Under Estimated Insulin Dose

[Paul Goldie]

Evening Members.

Can I ask a quick question. The other night I underestimated how much insulin I would need to give myself to cover my dinner and as a result went to bed on a high reading. Now obviously if this had been at breakfast or lunch, I could have just had some extra insulin before my next meal but as this was bedtime, should I just let my Lantus dose sort it out overnight or can I have some extra Novorapid as well as Lantus to bring it down quicker?

 

[Sally71]

Your Lantus won't sort it out, Lantus is a basal insulin which is designed just to keep your blood sugars steady between meals. It won't deal with high blood sugars. Yes you could have had extra Novorapid, that's what we would do. Some people don't like having Novorapid late in the evening in case they drop low overnight, but Lantus alone won't sort out the high, so maybe take a cautious extra dose of Novorapid? Maybe half as much as you think you need so that it won't drop you too low but hopefully will go some way towards correcting the error.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

or can I have some extra Novorapid as well as Lantus to bring it down quicker?

You can, but there's the obvious risk of going low. So take less than you think you need.

 

[helli]

I would take some NovoRapid.
As others have said, Lantus’s role is to keep your levels stable. Depending how high your blood sugars were, it may not have been able to achieve this.
When our levels are high (how high is different for each of us), we become insulin resistant. This is why we may need extra bolus (NovoRapid in your case) to correct the high. But, at high levels we are resistant to all insulin, including basal. So, if we don’t correct the high with bolus, we may need more basal to even keep our levels stable at high levels.