Will I feel better?

[astbury1]

Am going onto MDI soon. Currently just on insultard 2 ijections a day. I find currently that after I eat i feel weird, anxious, weird head ache and blurriness and getting sick of it. Plus my emotions are veyr up and down. Is this to do with my blood sugars going up??

Just wondering whether when I go onto MDI so I can bolus for eating will this pass? WIll I get more energy and feel more stable?

 

[Copepod]

You're right, the most likely explanation for feeling unwell after eating is that carbohydrate puts your blood glucose up, and long acting insulatard can only cope with that over a longer period. Once you add bolus short acting insulin, that should cope better with food peaks.

However, it takes a while to get used to estimating what dose to take before each meal - you may need higher doses for breakfasts than midday and evening meals, for example, plus need to account for carbohydrate content, effects of fats slowly down CHO absorption etc - plus takinf account of other factors, such as exercise / activity, air temperature, infection, stress etc. So, be gentle on yourself and don't expect to get it all right immediately. Even after years of MDI, I still get it wroung sometimes.

 

[Robster65]

Hi Astbury

If you test your BG before and, about an hour (maybe half hour or 2 hours on different days) after eating, you'll be able to tell if the moods are related to your swings in blood sugar or some other anxiety.

As Copepod said, MDI is a far better way of finely controlling the spikes from food and, over time, you'll learn to get the doses and timings correct (nearly!).

Rob

 

[astbury1]

This makes sense as just before I was diagnosed I had this feeling after eating. Always suffered from anxeity but this feels different and what stemned the trip to the doctors. Thought would have gone away but it must be the raise in blood sugar causing. Am definitely hoping it gets better with MDI although am not happy that every one seems to have hypos alot

 

[Doddy]

I recently went onto MDI, and even more recently, started the whole carb counting lark. I haven't looked back. I am now nearly always on target, and have been lucky to only have 2-3 hypos. You work your way up slowly, and hopefully might avoid hypos.
it is a nervewracking time, whilst you are titrating, but the result is well worth the hard work. You won't get it right immediately, it does take time, you will hit hurdles, you will feel like giving in, but stick with it, and you won't look back.
Good luck with it all 🙂

 

[astbury1]

Im glad you are doing well! Sounds like you getting the hang of it with few hypos! Which to be honest makes me feel better!🙂

I recently went onto MDI, and even more recently, started the whole carb counting lark. I haven't looked back. I am now nearly always on target, and have been lucky to only have 2-3 hypos. You work your way up slowly, and hopefully might avoid hypos.
it is a nervewracking time, whilst you are titrating, but the result is well worth the hard work. You won't get it right immediately, it does take time, you will hit hurdles, you will feel like giving in, but stick with it, and you won't look back.
Good luck with it all 🙂

 

[Doddy]

Im glad you are doing well! Sounds like you getting the hang of it with few hypos! Which to be honest makes me feel better!🙂

Thats good 🙂 Honestly, it was the best move I made and as long as you do it slowly, fingers crossed you won't have hypos xxx

 

[Flutterby]

Just wanted to agree with what others have said. I wouldn't go back on to just the long acting if they paid me. It's not always easy but you do have more options with MDI. I wish you well with it. Hope that you get a DSN to help you over the initial changeover and to help you interpret your results.

 

[astbury1]

Believe me I will be doing it slowly! lol. Already decided on a junior half unit pen and I know that they will be starting me on 0.5 to 10 carbs at first. They know am petrified of hypos!😱

Thats good 🙂 Honestly, it was the best move I made and as long as you do it slowly, fingers crossed you won't have hypos xxx

 

[astbury1]

Am glad everyone agrees! It would be nice to feel less rubbish!😉

Just wanted to agree with what others have said. I wouldn't go back on to just the long acting if they paid me. It's not always easy but you do have more options with MDI. I wish you well with it. Hope that you get a DSN to help you over the initial changeover and to help you interpret your results.

 

[astbury1]

LOW Carb

Does anyone do the low carb thing? Wondering if this would better for me although am not sure if your BG drops if you do it. Am sick of eating carbs lots on this insultard, Cant wait to just have a chicken salad and not worry that BG will plummet

 

[Ellie Jones]

Don't get yourself too anxious over hypo's, Yes you need to be wary of them, as too many too frequently will erode your hypo awareness, but to attempt to totally avoid them normally puts your Blood Glucose ranges in to the 'high' risk area of sustaining long term complications.

Keeping a good diary and maintaining good testing practices, will help you to stay in control and keep hypo's/highs to a minimum so that your hypo awareness stays in tack..

The dairy side of things, you won't have to keep up an intensive diary all the time, but to begin with, noting down exercise, changes to normal routines, even noting down type of housework, stress levels etc.. As well as the carb amount note the type of carb.. This is all information that will help you translate your basic carb/insulin data, which in turn help you to determine whether an hypo/high was caused by insulin/carb ratio or it has been impacted by something else, like a real bad day at work! or even a mismatch between insulin injection timing and food adsorption (pizza effect)!

With this you then can build your own little book, where upon you know what adjustments to make in different settings/circumstances..

But remember we are only human, so apart from at times yes we faff up on our calculations, but sometimes due to the data source being of the nature of educated guess... And we do, then we look at our data to see possible cause of faff up, did we over/under estimate our carb intake, exercise etc.. Or is there a pattern that suggest we need to adjust something, such as background, insulin/carb ratio!

Hopefully, you put yourself into the position that high/lows are infrequent and your body is pretty well tuned so will tell you very quickly that you need to check BG to see what action needs to be taken to rectify the situation...

 

[trophywench]

Don't be scared of hypos, yes if they are really bad ones but honestly, once you've got it sorted, you shouldn't get em any more than you do now. Except you know, we all make mistakes with doses sometimes when we are working em out for ourselves and most of em are user-error and therefore explainable. Once you can recognise exactly WHY that happened and exactly what it is you need to do to avoid em, they are easier to avoid. And normally the high 3's don't really have a mega-effect - the worst hypos are when your BG plummets so if say you have your pre-meal jab and then omitted to eat it. All that insulin and no carb to use it .....

MDI is based on science. Mixed insulin is based on guesswork. Should be intelligent guesswork (as it was when I was diagnosed) but few medics now have been around long enough to know how to do the calculations properly.

MDI you never have to eat anything you don't want to eat. You do not have to have snacks between meals. You can plan and enjoy a chicken salad with no carbs at all or you can have stodge. At whatever time you want. Any day of the week you want to. Or even skip a meal entirely. If that's what you want to do!

Flexibilty! You'll love it once you get your head round it, promise you!