Did you eat the bar beforehand? Maybe skip that but try the same exact process, and save the carbs for after the swim? I’m by no means an expert on this stuff though, just a random thought.
Or maybe eat the bar earlier… when your basal is still active?
i ate 1/2 the bar today an hour beforehand. but i like your suggestion about eating it when i still have basal on board. i think i will try that on monday.
at least i have the whole w/end to think about my next strategy.
just to let you know another detail:
despite having given myself the 1.2 units post swim, my BGs are climbing rather quickly. when i got out of the pool, my sugars were 119, then an hour later i retested, 137, then after another hour, 145.
any suggestions?
A couple things. Since you were unplugged for 2 hours, you have to hit that bolus aggressively post-swim. The lack of basal means you will need more than usual. We can work on some formulas for that.
The other thing, I have some thoughts on how cutting the basal will work best. I will write it up in more detail when I have some time.
Will you read this thread before you swim on Monday?
It appears that your best time was 2 hours after being disconnected (the 27 point drop). We want to get that right in the sweet spot, the middle of your swim.
Basal now is basal for the next several hours…
Hey Daisy Mae! I swim too, also 1.5 to 2 hour sessions But I am on MDI. I stop every 20 minutes to take 15 carbs or I’ll go too low.
as i said, i will keep you posted: my BGs came back down on their own; by 7:15 they were 103. yay.
but i did go to a formal indian wedding tonight, and i ate pretty much everything; dont know what the heck i was bolusing for. hidden sugars everywhere. did a dual bolus over a 2 hour period. who knows. but i came home and my BG was 83. we’ll see how my overnight BGs go. hummmm. (but it was all sooo yummy 
)
yes, i will be reading this thread over the w/end. i dont usually swim over the w/end, but due to the long holiday, i might just jump in if my muscles feel recovered enough. please be in touch.
For us, Indian food (which we have every week) needs continual vigilance overnight. The upfront bolus is usually less than what you’d think based on carb count…but the food just keeps ticking for like 8 hours!! Enjoy. Indian weddings are quite the experience!
Kaelan, what insulin do you use for your 24hr basal? dont you have that in your system all the time?
what do you eat during your swim? i know you said you take 15 grams of carbs, but what kind of carbs? and do you test your BGs every 15 min. also? or do you just keep re-fueling as you go?
oh god, what did i get myself into? am i going to wake up at 4 am and be 400? should i keep a syringe bedside and be prepared to correct throughout the night??? UGH.
Obviously everyone is different but for us it’s more like our son will be hovering between 200-250 all night unless we log phantom carbs every two to three hours through the night. An increased basal could do the trick.
I use Lantus, twice a day, morning and evening. I have Lantus in my system all the time so i can’t reduce it before i go swim. But I decrease my lantus dosage in the evening after a really hard swim practice.
Normally I eat skittles out of a tube. This way I don’t have to handle them, it’s easy to eat, and it’s easy to count exactly how many carbs I eat. But I also use 17 carb protein bars with coconut, because it’s almost exactly the same count, and it gets me a bit more stable after exercise too, I think.
I get out of the pool every 20 minutes. I use my watch to know exactly when to come out to get a Dexcom pulse: they come exactly every 5 minutes so its easy. But I test often also, almost every time I come out. Because I know exactly how often i need to come out, it’s every 20 minutes for me – but if I needed 15 carbs every 25 or 30 minutes i would come out every 25 or 30 minutes, I adjust when i come out to when i need the carbs.
My father stays at practice too, so he’ll wave me in if I lose track of time. But it’s rare.
I forgot to say: I get out every 20 minutes because i drop about 50-60 every 20 minutes. I start practice around 150, so I can’t swim more than 20 minutes or it’s too risky without testing. To get to 150, I eat some carbs also 20 minutes before practice starts. I also drop more after practice. I have some milk (8 oz) in a thermos waiting for after practice that I drink right away when I am done so as not to drop further – and also to refill my glycogen.
I don’t drop a lot after swimming because of all the eating i do during practice. But, if I play a hard soccer game, I won’t drop during the game, but I drop a lot afterwards, for the whole evening and into the night. I have to keep eating late. Sometimes I miss a bit of school the next morning because I have to stay up really late to eat.
response to the bolusing for Indian Food Carbs; getting it just right.
i think i got it just right. all night long, i flatlined at 80. i made myself wake up about every 2 hours just expecting to need to correct, but i didnt.
i think that the 2 hour swim must have had something to do with it b/c i ended up going low in the early morning (55) but then i just took 2 G Tabs, a small piece of chocolate and went back to sleep until breakfast.
but i really appreciate your sharing about your son, b/c it helped me to be on the lookout during the night. its best to be proactive than be side-swiped and confused and frustrated.
i used to use the Dexcom, but when i would swim, i would go out of range and then i would get the ??? icons. how do you keep your Dex close enough that it continues working? you didnt have a problem with that?
i am too lazy to get out of the pool every 20 minutes to test. i will test after an hour if i start swimming at 200. i usually go down 100 points or so in an hour. i am curious how to head that off. eric has been helping me to get flatlined and stable. i would love to go in at 160 and stay at about 120ish. but i always crash. maybe i should just start bringing small snacks with me and hop out of the pool after every half hour.
how long did it take you to come up with your swimming/ BG formula? i have been trying to make some progress since last October, and i still havent gotten it down. its very frustrating.
DM,
Wanted to mention a few thoughts to you.
First, as a general recommendation, I would suggest making only one change at a time. This will help you understand what effect the change is having. If you change two things at the same time you won’t know which change did what! Since you have a good routine with the UCAN bars, it would be helpful to stick with that for now. Once you get the basal changes figured out a little better, then it would be a good time to start fine-tuning with the timing and amount of food.
For the basal stuff, looking at your results from the other day…
Time disconnected and resulting BG:
0-1 hours, waiting and BG rises105 points, but from food
1-2 hours, swimming, BG drops 79 points
2-3 hours, swimming, BG drops 27 points
So that 2-3 hours looks like a good time. I think if you disconnect 1 1/2 hours before, you’d be swimming right in the middle of that 2-3 hour time. That’s the sweet spot for your basal timing!
One other thing - keep in mind that when you disconnect, you still have several hours of that basal trickling through. If your insulin duration is 4 hours, you need some time for that insulin to finish flushing out of your system. But if you waited 4 hours after disconnecting, you’d spike like crazy. So you want to find that time where it matches your exercise. The time where the small bit of insulin still finishing up in your body and your exercise match up.
Try 1 1/2 hours!
When I started wearing my dexcom I had that problem too. It also would fall off in a few days, not even a week. My dad and I spent several weeks figuring out how to keep it attached and working better. Finally we came up with a method to keep it attached much better. And we found that we it is attached better, i get many fewer ???. Now I get them sometimes, but maybe no more than 1/4 of the time or less. Some practices I don’t get them at all, even sometimes a whole week. I think my dad posted a thread that describes how I do my dexcom. I’ll look for it and give the link later.
I would really like to have an Omnipod because this way I could suspend my basal too: I wish I didn’t have to come out every 20 minutes. But my dad’s insurance company won’t let me have one right now. If I had a pump, I am pretty sure that I’d be able to find a way with my dad to drop a lot less, if only I could suspend my basal the right way. We experiment a lot to figure things out. It takes a while but in the end we always get it. Eric has helped me a lot already too: he is great![quote=“daisymae, post:113, topic:894”]
how long did it take you to come up with your swimming/ BG formula?
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I go to practice 3 or 4 times per week, plus meets on weekends .It took me about 5-6 weeks to figure out what to do. I was careful at the beginning. I don’t notice when I am low in the water, thats a problem. But it changes every couple of months, so I have to change also how long it takes me and how many carbs to eat.
hi eric ! tomorrow i will try another swimming experiment and i am kind of nervous (as always). i am going to put my basal down to 40% one hour before swimming and i will eat 1/2 a Ucan bar.
i havent a clue as to what to expect. i won’t go into the pool any less that 160. and i plan to hop out of the pool after 1/2 hour to test. we’ll see what happens.
question: i did not swim all w/end , and i have noticed that my BGs are on the higher end (130-150s); i haven’t eaten anything unusual and i haven’t been a couch potato. today i walked about 4 miles briskly, and my BGs only dropped from 135 down to 88. nothing really significant, but they did go back up to 145 by the time i was getting ready to eating dinner. i feel fine, but i am not certain if this is related to some sort of lack of cortisol or other hormonal response to my not swimming. any info from your brain would be very encouraging
also, whats your take on my basal plan for tomorrows swim???
thx, DM
i have this problem too. i can’t feel a low coming on while i am swimming. i just kind of guess b/c i tend to drop 100 points within an hour. so i watch this big clock above the pool and try to keep an eye on the time. when you do need to re fuel with carbs when you hop out of the pool, do you just jump right back in, or do you wait till the carbs bring your BG up a bit?
also, doesn’t your Dex get the out of range ??? when you are swimming to the other end of the pool? its not waterproof, so i know you have to keep it close by? how does that work for you?
just curious.
I predict you will need either more of a basal cut, or a little bit longer.
Last time you disconnected for an hour before starting your swim. Your first hour swimming you dropped about 80 points, and your second hour you dropped 27 points.
So one hour at 40% might not be enough.
The last time when you disconnected, the second hour of swimming was really good (27 points). So I think 1 1/2 hours of basal cut before swimming would work better.
Definitely, by not swimming all weekend your basal needs go up. Especially 2 or 3 days after not doing the exercise you are used to!
so i will turn my basal down to 40% for 1 1/2 hours before my swim? is that what you meant?
(btw, i gave myself a little xtra insulin bolus for dinner and after 2 hours 1/2 my BG is back in range (120). not too hard to do. ( and i even managed to have a piece of dark chocolate 
)
I think that is a move in the right direction! Last time you did 1 hour at 0%, right?
Maybe a little bit less insulin than 40%. How about 25%?