Type 1 diabetics and extremly bad hypoglecemia??

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Permalink Reply by Heidi Bruggink on September 27, 2009 at 11:28am

AGREED!!! Tiera, you likely are taking too much insulin, so I'd suggest keeping very careful logs of your food, dosing, activity, etc. - and then CALLING YOUR DOCTOR / CDE to make safe dosing changes.

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Permalink Reply by Brunetta on September 27, 2009 at 2:09pm

Tiera, Please work with your CDE/Doctors/Diabetes team to get your numbers in order.It iwll take some time, as the learning curvr can be long.. but try to fax or call your numbers and food log ( carb counts of the food you have eaten fior a couple of days, and carb -insulin ratios that you use,, insulin taken, pre-and post meal numbers, and basal rates) so you can get some help with your
You write that have steady lows.. You are getting too much insulin somehow. I know it sounds like a lot to keepo track of, and it is..but do a little at a time so it does not get overwhelming.
Everyone's diabetes needs vary, it is very individual" You are your own science experiment" work to get the insulin dosages and timings to work FOR YOU
But try to geet some help with the lows by sending in the data ASAP, as Heidi and the others said, and call your doctors/diabetes team to make "safe" changes.

God Bless,
Brunetta

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Permalink Reply by Mark on September 27, 2009 at 7:15pm

Hi Dave. I take one unit per carb. Guess I am one one of the out of line dosers. Any person who plays like their doctor using advice from this site has a fool for a patient.

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Permalink Reply by MelissaBL on September 27, 2009 at 7:34pm

Do you mean 1 unit of insulin for every 1 gram of carbohydrate - so, 15 units for a slice of bread - or 1 unit for every serving of carb (also called a carb exchange) - so 1 unit for every slice of bread?

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Permalink Reply by Mark on September 27, 2009 at 7:48pm

Melissa, One unit per carb, carb being 15 grams of carbohydrates. It gets confusing when we do not specify exactly how we state our carbohydrate intake.

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Permalink Reply by Kristy on September 27, 2009 at 8:16pm

so technically that would be 1 carb "exchange".. I thought for the most part, for T1 anyway, we counted the "exact" amount of carbs minus any fiber over 5 grams . I suppose the carb exchange method is easy if you are on a 1u/15 gram ratio but I feel all my food isn't suitable for the exchange method and seems like there would be more math involved especially since I am on a 1u:12gr ratio. There is a huge difference in what most consider "1 carb" and "1 carb exchange". I also find exact counting is more reliable than exchange counting. Just MHO~

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Permalink Reply by Gerri on September 27, 2009 at 8:35pm

Thanks for explaining, Mark.

Confusing for newbies who are taught carb counting & not exchanges. Most will assume 1 carb per one unit of insulin means 1 carb:) My first endo was old-fashioned & started me out on exchanges. Not terribly accurate & I was glad to move up to counting actual carbs.

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Permalink Reply by MelissaBL on September 28, 2009 at 5:28am

Yes, that makes a huge difference. On a pump, ordinarily, your ratio is figured by grams. I take 1 unit for every 6g throughout most of the day. I haven't counted exchanges since the mid-90s, but reading people saying 1 unit per carb made me freak out until I thought we might be using different language. A 1:1 ratio would have someone dosing four units for a single glucose tab and taking 100-200 units a day of fast-acting insulin for their meals. Normally, your ratio would be called 1:15, even though you might refer to it as 1 per carb.

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Permalink Reply by Sami on November 15, 2009 at 11:37am

Actually, the original pumps counted carb units (every 15 grams) through a formula. There were no bolus wizards. There were no counting individual grams of carbs. I was in the group who had the first trial pumps in STL in the very early 90s. Mark has been diabetic since 1958... so I'm sure he was in a similiar group also (switching from being worried about sugar to being worried about carbs). They weren't called exchanges, but rather "carb units" as far as the pump was concerned. Even doctors and educators refered to 15 grams of carbs as "a carb" shortened from "a carb unit."

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Permalink Reply by MelissaBL on November 15, 2009 at 12:24pm

My first pump did that as well (if I remember correctly) back in 2000. I moved from exchanges to "carb servings" (same thing as a carb unit, like Kelly states below) and then to carb gram counting when smart pumps became the industry norm. I just wanted Mark to know that we've got two different languages going on among our members here. Most of our pumping members do speak in "grams" now.

1 unit per "carb" when thinking in carb units rather than grams doesn't help me calculate my individual needs if I have a changing ratio throughout the day of 1:6, 1:7, and 1:8, depending on my needs. I'd have to explain it as a ratio of "one unit of insulin for every 40%, 46.6%, or 53.3% of a carb unit" when I can just think in grams instead.

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Permalink Reply by Sami on November 16, 2009 at 7:25am

When it comes down to it, I definitely agree that counting grams is the best way - at least for me. Before, I would've never gotten as precise (ie. 1 unit of insulin covers 11 grams of carbs for me).

Permalink Reply by Dave   _ on September 28, 2009 at 8:54am

If you read the nutrition info on a package and it says 10 carbs per serving, that's "10 carbs". YOU are using different terminology that the rest of us by NOW saying that YOUR carb is REALLY 15 carbs. I don't think the rest of us is going to agree to such a method of stating carb intake...

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