Basal testing ?'s

[mell1682]

At the risk of sounding totally stupid, I've never done this and I don't know how. What is it? I'm curious to know because I rarely change things and I'm wondering if I'm missing something or could do something more with the insulins I'm on. And I'm also asking because I think I'm experiencing "dawn phenomenon"; I've woken up in the 200's for the last week or so and a friend from another forum asked if I had it and I said no but I'm not too sure now! It's painful to admit but I don't even have an insulin to carb ratio! My latest A1C was 6.6 but I wonder if I could get it lower with some more aggressive therapy. I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska and there are NO endos here...just one doctor the whole town sends all of its diabetics too and she's very old-fashioned and deals with a lot of type 2's here. Oh and not to mention now I have no health insurance.

I've gathered to basal test, you don't eat all day. Do you take insulin regularly the night before and how do you treat hypos while basal testing. I'm on 30 units Lantus every night and I take anywhere from 3-10 Humalog when I eat or to correct high bloods. I hope you all don't think I'm stupid, until I came here I'd never heard of basal testing.

[Jules49]

Don't feel stupid. Have been seeing a Endo for years and he has never mentioned basal testing to me. I have another rare disease and wonder if they even know what to do with me. I am about 100 miles away from my doctors. I have learned more on boards that my doctors have ever told me.

[mortis505]

See this thread for links on basal testing.

http://www.diabetesforums.com/forum/pumping-insulin/28110-how-do-basal-testing.html#post330495

[fgummett]

There is no such thing as a stupid question :) I guarantee you 100% that if someone on DF is confused about something to do with managing Diabetes, there are hundreds of others wondering the exact same thing - good on you for being the one who asked :star:

[Brian J]

At the risk of sounding totally stupid, I've never done this and I don't know how. What is it? I'm curious to know because I rarely change things and I'm wondering if I'm missing something or could do something more with the insulins I'm on. And I'm also asking because I think I'm experiencing "dawn phenomenon"; I've woken up in the 200's for the last week or so and a friend from another forum asked if I had it and I said no but I'm not too sure now! It's painful to admit but I don't even have an insulin to carb ratio! My latest A1C was 6.6 but I wonder if I could get it lower with some more aggressive therapy. I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska and there are NO endos here...just one doctor the whole town sends all of its diabetics too and she's very old-fashioned and deals with a lot of type 2's here. Oh and not to mention now I have no health insurance.

I've gathered to basal test, you don't eat all day. Do you take insulin regularly the night before and how do you treat hypos while basal testing. I'm on 30 units Lantus every night and I take anywhere from 3-10 Humalog when I eat or to correct high bloods. I hope you all don't think I'm stupid, until I came here I'd never heard of basal testing.

It sounds to me like you've done pretty good inspite of having limited medical support. An A1c of 6.6 on a sliding scale regimen is fairly impressive. I also was diagnosed with Type 1 in 1987. I was lucky in that I was 32 at the time and didn't have to deal with it through childhood like you did! Learning a more modern approach isn't all that difficult, it just takes information and a solid approach.

I see from your profile that you're a college student and a mom. Probably the best Christmas present you could get is Using Insulin by John Walsh, Think Like a Pancreas by Gary Scheiner, and also a carb counting book like The Ultimate Guide to Accurate Carb Counting. You can get all three shipped to your door from Amazon for less than $40. If that's too much, try out the library at your school, but make sure they're recent editions. If you want tighter control, you're going to have to ditch the sliding scale approach, and manage it by techniques explained in the books mentioned.