Way back, before pumps and CGM’s, I used to take my Lantus in the morning instead of the night.
My reason was - because I knew it would wear off by the time I woke up!
And because there was no CGM to wake me up if my BG was plummeting, this was a good way to do it. It was safer that way!
@jpf The “captain of the team” is an apt description, for now others (docs, nurses, etc.) may or may not know more than you, but you can take it all in, compare/contrast it with what you’ve read/learned elsewhere, determine what you believe and who you trust as a reliable “partner” for yourself. Its good business sense to take in all the information you can and judge for yourself, probably like you do with most things, albeit, at work you may have people you can’t overrule, and here you are pretty much the final arbiter. @JessicaD is right that you should explore what your doc recommends and what he’ll write a prescription for (Lantus vs Tresiba), as well as what works best for you. It takes time to evaluate, making small changes one at a time, to see what works and doesn’t; but then, as others told me, diabetes is marathon, not a sprint….
@TomH is correct, the doc is going to write what the doc is going to write. However, @JessicaD is also correct IMHO - Tresiba is far better than Lantus. It is 24+ hours duration with no stacking, and if you miss your dose it’s not a problem. Take it asap and your covered because of the overlap or tail of the previous dose. @JessicaD said she experienced no discernable peak, I had the same experience, and each dose tailed off between 30 and 32 hours (yes, I did an @Eric experiment, lol)
Lantus is a fine insulin. Far better than some (NPH) and not as good as others IMHO. Insurance companies have preferences too, and sometimes to get things like Tresiba you have to have tried things like Lantus unsuccessfully.
Hi Everyone,
Thanks again for all the responses! I’ve been on Lantus for a week and it seems to be doing the job of lowering my fasting glucose - and because it’s lower, the post meal rise isn’t as high. I have a follow up appt next Monday and I will definitely ask the nurse about Tresiba. At this point, it feels like I went from a fixed gear bike to a 3 speed with Lantus. Tresiba may be the 7 gear? I’ll stop the biking analogy here because it will get away from me really quickly haha.
People close to me are asking if I feel the difference and honestly, I do not.
I have literally no idea if my glucose is high or normal. I did have a low the other day and I did feel that - tingling in my fingers and toes, light headedness and a weird cold feeling in my lips - but overall, looking at the CGM or doing a finger stick is a total revelation every single time.
@jpf if Lantus is working for you, stick with it for a while until it doesn’t. It’s cheaper at the pharmacy and once it’s no longer effective at least you know there are other options available to you in the future. There’s no point in buying a 21 gear bike when a 5 speed will do.
That describes me about 8 years ago. My glucose reading was more often a surprise than not.
@Eric gave me a useful suggestion a couple of years ago - before you look at the reading from your cgm, take a quick guess at what you think the reading is going to be, and then you can compare your estimate with the actual reading. I am still off a fair proportion of the time, but i get a little better at predicting.
My first cde told me always inject fast acting in the belly, love handles etc and long acting always below the waste… thighs butt, whatever. The goal with long acting is the slowest possible absorbtion. I used Lantus for quite a few years, always just once a day… and then switched to tresiba which I really liked.
One thing to play around with over time (not like day to day but more like after tracking your patterns for a month) is taking it at different times of day. All insulins, even long acting, are always in a state to some degree of ramping up or tapering out—- and matching that timing to your own body’s patterns as best you can is a pretty powerful thing
I will try that! I am so grateful for the technology available to help me help myself - not just the devices, but the resources like FU Diabetes and even my doc’s patient portal. Things are starting to shake out a bit in my mind as this disease progresses and as they do, I feel like I can engage a little more intelligently and coherently about what’s going on.
Thank you for the tip about injection site! I am looking forward to having more awareness about the ways Lantus affects my body and the patterns that emerge. My plan is to trust that this will be the case - that over time, I will see the patterns and know how to interpret them. Lol, not to belittle my own intelligence but honestly, among my closest friends and family, I’m not known for my self awareness.
Yeah but now you’ll have lots of technology helpers - beeping or buzzing to let you know if you’re running high or low - if you don’t notice it yourself.
The first couple of times (couple of years) that you go low, you might find yourself going “I feel a little funny. Am I drunk for some reason?” and then you look at your cgm (which should have been beeping already) but it shows you are going low.
At this point, I think I am more sensitive about going low than the cgm - I can feel it 5-10 minutes before the cgm catches it. I can never feel it when I am running high tho.
That’s the nature for of CGMs because they do not measure blood glucose but interstitial glucose. There can be a lag as much as 15 minutes if BG is rapidly changing.
It’s always funny to me when I can feel low and eat something and then start coming back up - all before my CGM gives me its first beep.
And then when it finally beeps, I laugh at it and say, “Oh, really? 
Gee, thanks.”
That’s what happened to me last week. I was out shopping and started feeling weird and fuzzy. But I’ve felt that way before and I’d never associated it with hypoglycemia. Then, when the alarm went off, I realized what was happening. So I learned what a low feels like and also that I’ve had them even before I started exogenous insulin.
I felt those symptoms my whole life before be diagnosed as a Type 2. I thought everyone felt like that when they were hungry. I self medicated with a Coke and candy bar - bad, bad, bad. Over feed with sugar reactive hypoglycemia and set yourself for the rollercoaster of soaring blood glucose levels with the release of a huge amount of insulin for a new low.