Yeah, I understand women’s bodies are complex… Which is why I love them so much. They are miracles. I’ll just exit… Stage left. 
Just remember, you tagged me!!! 
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I get that. I will stay away from capslock now. 
The thing that has kicked off my deeper probing in this instant (bc it is always something I’ve wondered about), is why I’m seeing such a huge tank in my bg from 4-7PM running 20% extra basal when that same 20% was doing great for me in other contexts? I average 0.4 units/hour over the course of the day, so an extra 20% is not a huge quantity of insulin. But I am most active on work days in that timeframe (cook dinner, chase kids, etc)…so did I become less insulin resistant due to activity? Would a reduced extra basal (like 10%) work better? So. many. questions. The math astounds me. How can an extra tenth of a unit or so an hour add up to needing 40-60g of extra carbs?
I only throw public tantrums at people I like! And who I think will handle it well! Besides, it makes the forum even more exciting. Some of @Nickyghaleb and @Eric’s exchanges have been epic to watch.
Hmmmm…@Tiag said what I was trying to say in a much more mature fashion. Noted. She’s my Anger Translator, @ClaudnDaye.
At the risk of getting Allison mad for talking about menstruation…
Just kidding, nothing about menstruation here.
Let me give a very simple answer about basal.
What keeps your body going? What fuels you so you can walk around, and keeps your brain supplied, and so your muscles can do all kinds of easy things? (not even talking about exercise here)
Glucose is the fuel of choice. Even if you don’t eat carbs, your body can create glucose from other things you eat, like fats.(a process called gluconeogenesis).
So your liver is the gas tank that has glucose and it feeds your body a small amount for your general activities (again, not talking about exercise).
So this is not glucose you are eating. It comes from the liver, which got it from foods you ate previously, and it stored the glucose.
What is needed for your body to be able to use glucose? If you are a FUDer here, you already know - insulin.
So basal is simply the insulin your body needs for the glucose that is always being delivered, not from meals.
So that is a very simple basic description. Is that what you were looking for?
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Nope. But thanks!
More specific question: Let’s take a male scenario. Is the ONLY thing that you’re basal is accomplishing is moving enough extra body released glucose out of the blood stream and into your cells? I.E. Does your male basal rate for Dawn Phenomenon only address sugar? Or does an increase in basal rate address hormone-induced insulin resistance?
I ask because it seems to me that if all the basal accomplished was manage your body derived background sugar (my own made up term), then the math would line up much better on how much accidentally-too-much basal lowered your blood sugar compared to what a correction dose would accomplish. Unless you have a Insulin:Liver Released Sugar ratio which I know is not a thing…yet…
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Because…if a flat +20% doesn’t work for me during ovulation hormones across the entire day…is that maybe because basal really is interacting with all kinds of hormone-generated insulin resistance and the times of day with lowest circadian hormones (late afternoon) means that the +20% I needed during Dawn Phenomenon is now going to be way overkill in the afternoon?
There are certain hormones that change insulin sensitivity. But for the most part for me, my increased basal needs at night, it is mostly from liver glucose release. I don’t know what percent. It’s not 100%. But most of it. Like probably a huge majority.
But occasionally, I see things that are not liver glucose related. Sometimes I see things that are hormone related.
Let me relate a personal experience. On the night after I have run a marathon, what do you think I would need to do to my basal rates? Let’s say I finish that morning, fly home, and go to bed. What percent change would you guess I need to make to my basal?
I would say it’s the opposite; basal isn’t about moving glucose INTO cells, it’s preventing it from getting out of the liver.
But as to whether it’s the only thing, I don’t know the specific answer BUT, I do know that when physiologists try to map hormone signalling via biochemical pathways, it’s a crazy chart with about 150 different arrows all going in different directions so I’m gonna guess no.
My vague impression is that hormones DO affect insulin resistance but that may be liver insulin resistance or peripheral insulin resistance. And you can’t neatly map peaks in certain hormones with certain levels of insulin resistance because all these hormonal responses are linked in a daisy chain of feedback loops. So you’d need to know the levels of each of those hormones and how they interact with each other to make a very good prediction.
That’s just my guess. The other idea is that pattern recognition may simply be more useful than trying to map the underlying physiological cause.
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That’s what I said anyway in my own way! She is asking something that I think only a woman can answer. Let’s get the hell outta here while we still can!
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Amen to that. That’s all I’ve got.
My notes from the last three months indicate I usually needed more temp basal at work (sedentary) than I did at home (active). Like a +30% at work and a +10 or +15% at home.
All I know is I’m tired of crashing in the evenings this week and I’d like to have an answer to it, whether it’s empirical or theoretical. I’ve tried reducing my basal an hour before leaving work. I’ve tried fasting and watchful waiting. I’ve left a trail of juice boxes in Target while doing Back-To-School shopping after work. And another trail of juice boxes around my house tonight. So. Frustrating. I just don’t understand how such a small amount of basal insulin can do so much more to my blood sugar than a correction dose or meal bolus. Confounds me.
My effort expended does not match my results achieved. It all comes down to these hormones and how to manage my bg around them. It is not easy. At all.
I’m going to assume your liver wants to replenish itself after the run. Not entirely sure how you manage that. Would be curious to hear.
Tia is here to save the day. She’s smart AND a lady.
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At the end of the day, a 10% basal change is a tiny amount of extra insulin, but it might be what’s needed. The only way to know that is if I fast and watch it and test and blah blah blah and then I’m not getting enough calories in the day. If I don’t use an extra 10% basal when it’s needed, the number of correction doses needed will be insane and they won’t work until they work way too much, and then you’re going to rebound anyway even you used the correction dose perfectly, bc the needed effect isn’t going to last of any duration.
I just wish I could get a better understanding of what’s doing what and WHY because it is not apples-to-apples for the numerical outcome for insulin expended and blood sugar attained.
Alli,
Part of your basal needs are also related to how much you eat. I know that goes against all that people think is pure and holy in the endocrinology/diabetes world - the idea that basal has nothing to do with what you eat. But if you reduce your carb intake, you will also reduce your basal needs.
Is that part of what you are seeing?
This is not necessarily helpful to your discussion, but just a curiosity of hormones and their effect. The night after running a race, I have to bump my basal up 40%. So much adrenaline just surging through my body. It’s crazy. You would think it would be dropped way down. But hormones are powerful. I run the race over and over in my sleep.
Look, I am sorry. I am operating at about 15% right now. If you post a question for me, I can take a look at it in the morning and probably do much better following the whole thing.
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@Eric, @Jen, @Tiag, @ClaudnDaye, thanks for chatting about it tonight. I’ll keep logging and try it again tomorrow!
Discussion for another time: within what timeframe? I eat way more carbs in my easy hormone weeks than I come close to in my difficult hormone weeks. I have to limit variables during the tougher weeks…would that decrease in carbs for two weeks be long enough to affect a change? Bc my basal needs are definitely higher then on their own.
I notice it after a few days. When I am cutting weight and not eating, my basal rates go way down after just a couple of days.
Let me throw a couple of more thought logs on the fire. Not necessarily answers, but just things to ponder.
If you drank 2 Cokes - and I mean guzzled them down rapidly - what would that do to your BG? Spike it 100 points? 200 points?
Your liver has a little more than 2 Cokes, roughly 100 grams in your liver. 2 Cokes is about 80 grams of sugar.
Your liver can’t release all of that. And never would. It always saves some for later, it never gives it all to you.
So this is just an easy way of seeing how much your liver has available to give you.
The other thing…
Crap. I forgot.
I am just not all there mentally tonight. I am whipped.
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I notice it for Samson after 8 to 12 hours. Not sure if kiddos have a faster response time, with lower reserves?
I want to learn more about this concept for a variety of reasons.
It’s not coming into play for what I’m talking about (not observably anyway), bc my carb intake is lower during higher insulin resistance caused by progesterone. So the resistance from the progesterone causes me to eat lower carb, but I still need more basal that whole time. The question there is how to quantify it…but you can’t help me w that part.
But assuming a level playing field without hormones, I’d be curious to know more about carb intake and basal rates. Are you saying that concept accounts for how just a fraction of too much basal over a few hours can cause so much more of a bg drop than an equivalently sized correction dose? Bc that has always been a mystery to me.