Hi, I was diagnosed with LADA about 2.5 months ago and have been undergoing insulin therapy and largely as a whole I have managed to get on top of it well. I do have an issue in that in the late afternoon I always seen to drop close to 4.0, I have prevented a lot of hypos but have been having to eat a lot of carbs to keep me above board when I am trying to lose weight. I have been able to exercise early evening after getting my sugars up with no hypos but have to eat a lot of carbs to get there without any insulin. I normally have 4 units of BI of a morning and 1 unit of novorapid for every 15 grams of carbs for breakfast and that works perfectly fine, the same ratio is applied to dinner and again no issues. I take 5 units of BI before bed and keeps me stable overnight. Normally for lunch I have 1 unit of insulin per 20 grams of carbs but I keep dropping low. I decreased the total insulin to 1 unit for 60 grams of carbs and about 4 hours later I just caught it before going into a hypo. I was thinking of either decreasing the BI insulin during the day or not take any novorapid for lunch? Any help would be much appreciated, many thanks!
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Prevention of late afternoon blood sugar drops
- Thread starter cjmunn91
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Pumper_Sue
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- Type 1
Not to sure I can understand what you are saying but from what I could follow it looks as if you have to much Basal insulin taken in the morning. If you are going to low for your comfort and it's less than 2 hours from your bolus then it's a bolus problem. So check your timing of the bolus and if it's not within the 2 hours then look at your basal 🙂
Thank you very much for your advice, I will look into which type of insulin I need to alter based on the timings after eating 🙂. Sorry my message wasn't very clear or well written! Many thanks 🙂.
mikeyB
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- Type 1
Hi @cjmunn91, welcome to the forum.
it sounds like either the lunchtime bolus might be too high, or the morning basal too high. The way to find out I would suggest is reducing the morning basal first, by around half a unit. If that doesn’t work, then it’s the lunchtime basal that needs reducing slightly. Don’t adjust both at the same time, otherwise you won’t know which has worked.
it sounds like either the lunchtime bolus might be too high, or the morning basal too high. The way to find out I would suggest is reducing the morning basal first, by around half a unit. If that doesn’t work, then it’s the lunchtime basal that needs reducing slightly. Don’t adjust both at the same time, otherwise you won’t know which has worked.
Thank you and thank you for your message 🙂. I take Levemir and read that it remains active for about 24 hours or so to keep you stable? May ask what are you thoughts on not having an Levemir in the morning? Wouldn't the 5 units taken at night cover me for 24 hours, or am I mistaken? Just interested. Many thanks 🙂.
I would have thought a basal test would be the better option.
Tweaking bolus when you don’t know if you have the basal correct is a waste of time.
The way to find out if your basal,is correct is with a basal test - fasting (and no exercise) for 8 hours at a time to see if blood sugars remain approximately stable. Then @cjmunn91 can adjust basal accordingly : if blood sugars go down then morning basal is too high. if blood sugars remain approximately stable, bolus can be adjusted.
But definitely get the basal right firat.
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