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2. Profiling Basal Rates.

2.1 Preparation before testing your Basal Rates

Test your Basal Rates on a day which follows a vanilla day. That is, the previous day should have no insulin reactions, unusual highs or lows, or out of the ordinary physical activity.

Prior to and during the testing period, you should not participate in any activites which are out of the ordinary. Do the things you normally do every day.

In order for this procedure to work correctly, blood sugar levels must remain stable and constant during the test period.

2.2 Repeatability of the Basal Rate test

The Basal Rate measurement should be repeated two or more times on different days to make sure the results are accurate and repeatable. Make changes to basal rates only after successfully repeating the test results. It can be expected that there will be some minor variation in results from day to day. Repeatable test results indicate a true pattern which can then be used to correct basal rates.

2.3 Basal Rate test procedure

Measure and record your fasting blood sugar levels over an 8 to 10 hour period every 2 hours. For night time measurements, you may wish to do the test over two nights using a 4 hour measurement interval with the second night's measurements offset 2 hours from the first night.

If night time testing is done over two days as described above, you must NORMALIZE the results of the second night as in this example: On the first night, measure blood sugar at 10:00pm (example result 112), then measure at 12:00 midnight, 4:00 am, and again at 8:00am. On the second night, measure at 10:00pm (example result 98), then measure at 2:00am, and again at 6:00am. The second night's results are adjusted up or down by the difference in the 10:00 o'clock results from the first night. To normalize the second nights results, add ( if the first night 10:00 pm reading is greater than the second night ) or subtract ( if the first night 10:00 pm reading is less than the second night ) the difference in the 10:00 pm results (14 points) to each of the results for the second night. The 10:00 pm adjusted results should now be the same for both nights and the remaining second night results will be normalized. This produces a set of results at 2 hour intervals and will not significantly disturb your sleep pattern.

  1. Fast for 4-5 hours prior to beginning the test and do not take any insulin other than that provided by your basal rate.
  2. With blood sugars between 90 and 140, start the test and measure your blood sugar levels every 2 hours. If your blood sugar levels fall above or below the guideline limits (65 - 165) correct your blood sugar levels with glucose or insulin and STOP the test.
  3. If blood sugar levels exceed the guideline limits, adjust the basal rate for period prior to the out-of-range measurement up or down by 0.1 u/hr., as appropriate, and repeat the test on another day.
  4. Repeat this procedure for night time, morning/daytime, and afternoon/evening test periods.
  5. Use the Basal Rate Estimator to help you make basal rate adjustments. Be sure to review the results with your health care team when adjusting or adding/removing basal rates.


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