Trish

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wooly1

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Type 1
Can anyone help? I am getting conflicting information from my GP and my Consultant re whether insulin should be taken before a meal or after. I have always taken it half an hour before my meal, to give it chance to start working. I have now been told that is rubbish and to take it just before or even after the meal is OK. Sometimes they make you feel so stupid for the way you manage your diabetes and forget that you are doing it this way because a doctor told you to.
 
Hi Trish. Welcome to the forum.

It depends what insulin you are taking. In the good old days, it was always before but Humalog, and some others, can be taken shortly before or after meals.

Rob
 
With insulins like Novorapid, they start to work after 5-10 minutes, so before would be normally the best, although experimenting with split doses before and after is common, especially for me.......

Older mixed insulins take longer to start working, thats where the 30 minutes came from..............

Its all about the onset time of the insulin!!!!
 
Welcome Wooly1
Like so much in diabetes, it depends on many things, so it's a shame that your GP and consultant haven't explained the reasons for their "instructions"...

It depends on type of short acting insulins - some are classed as "rapid acting".
It depends on what you're eating eg fat rich pizza means carbohydrates take longer to get into your system.
It depends on your lifestyle / job / family / recreation eg if you know you may be called away between injection and starting / finishing eating, it may be "safer" to eats first, inject after.
 
A warm welcome to you!

I think this depends on what insulin you're taking and how responsive your body is to insulin and food.

My appetite can go up and down a bit, so I tend to take my insulin just after my meal because I'm never sure exactly how much I'll eat. However, my breakfast always gives me a superbly quick BG spike, so I always take insulin for brekkie about 20mins before to give it a head start (brekkie is always a small affair so 9 times out of 10 I eat it all).

So basically, it's trial and error and depends on your own body. My suggestion would be try both before and after and test, test, test!
 
As others have said, much depends upon the insulin used. I use novorapid and inject immediately before eating, but if my meal contains fat or is low-gi I will inject after eating so that my food gets a chance to digest before my insulin kicks-in. Toby.
 
Just adding my half penny's worth.

My daughter is on NovoRapid and injects either after her meal or inbetween meal and dessert (she always has room for dessert!!). She does this for the same reason as bigpurpleduck. We never know how much she will eat.

Novomix30 should be injected before a meal. Mixtard30 (discontinued in december) was always 30 minutes before a meal. Those are the insulins we have used before. I won't comment on other insulins as I don't know anything about them.
 
wow thanks

Really big thanks to everyone. This makes me feel so much less alone. Wish I'd found this years ago. I am on Novorapid and usually inject before meals as I normally finish my meal. Surely it is better to have the insulin in our system before we eat so we don't spike BS when we start eating?
 
wooly1 said:
Really big thanks to everyone. This makes me feel so much less alone. Wish I'd found this years ago. I am on Novorapid and usually inject before meals as I normally finish my meal. Surely it is better to have the insulin in our system before we eat so we don't spike BS when we start eating?
Click to expand...

Thats the rule of thumb and is correct, but if your unsure if you will finish the meal it may be safer to inject after............

When I am having a wide varietie of carbs that are absorbed at different rates, usually anything over 150 grams I will take 75% before and 25% after, this is really to avoid the big spikes happening, as if taken before I would still be on target for next meal, just really high in between times..
 
Hi there trish cant help on the insulin questions as im no t on it but wanted to welcome you onboard x
 
wooly1 said:
Really big thanks to everyone. This makes me feel so much less alone. Wish I'd found this years ago. I am on Novorapid and usually inject before meals as I normally finish my meal. Surely it is better to have the insulin in our system before we eat so we don't spike BS when we start eating?
Click to expand...

This is certainly the advice I get from my doc and DSN (I'm on Novorapid too), but their view of the practicalities of living with diabetes are very different to mine.

The only reason I take insulin after my meal is to avoid hypos in case I don't eat everything I expect to.

It very much depends on you. If you feel more comfortable injecting before you eat and this causes no problems, go for it!
 
befoe or after

bigpurpleduck said:
This is certainly the advice I get from my doc and DSN (I'm on Novorapid too), but their view of the practicalities of living with diabetes are very different to mine.

The only reason I take insulin after my meal is to avoid hypos in case I don't eat everything I expect to.

It very much depends on you. If you feel more comfortable injecting before you eat and this causes no problems, go for it!
Click to expand...

well novorapid is a very quick acting insulin it starts to work less than 15 minutes after the injection and peaks between 50-90 minutes. I have been told on the DAFNE caurse that it is better to take after meals because you never know if you are going to eat all you have put on your plate or if you will have more. Hope this helps.
 
My daughter once had a hypo DURING her meal - Dsn was no help but since found out that some foods take longer to digest so we have assumed that the novarapid hit her before the food did. So she always injects straight after a meal now.
Think in an ideal world would split the dose before and after but this means two injections, so cant blame her for not doing that!
May try Monica's idea though and inject between meal and dessert.
 
I often used to split the dose for restaurant meals when I didn't know when dessert would arrive ....like Carolyns daughter, I once had a hypo between courses when the dessert took ages to arrive, and in any case until you see it you don't really have any idea how big it will be and how many carbs to estimate.
I also did it for long drawn out meals and as stated above for meals with a high fat content, where I'd inject some 'upfront' and the rest after an hour or so. (now I use a pump and use similar techniques)
 
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wooly1 said:
Really big thanks to everyone. This makes me feel so much less alone. Wish I'd found this years ago. I am on Novorapid and usually inject before meals as I normally finish my meal. Surely it is better to have the insulin in our system before we eat so we don't spike BS when we start eating?
Click to expand...

Hi Trish

I would inject immediately before eating an evening meal. For lunch I give it a head start of 10 or 20 minutes. Breakfast is better for me with 20-30 minutes head start. As others have said what you are eating can make a big difference. If my levels are high before a meal, Humalog can take over an hour(!) to begin to bring my levels down (seen while testing every 15 mins).

The 30 minute headstart was probably Actrapid which had a longer onset. Novorapid/Humalog is supposed to have an onset of 15 mins, which may match the beginning of digestion for you, or might not. The only thing you can do is to test an hour and two hours after eating to see how it works for you.

M
 
Thanks everyone, I am going to slowly reduce time between injecting and meals and check my BS after my meal at regular intervals as Mike suggested. I am Type 1 and am going to start Metformin with my tea to hopefully make me more sensitive to insulin and loose weight. Has anyone got any experience of this?
 
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