time in range

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sl0042

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Type 1
I am type 1 diabetic; I was diagnosed at 69 years old,
I was in France at the time.
I am now 79 years old.
I have Lire 2 & there is a key for time in range ie between 4 & 10.
I am concerned that I am only 52% in range; should I worry?
 
Welcome @sl0042 🙂 The answer to that question is that it depends. First, are you having a lot of hypos which are putting you below range? If so, that’s a concern. Secondly, are you having a lot of highs that are putting you above range? If so, how high are you going?

Which insulins do you take?
 
maybe a hypo every 2 - 3 days ; very highs above 20 only very occasionally if I have forgotten to take my insulin.
My inslins are Nova Rapid & Treshiba
 
sl0042 said:
I am concerned that I am only 52% in range; should I worry?
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I doubt it, so long as you feel OK. If you're having too many hypos or too many highs that feel unpleasant, then for sure start to look at those (starting with any hypos since those have obvious short term risks).
 
sl0042 said:
maybe a hypo every 2 - 3 days ; very highs above 20 only very occasionally if I have forgotten to take my insulin.
My inslins are Nova Rapid & Treshiba
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That sounds ok @sl0042 If you’re finding you’re spiking a little high after meals, you could look at cautiously bringing the time of your Novorapid injection earlier before the meal, eg instead of injecting it 10 mins in advance of eating, you could try 15 mins. That can lower any post-meal highs.
 
sorry can I clarify; my alarm llimit is set to 4.5 so that is when my alarm goes off preventing me having a hypo;
 
Not meaning any disrespect as I am aware that we are all getting older but at your age when falls become more of a risk and hypos can cause falls, and also your digestive system probably gets a bit slower, you might be well advised to raise your low alarm to 5.0 or maybe even higher instead of 4.5, to give you a bit more time to prevent a hypo. This doesn't necessarily mean that you need or should have a full hypo treatment of 15g carbs when the alarm goes off at 5 but just that you might want to monitor your levels a bit more closely and perhaps nudge them upwards a bit with just a very small amount of carbs like just 5g carbs (ie 1 jelly baby or 1-2 glucose tablets) or i sometimes use a single prune or dried apricot both of which are about 5g carbs each.
 
sl0042 said:
sorry can I clarify; my alarm llimit is set to 4.5 so that is when my alarm goes off preventing me having a hypo;
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No matter your age,I think 5.0 is a safer level. The idea is to ward off as many hypos as possible. This will also help maintain your hypo awareness. If your Libre isn’t that accurate against fingerpricks (mine rarely was accurate) you might even need to set it slightly higher than 5.0.
 
Hi @S10042 and welcome to the forum

If you are going high after meals it would be worth looking at the timing of your bolus injections. I find that the amount of time before my meal at which I need to inject (in an ideal world) varies during the day. I worked out how long I need by gradually altering it step by step. This was a lot easier for breakfast which tends to be fairly consistent.

As others have said it is good to head off hypos where possible. Setting your alarm at 5 and then looking at how fast you are dropping will help you make decisions about how to treat this. Sometimes just a small carb snack, with insulin can head off a slow decent, other times faster carbs are needed. Some trial and improvement helps us to settle on what works for us.
 
I'm 74, don't fall over all that often but do sometimes have a bit of postural hypotension ( ie low blood pressure when I've been sitting or lying for a while) and stagger a bit so make sure I hang onto the architrave where the door frames meet to wall or any other solid things like work surfaces, backs of chairs etc - and I do love a dried apricot but really don't need to walk past the loo door and stagger to the kitchen and grab an apricot out of the fridge when its 3/4am and needing a wee woke me up!

Are your hypos real ones ie corroborated by a finger prick test check?
 
Inka said:
No matter your age,I think 5.0 is a safer level. The idea is to ward off as many hypos as possible. This will also help maintain your hypo awareness. If your Libre isn’t that accurate against fingerpricks (mine rarely was accurate) you might even need to set it slightly higher than 5.0.
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Me too. I’d rather have a small nudge at 5.0 to steer me away from a hypo than wait for 4.5 and down arrows to panic and then bounce back up into the teens.

The only snag with low alarms at 5, is when your body decides it is happy to cruise at 4.8 all afternoon, and you get a bit of alarm fatigue from the repeated nags. But certainly with Dex’s 5 minute updates to what was happening 10 minutes ago I need my low alarm to be 5, because 5 and dropping can mean a realtime 4.1 🙄
 
I don't find my dex lags by as much as 10 min..if my sugars are going up i can jump on my excercise bike for, say, 4 min, and by the time i get off my levels are already going down.
Having said that, it tends to lag more when low and i've taken glucose to bring it up
 
Tdm said:
I don't find my dex lags by as much as 10 min..if my sugars are going up i can jump on my excercise bike for, say, 4 min, and by the time i get off my levels are already going down.
Having said that, it tends to lag more when low and i've taken glucose to bring it up
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I love the Dex for stable tracking in-line with my BGs, but the ‘only updating every 5 minutes’ does drive me slightly crackers, and I do find it laggy, especially with hypos as you suggest.

Early on I repeatedly double-treated myself into double figures because I reacted to the repeat alarm that said I was still 3.8 or 4.1 or whatever. When I started cross-checking, I discovered my BG was often 5-6ish at that point. Except on the occasions when I still was still 3.annoying!

It was a tiny thing, but waiting for hypo treatment to ‘land’ before I could continue walking the dog (in full 5 minute increments) was surprisingly frustrating at times!
 
Tdm said:
I don't find my dex lags by as much as 10 min..if my sugars are going up i can jump on my excercise bike for, say, 4 min, and by the time i get off my levels are already going down.
Having said that, it tends to lag more when low and i've taken glucose to bring it up
Click to expand...

Must admit lag with Dexcom is much smaller than Libre, plus find it much more accurate to.
 
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