newly type 1....questions

[MikeD704]

I have been diagnosed type 1 for 1 week now. When i went to the doctor my blood sugar was at 490...it peaked at 561 the next day. Right now they have me doing 25 units of levemir at bedtime and 7 units of novolog before meals. I noticed something yesterday that has been bothering me.....I took my blood sugar at 11:00 am before lunch and it was 247. I then took it at 1:00 pm and it was at 260...no big deal, but then i went home and started feeling weird a couple hours later so i checked it at 4:30 and it was at 370 without me eating anything since 11:00!! why is it raising if i am not eating anything..this disease is very aggravating and confusing.

[Psycho Penguin]

Some foods process slower than others. Potatoes and pasta and starches I believe. So if you eat those, you get a gradual spike. As opposed to sugary stuff where your sugar will spike quicker.

[Olidus]

This is not that uncommon,
I was always told that the body can and will store excess carbs to glucose and call upon it if needed. It also depends on what is going on with you as well.
Personally I find that sometimes when I'm am active this can happen and spike my bgs.

[Gordonm]

There is no way you have your basal (levemir) or your bolus (novolog) down yet. It will take a few weeks of trial and error before you even start to see good numbers throughout the day. A before meal glucose of over 200 is way out of the range. I do not even try to eat anything until mine is around 100. You are still probably somewhat insulin resistant and you will find out when you get your glucose numbers better how the insulin reacts. Read as much as you an ask as many questions as you can and realize this is YOUR diabetes. Your numbers will vary from other people here. Constant monitering and adjusting is the key. I have had type 1 for 34 years and it is still frustrating at times. Keep at it but don't expect perfect numbers for a while.

[Scratch]

Meals with high fat content can be slow to absorb.

Like Gordon said, right now you're in a bit of an odd situation, trying to get your numbers down and it's going to be some trial and error. You also probably have some insulin resistance with your numbers up over 200 mg/dL.

I also highly recommend you consider buying the book Think Like a Pancreas by Gary Scheiner. He's a type 1 diabetic too and a CDE, I've got the book and felt it did a good job of explaining the concepts behind using basal insulins like Lantus/Levemir and the bolus insulins like Humalog, Novolog and Apidra. Grasp those concepts of basal and bolus and you'll be on your way to taking control.

[DanG]

..this disease is very aggravating and confusing.

Yep - it is aggravating - if you think that you can take a medicine and then plug and chug.

Diabetes is not a plug and chug disease, sorry. Diabetes is life. And, as life, it is a whole being affair. All you do affects the almighty blood sugar reading. What you are doing, what you ate last meal, what you are going to eat, what you are going to do, how your head is (happy / frustrated / angry) - all these and many more factors enter into the grand equation that we try to read when we see our almighty blood sugar reading.

It is not a heart condition where you take the pill and eat the food and live - plug and chug. Diabetes is life, and it is all of life.

Ya gotta sorta get touchey feeley with yourself so you can sorta sense how things are going, what things will happen, etc. Take the blood sugar reading and remember what has happened, how you felt, what you ate, and learn some serious mental recording so that you can chalk up similar experience to be similar to a previously recorded event. And then, start to learn again - because diabetes will throw you a curve ball. Learn to catch the curve balls. It really is a game, but not quite. It really ain't all that bad. Certainly not as bad as some very limiting diseases that we all read about in medical stories, sometimes.

We eat, we live. But, we are quite careful that we do eat, and take the insulin and learn the balance between the two. Learn, learn, learn - nobody can know as much as you will about your diabetes, plus, nobody cares as much about your diabetes as you care about your diabetes.

[mazea]

Blood sugars swing wildly for no reason in the first month that you are on the insulin. They swing wildly because your body has been without insulin for a while and needs the time to adjust to the huge difference that insulin brings.

My blood sugars swung from 2 to 15 3 times a day in my first month of Type 1 treatment. They settled down a few months later. A few months later my basal and short acting insulin requirement dropped and my blood glucose was steady on about 5-7 all day.

[owlyn]

Hang in there, Mike. It takes some time. You will eventually get it sorted out. You also learn to accept the frustrating times. Here's abgreat example- Monday through Friday I eat the exact same things for breakfast and lunch. Breakfast is coffee at home, and then a bagle and cream cheese (no booing from the peanut gallery, please) at work, and for lunch I have a large salad with vinegar and a touch of olive oil and a small roll with butter.

So, it may go like this:

Monday: fasting BG 80, take 28u Lantus, no Humalog. 2 hours later, BG is 180
Tuesday: fasting BG 80, take 28u Lantus, no Humalog. 2 hours later, BG is 75

I take the train to work, so it's not a stressful commute.

Don't ask what happens after the bagle and 6 units of Humalog to cover it. Could be 90 by lunch, could be 250. Meals are at the same time every day. Sometimes there's just no figuring. I have a theory that it's related to the square root of the price of tea in China divided by the number of people in the Empire State Building, but I can't prove it.

[shiftzor]

We have all been there and you will get through it, high bgs cause mood swings which can make you depressed however don't let it get to you (easier said than done) all is not lost. Normal ranges are between 4mmol/L or 72mg/dl and 7mmol/L or 126mg/dl, but don’t worry too much about these yet wait for things to settle and you will be in a much stronger position to take control. Diabetes becomes easier to manage once you have worked out insulin to carb ratios, correction factors, basal doses and carb counting. Might seem like a hard and daunting task to start with but it’s not as scary as it all sounds. Keep asking questions and welcome to this great forum.

[shiftzor]

Don't want to overload you with info so just ignore what i am about to say if you wish and you can always refer back to it later.

I forgot to say that you should keep increasing your doses until you reach normal range, do it step by step in one unit incremements and always consult your endo. Start with your basal dose, which will be correct when your waking bg is within range.

bolus = fast acting insulin such as novo rapid
basal = long acting insulin such as lantus