Re: [IPk] Re: fasting to fix basal rates etc - weirder still
Hi Nanette
Something occurs to me, as I also find that BGs vary whether or not I fast
(although they vary anyway, so it's a little hard to figure it out!). My
highest insulin need (highest basal rate 1.1unit) is from 8:30am to 11:30am
- and if I eat breakfast (which I usually don't), my basal needs to be
lowered in that timeframe.
What occurs to me is (and I don't know the technical or medical
words/expressions, so this may be clumsy) that I have always been told that
exogenous (injected) insulin is always more effective when given WITH food.
I wonder what the mechanics of that are, and if it's true. It certainly
seems true in me - hence if I have a high BG, giving an enormous bolus
works far better in me if I also eat something (even if it is non-carb, but
carb helps more).
Any thoughts?
Tori (I was taking black cohosh tabs - Remifemin - for an early
peri-menopause until recently, another isoflavone, and found also that my
insulin sensitivity decreased when I stopped taking them .... But I hadn't
made the connection until you mentioned it here!)
At 12:10 AM 1/12/2003, you wrote:
>John,
>Thanks very much for the compliment - I am very honoured, especially
>coming from you.
>Meanwhile things have got somewhat more weird, or at any rate
>suprising.
>The reason why I had dared to rock the foundations, as you so nicely
>put it, was that while I had always noticed that my requirements were
>different when fasting than when eating, the difference in the mornings
>had become even more dramatic in the previous 3 weeks. Just to remind
>you, although, like John and others, in general I need a lower basal
>rate when fasting, in the mornings, for the first 3-4 hours after my
>normal breakfast time (7.15-ish) I actually need a *higher* basal if
>fasting. In the last 3 weeks, the difference between fasting and eating
>breakfast became even more pronounced, and because it seemed quite
>absurd to lower my already low mid-morning basal rates (0.2), I
>stupidly left them as they were, and only when I started feeling hypo,
>turned them to temporarily low rates - I found that I had to go down to
>only 40% of normal (that would be 0.08 units/hour) in order to maintain
>BG at about 4, and lost chunks of my mornings' concentration at work in
>the efforts. And on days that I didn't eat breakfast this did not
>happen at all, on the contrary, BG's went up.
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