Insulin needs way down for awhile---more than Loop tackles

My insulin needs went down like crazy for a few days. I know it happens when you get some beta cells back for a while—but that time was a bit freaky. My basal needs went down from 1.25 to lower than 0.75 in one day. I took me a couple of days to adjust that much. Even though I was using lower temp basals, some days I had to eat 150 carbs or more.

I am mentioning this because normally I really trust Loop at night to keep me out of really bad trouble. But, one night (the first night it happened), I had to eat more than 80 carbs. I am pretty sure Loop would not have dealt with that.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll have these kinds of episodes. From reading FUD, I figure that most T1Ds end up killing their beta cells dead for good. My point is, though, that Loop isn’t enough to deal with some things when you are a teenager. It’s not a perfect life insurance (despite what I wrote to @mlg here).

Btw, it took me about 10-12 days to progressively get back to where I was before. I had to adjust my basal pretty much every day over that period: sometimes it was too high, and sometimes too low, it was not an easy process. In part, it is because I am accustomed to ignoring little variations over a day or so: so suddenly changing my settings every day, sometimes more than once, is a big change.

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Lately at least, I’ve been having half a perfect bar and some 2% milk before bed (not exactly sure how complex it is…but seems to act slow…and no beta cells over here). Even if the BG starts at 90 and there is almost no insulin in the system, seems to have a tendency of dropping around midnight…Overall I’ve had pretty good luck with Android APS in terms of setting up the looping profile although I’m sure the other systems can achieve the same result in multiple ways. I think sometimes the auto-looping overreacts to BG changes whereas the normal basal schedule is pretty smooth

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I agree, if your insulin needs change drastically from your settings, Loop probably won’t be able to adjust, especially with autobolus.

Do you think all of the exercise is increasing your insulin sensitivity? You mentioned doing cross country 4 hours a day. That would definitely have an accumulated effect on your insulin sensitivity. I know when I bike and run long hours, my insulin sensitivity increases the following day, too. I will sometimes use a GoodISF override for these days which reduces my basal for 2 hour durations.

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