Experiments
Good for you for experimenting, Andrew! I often do the same thing, running
little experiments to figure out how my body reacts to certain things.
Instructions and guidelines in books are really good as a starting place,
but in the end everyone should figure out what works and doesn’t work for
them individually.
Jen
July 15th, 2007 at 4:20 am
I think the books such as Pumping Insulin or Using Insulin, or others that
give similar charts and tables and “standard” answers, are good for people
new to diabetes. It makes sense that if you’ve only had it for a few months,
or even a few years, you might be reluctant to experiment for fear that
something might go wrong and you might have a serious low or DKA (though I’d
say the low is far more likely). But although books are very good and the
guidelines in them are usually accurate (i.e., if you have a 1:12
insulin-to-carb ratio your blood sugar should drop by 2.1 points for every
unit of Humalog is pretty close to me, my ratio is 1:12 but a unit of
insulin drops me 2.5), it’s still good to experiment and see if you can get
even better control by fine-tuning things.
I think nowadays experimenting is encouraged more. Even with carb counting,
although we’re told to start with a 1:15 ratio, we’re told to move that up
or down until it’s personalized. Insulin adjustments are now made on almost
a daily basis by those of us with type 1, instead of only adjusting every
few months when you see the doctor (though even when I was younger I was
“allowed” to adjust my own insulin, just not pushed to do so). The last time
I went to my doctor he actually told me to not wait so long before adjusting
insulin, he said if I made a mistake and was high I could just change it
again to fix things.
Diabetes is really one situation where you should know more than your doctor
about the disease!
Jen