PS: i used to be very insulin resistant in the AM, so i believe this is why the I:C ratio is set like that; it did work for quite a long time.
Itâs like dolphin skin. It makes me go faster!
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I wouldnât mess with the endo, I really would not. Is it easy to change the ratio on your pump? I bet we can find documenation if you donât know how to do it.
If you are low after you eat every morning, you really should change that. No doubt your exercise is playing a role.
Do your 1:9 and 1:12 ratios working for you the rest of the time? Going from 8.5 to 9 is a pretty small change. It might not be enough, but at least youâll be moving in the right direction.
Iâd say try 1:9 for a few days and if your are still low, go to 1:9.5 next.
i called up Medtronic and they walked me through how to change the ratios, so i think i will try to lower the Wizardâs info and decrease the ratio. like you said: 1:8.5 to 1:9 is no major change. i mean, what could possibly happen that would be catastrophic? and, if it doesnt go in the right direction, i could always change it back.
OK, iâm back; i just finished changing it. now time will tell.
Daisy Mae, I change my IC ratio a lot too. I donât think you should worry. Almost every time my basal changes a lot I also have to change my IC ratio.
how often, in average, do most PWD need to make basal changes? i had just 2 basal settings for the longest time, and now i have 6. and the changes can be both, either minor, or more dramatic. whats up with that??? i mean, i understand that since i have been swimming i have noticed all these changes in how my body is responding to insulin, but why would basal settings need to be changed when there is nothing changing in our lives? i know that this is something that we do often, but i just dont get it. is it just the nature of the disease, or something else?
i know i have had D for a long time and i have been on the pump for over 16 years now, and i dont mean to sound like an idiot when i ask these simple questions, but it has only been in the past 3 years or so that i have been taking charge of managing D life myself (more aggressively) w/out the use of my endo. i am just curious about a lot of little things. i think that this is why i find the site so helpful. no one judges me here. everyone just jumps in to help.
I am not a good example because I entered puberty a few months ago. I am growing a lot so I change all the time.
But sports changes my basal all the time. If I have a practice a day for 4 days, then stop swimming for 2 days, at the end of the second day I need to increase my basal 10-15%. If I have a hard 2 hour practice after no swimming for 2 days, I typically drop my basal 10% etc. When I go to a long practice break I need about 20% more basal. Sports causes changes all the time, unless I have the same practice at the same time every day, which never happens.
I never talk to my endo before I change my ratios or my basal. I would have to call her twice a week I think. But she knows I change it without her: she told me I should.
one thing i can say about my swimming: i do go at the exact same time every day of the week. but its true about not swimming every single day every day of the week. sometimes life just gets in the way and i miss a day in the pool. thats when i notice the most changes.
Everyday!
Unless youâre doing the exact same thing every day.
It is based on so many things. Not only on your exercise today, but yesterday and the day before. And also how much glycogen restoration you are doing. Lotâs of things!
But everyday I do different things. I get different amounts of sleep, or get different amounts of exercise. Some days are glycogen depletion. Some days are glycogen replenishment.
So it is never the same for me.
Who wants âsameâ?
âSameâ is boring!
Well, we donât make changes to basal every week but i look review his numbers two to three times a week and if we havenât changed something in about 2 or 3 weeks, thatâs usually when the control starts to deteriorate. Usually, however, weâre only changing one setting every few weeks. So recently i brought back Samsonâs evening post-sleep high basal to account for growth hormones. Then a few weeks later I extended his higher afternoon basal by half an hour. Mainly tweaking around the edges.
Our son is a toddler though; he gets sick about that often, he has growth spurts, and sometimes he just doesnât eat very reliably, which throws off his basal. Probably you could get away with less?
eric, and anyone else w/ experience out there, yesterday after much deliberation, i lowered my overnight basal as well as making a very minor change in my I:C ratio (from 8.5 to 9.0 beginning at 7pm , when i typically eat bfast). this morning i has one low at 5am ( bg 58 and i took 2 gtabs and went back to sleep. when i woke up for bfast, i was 97 and 2.5 hours post, my bg was 90. 3 hours post bfast my bg was 91. so this seems to be an improvement. i think i might lower my overnight basal from midnight to 3am by.25/hour from .60 to . 575 and see what happens tomorrow. i am keeping a sharp eye on this and documenting EVERY single change and how it effects my day.
also, today i will not be swimming; it is my husbands and mine wedding anniversary and we are too busy for me to get to the pool. so i am eager to see how this ârecoveryâ day effects my bgs today and how i respond to them tomorrow.
and yes, i believe that this swimming and the muscles i am gaining are effecting my insulin sensitivity.
so yes, eric, i am becoming Wonder Woman w/ sports car speed. and i want to empathize again that i am not a competitive swimmer. i can go the distance w/ ease, but i would classify myself as a moderate speed swimmer. so i have another question for all who are still reading about my experiments: what glycogen (etc) am i using for this type of exercise? muscle or fat storage, or both?
and, what is a typical day like for you w/ regard to your exercise routine? just curious. 
You are using both muscle glycogen and fat. It isnât one or the other, it is how much of each. Generally that is what people use all the time, the question is how much of each. The more you go from slow and easy to harder and more difficult, the more you move from fat to muscle glycogen.
To get a good idea, we would need to know what your heart rate is while swimming. And then there are some formulas that would give you an idea where you are on the scale.
This little picture helps to understand it:
And you can read all about it here:
I generally wait many hours after I have eaten lunch so there is no IOB, but before dinner.
I donât have typical âdaysâ. I try to exercise different heart rate zones throughout the week. So it is more likely for me to have a typical âweekâ rather than a typical âdayâ.
So I might have 1-2 long runs, a few runs with speed intervals, a few medium length runs, a few recovery runs. I try to hit all the different heart rate zones, from 1 (âthis is easy, I can do this all dayâ) to 5 (âIâm about to dieâ).
Happy Anniversary! Have fun today!
we decided that we hate fancy restaurants and we hate getting dressed up unless its mandatory, we didnât want to exchange gifts or cardsâŚwe just wanted to pig out on burgers, fries and guacamole w/ chips. and thats exactly what we did and it was a F-ing blast. i am on a 3hour dual bolus of 25/75 covering 75gms carbs. this formula at this restaurant usually works well for me. i am just letting go and trying not to panic or ruminate about whether i gave myself the âperfectâ amount of insulin or not. today is for enjoyment and gratitude.
AND, of course, i am wondering how this fuel will fuel my swim tomorrow 
.
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EXERCISE SOS
EXPERIMENT #6
OMG. today was very weird and unusual for me. i donât understand why it happened the way that it did, but i know that you will have an answer, so i am going to lay it all out for you.
no overnight lows (yay) woke up at 111, ate breakfast, 2.5 hrs later bg was 124, then after 4 hours, back down to 104 (yay, again; lowering those overnight basals and the morning I:C ratio worked)
but hereâs what i cannot wrap around my head:
prep for swim at 11:30am turned off pump (0%) and waited 2 hours for all insulin to have gone, leaving me w/ no IOB. my bg was 104. 1 hour later, my bg had climbed to 128, then at 1:15 to 149, then at 1:45 (pre-swim) i was 175.( i had not eaten ANYTHING)
i jumped into the pool. tested 1/2 hour later, at 2:15 and my bg had CLIMBED to 187
2:45 bg 141
3:15 bg 147
3:30 bg 163 (???) got out of the pool and gave myself 2 units manually, then walked home briskly (15 minutes)
4:30 bg 150.
swimming a total of 1 hour 45 minutes plus walk to gym and walk back (total 1/2 hour) total time off the pump 4.5 hours.
i am confused as to why my bg was high after all that swimming. what does seem good and perhaps telling is that i did not crash at all. (yay) but why so high after all that exercise? is it from the burger i ate yesterday? i did everything the same as i did the past times i swam.
please help me make some sense out of this. on the one hand, i feel like i have failed myself, and on the other i feel that i found some secret on how to maintain an even kiel bg.
awaiting answers eagerly. thx everyone, daisy mae (AKA DM)
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PS: there is nothing wrong w/ my insulin or my pump. I just tested again (only 1/2 hour later) and my bgs were down to 97. hoping i donât crash and that i did not over due my manual bolus of 2 units before i left the gym. its all such a crapshoot for me; i never have much of an idea or a system for how much insulin i need to replace to account for the time off the pump.
any suggestions on that? i will keep my fingers crossed that i donât crash down into the 30s 
.
Havenât read all this thread, but
My understanding is that this is not trueâexercise allows your skeletal muscle cells to uptake glucose independently of insulin, through another mechanism, with contraction/exercise and insulin having additive effects on glucose metabolism. If you google skeletal muscle insulin uptake and GLUT4, youâll get a lot of hits on the topic, including studies showing exercise-induced absorption in the absence of insulin.
hi @cardamom, itâs definitely true that skeletal muscle can take in glucose in the absence of insulin during exerciseâŚI guess the question is how much? It would be great to see studies that can quantify the magnitude of this trend.
DM, whatâs troubling you?
DM, this is wonderful and exactly what you want, and is exactly what I would expect after you have been fueling your body sufficiently!
Between the time you turned off at 11:30am and that 163 BG, you were off the pump for 4 hours. Being 163 after all that time, that is no surprise there!
Now that you can see how you can do it without dropping, you may think about starting a little lower. You might need to do some preemptive basal tricks. We can go over that. Would you be comfortable starting a little lower now?
That is awesome. Did you eat when you got home?
If you were able to eat after your swim, it sounds like a perfect day - you didnât drop 100 points, you ended at 97 a few hours later. Thatâs really wonderful.
yes, definitely, i would. this seems so crazy. why these results today and not the days before? is this all food/fueling related? IYHO ?
and PS: i hit the sweet spot with the âreplacementâ insulin bolus post swim. never crashed .
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yes. had a nice hearty dinner. yummy. and we were planning on walking to chinatown tomorrow morning for breakfast. there is this dish called CONGI that is basically a rice stew (i get chicken in mine) and this greasy baked bread that you soak in it. i love it; unfortunately, we have to drive a friend to the hospital during that time, so we cannot go. i will miss the long walk (its supposed to be 95 degrees in the city tomorrow) and i will deff miss the CONGI. another time. i thought that the CONGI would be a great meal for fueling up.
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