Basal Rates and Hormones

[T1Allison]

You are not late to the party! This party will go on forever and we’re glad to have more women to party with us!!

@LarissaW

Ok, I have so many questions and points of confusion I don’t even know how to organize and get it all out there. Nevertheless, she persisted.

Awesome. About persisting.

@LarissaW

I’m assuming there’s another thread for birth control separately but I’m running a little low now and don’t have brain power to go searching and reading…

There is…but we’re always in search of more info on this topic. Since you’re on Mirena, here’s the only other experience on FUD that I’ve seen related to Mirena. You may have a totally different experience.

@cardamom

I wanted to go back to an oral contraceptive again, for blood sugars and because my periods are pretty awful, but my doctor refused given my age (35 at the time), the fact that I have diabetes, and the risk for blood clots. They talked me into a Mirena, which I had for the better part of a year. Not sure how that impacted my blood sugars, but it was terrible—while insertion was actually not a big deal, the first six months involved a lot of cramping and spotting. and it made my chronic joint problems worse and made me depressed (which was not a problem with my combo pill or off of hormonal bc). Turns out the oft-repeated selling point that it’s only a small amount of hormones locally administered, so less likely to cause side effects is not backed up by research, and increasingly, findings suggest the type of progestin used in hormonal IUDs like Mirena have the highest risk of psychological symptoms and that Mirena has a bad side effect risk profile. Some women do fine with it, but a good amount do not. So while not diabetes-specific, I thought I’d mention it, since my diabetes was part of why I got pushed into getting one with false assurances about the lack of side effects. I got it removed and within a couple of months felt back to normal.

@LarissaW

even though I’m on Mirena, I still think I sort of “qualify” for tracking hormonal changes and insulin needs over the cycle

I would guess so! It will be interesting to see what you find. Mirena uses a second generation progestin locally released in small quantities. My general understanding from my CDE is that it may dampen your insulin sensitivity fluctuations as compared to if you were not using Mirena, but it might introduce the tiniest amount of resistance overall (due to progesterone usually causing a bit of resistance). So, hopefully this means that your cyclical insulin sensitivity fluctuations will not be huge!

@LarissaW

I’m planning on tracking basal needs and using temp basals across the cycle, founded on the framework in Allison’s original post

I really hope this helps you! Hopefully you will not see large fluctuations, and hopefully if there are moderate to small ones you can track them and adjust for them without too much issue. For me, scaling my basal up and down throughout the cycle with flat percentages is the way to go…but it only started helping me once I had my basals all set to work cohesively according to my Week 2 needs. Since that took me YEARS to figure out from a problem solving perspective, the percentage increases and decreases exacerbated problems that existed within my basal profile. All of which is to say, watch out for any trouble spots. Something that is a noticeable spike or dip in Week 2 for me became much larger when I added a percentage change to it in Weeks 3 and 4.

@LarissaW

I’ve downloaded the app Clue because I’m really terrible about writing down and remembering when I start my cycle.

Great idea. I use the Fitbit app for this same thing.

@LarissaW

can I just say it’s SO annoying that us ladies have to worry about this?!?!? And that our needs change nearly every day and that every month it’s not the same like really?!?

Yup! Preach. I wish mine only changed during PMS or during my period, but that is simply not the case for me. And maybe we’re all different. And maybe I’m an extreme example. But sharing our experiences together will help continue to answer those questions since we’re getting no help from the medical experts.

@LarissaW

If I get to set up and conduct my own research study in med school I’ll do it on this and you’re all invited to participate

[my hand is shooting up to join this project in any capacity you need at a future date]