# For those who carry glucagon

**URL:** <https://forum.fudiabetes.org/t/for-those-who-carry-glucagon/3827>\
**Category:** Treatment\
**Created:** [March 31, 2018, 9:19pm UTC](https://forum.fudiabetes.org/t/for-those-who-carry-glucagon/3827 "2018-03-31T21:19:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 10

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**Author:** ![Eric](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/forum.fudiabetes.org/eric/32/9209_2.png) [@Eric](https://forum.fudiabetes.org/u/Eric)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2018, 6:13pm UTC](https://forum.fudiabetes.org/t/for-those-who-carry-glucagon/3827/10 "2018-04-01T18:13:58Z")

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> [@Jen](#):
>
> Based on my reading, I think a mini dose for an adult would be about 10-15 units (don’t quote me). But maybe if you’re only giving one or two units throughout the day to prevent lows, it wouldn’t use up all the stored glycogen.

I posted a couple of threads on using mini-doses of glucagon:  
[effect-of-glucagon-dependent-on-amount-of-liver-glycogen-available](https://forum.fudiabetes.org/t/effect-of-glucagon-dependent-on-amount-of-liver-glycogen-available/1426)  
and  
[expired-glucagon](https://forum.fudiabetes.org/t/expired-glucagon/1417/9)

Doing 25 units, I got anywhere from 50-100 points out of it. It depends on how much your liver has available.

Your liver has about 100 grams of storage when full. But when depleted, you get much less from it.

I have actually done glucagon while running, after going 10-12 miles, to see what would happen. I took an entire dose one time, the full 100 units, and got absolutely nothing from it. No rise at all. My liver just said - sorry, don’t have any to spare now…

So what you get from it will depend greatly on how much glycogen is in your liver at the time. But in normal conditions, like not when almost completely depleted, you can figure it has about 100 grams.

I saw at most a 100 point rise from 25 units of glucagon, when my liver was full. So in normal conditions, 10-15 units of glucagon will give you a comparable amount, probably about 40-60 points rise (sorry, that;s mg/dL units 🙂 )

Since people have the same liver glycogen storage, I think that would be fairly consistent for most people.

> [@Jen](#):
>
> Yeah, the one scary thing about glucagon is that my understanding is you can use it once and then it won’t work (nor will you have any protection against lows) for the next day or two.

Mini-dosing is useful, as long as you don’t do it too much and deplete your liver and not replenish it. I think the potential problem when they put glucagon in pumps is if people keep using it and never eat. Eventually the liver would run out, and then the person would be in trouble. I think you could get by with a couple of mini-doses, but I don’t think it would be good to push it beyond that.

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