I first used it, which prompted some changes to meal sizes and choice of carbs. This has in the end lowered my HBA1c, but I am still working on reducing the number of hypos.
 
Thanks for the pointers folks. It's been a bit of a hectic few weeks but i think I'm back on track now.
 
Sounds like you are doing really well with the extra information @AaronH83 - but as you say it pays to be careful that we are not getting overwhelmed by all the new data and overeacting or getting stressed.

If you've not found them already, this series of videos give some really useful pointers of how to use the information to improve your BG management: https://abcd.care/dtn/education

You might also find this thread on 'time in range' useful for assessing how you are doing (90% TIR is a brilliant acievement, but it can also help to keep on checking your % or readings below 4): https://forum.diabetes.org.uk/boards/threads/time-in-range-useful-for-libre-cgm-wearers.82080/
 
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