Posted by on Wednesday 3 March 2010

Stop press. All units might be equal after all...

There's nothing like writing something down and ranting about how nonsensical and inexplicable it is to change things. A few days ago I went on at length about how dropping 2 units of Lantus led to consistently high readings the following morning and seemed to cause rampant blood glucose rises for the whole next day. Well guess what. Over the last week I've had low blood sugars in the morning a few times, and each time I've dropped back to 12 units for my evening dose. It seems, almost deliberately to spite my blog post, that my body has decided to accept this little change with good grace this time. Indeed last night (after a briskish 9.30pm walk) I dropped to 12 units and ate approx 20g carbs and still woke up a little hypo this morning!

I'll let you know how things carry on...

Update: more on my continuing Lantus fun and games here.

3 comments:

  1. I was having the same problem of having morning hypo's and was told to reduce my dosage of lantus. This was just before my Dafne review though so I was lucky to have advice about doing that. My consultant told me that it always takes a couple of days for your body to adjust to the new dosage and told me that when reducing it, I may experience high sugars for a few days. So what you suspected is right.

    Also I was also advised if I go to the gym a lot and do excercise, this can also cause more hypos later in the evening or following morning if on Lantus and was advised to try out the long acting Levermir Insulin, which can be taken in 2 dosages, and makes it easier to manage, so worth discussing that option.

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  2. Something else I forgot to add. When I was doing my dafne course they mentioned was is known as the 'Dawn Phenomenon' where for some diabetics, their liver releases sugar in the early morning causing higher blood sugars. So glad they told me about it, as it explained why my sugars were high in the morning despite me correctly counting my carbs. Now I tend to add a couple more units to my breakfast insulin if over 5. Something to watch out for.

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  3. Hi Emma

    Thank you for your comments :)

    In the months following this post and after a few other experiments with basal testing, splitting Lantus and changes to doses and timings it appears that taking Lantus in the mornings suits my system best. Since changing to basal in the morning, I have almost entirely eliminated waking up hypo.

    Yes I'm familiar with DP (I wrote a rant about this and other imponderables in April called Too Many Variables) and though I don't think that is exactly how it works for me I have come to realise that I need both a higher insulin:carb ratio in the mornings and also need to give my boluses more time to get going (typically 20-30 minutes) if I am to keep my post-breakfast readings in single figures.

    Thank you again very much for your support and suggestions.
    M

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