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Permalink Reply by Capin101 on May 16, 2012 at 9:22am

Your basal insulin should maintain a steady (flatline) BG for you indefinately without the additon of any food or exercise. The common way to check your basal rates is to skip a meal and check your BG every hour or two until you eat again. You are correct that having Insulin on Board is not appropriate when doing basal tests. What type of insulin are you using and how long is it active. I am on Humalog and it is active for a little under 4 hours.

While fasting and doing your basal testings, check your BG at least every 2 hours. Your BG should stay within +/- 30 mg/dL of your starting value. If your BG does not,then you need to consider adjusting your basal rates.

To adjust basal rates you need to know the peak activity time of your insulin. My humalog lasts 4 hours and peaks at 2 hours. So if my BG starts climbing at 6 pm. I would adjust my basal rates up at 4 pm. I would recomend small changes to your basal rates, because they can have a bigger impact than you may guess. The books than say to do the basal testing for that period again to see if you adjustments are spot on.

In the real world I would recomend that you skip one meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner, or evening snack)and basal test that period. When you feel comfortable with that time slot then tackle another time slot. I find a CGM to be a great tool for basal rate testing. Good luck with the overnight hours as those are a pain!

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Permalink Reply by acidrock23 on May 16, 2012 at 4:42pm

I have never basal tested. I watch "before meal" for "fasting" BG evaluations of my basal rates and after meal for evaluating ratios? It's sort of cheating as I don't fast much but, over time, I discovered that if the posts are off, either low or high, and I adjust my carb/ insulin ration just a bit, it will usually fix them. Similarly, if the pre-meal numbers are off, I adjust the basal and it usually seems to work out pretty well?

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Permalink Reply by Sam Iam on May 16, 2012 at 5:31pm

I went through this a few week ago. It is hard to achieve a fasting BG at all if you eat a lot of carbs. I spent 2 days only eating things that would have minimal effect, like cheese and lettuce, and testing every hour. Don't let your stomach become empty, because that will cause your liver to dump glycogen. It was tough, and I was hungry, but it was well worth it to set a proper basal, IMO.

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Permalink Reply by Mario on May 16, 2012 at 5:57pm

Hi Lysianne, for me, the insulin takes 4 hours to be absorbed completly. So I start to test my basal 4 hours after any bolus or BG correction.

Bienvenue dans le groupe ;-)

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Permalink Reply by LysianneAudet on May 17, 2012 at 5:16am

Thank you very much for your answers...The only other thing that i think is interferring is the actual real estate site that I am using. For exemple, when I use my thigh, I find that the bolus takes longer to take affect. So If I eat right after bolusing, my BG goes to high for to long.... Anyways, I am still trying to figured it all out but it not as simple as I thought!! Working out and alcohol are just a few other dilemmas!!

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Permalink Reply by MeganB on May 17, 2012 at 6:06am

I have the same issues. After discussing with my diabetes educator we decided that as long as my numbers are good as well as my Hba1c then I am not going to do fasting tests. I workout a lot and need to eat, so at this point in time I am not going to bother with the fasting tests. I adjust on my before and after meal numbers. If the numbers get out of control then I will do the fasting tests :)

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