Basal lows during night are a huge deal. I would expect people on this forum by their nature would not have the typical problems a larger and more general population would.
Simply by seeking out, joining and participating in such a forum indicates (IMHO) a higher level of dedication to improvement than is likely going to be found generally.
The entire reason the UHC gave for the UHC/Medtronic conclusion deal was in regards to the basal cut-off.
The next update that Tandem will be delivering is also the basal cut-off.
It is a pretty big deal to be able to have a pump automatically stop delivering basal when a cgm indicates that a low is imminent.
EH and I play that game at every meal. (Well, we did for the ten years before now when his insulin needs massively changed to the point where nothing is working anymore.) But, yah, it’s the part of dinner where we both shout out random numbers. Totally by instinct, was often correct. I believe @Eric rightly refers to it as The Force. (Can’t find that thread despite twenty minutes of looking.)
I agree with Sam, and Eric, and anybody else who said that it’s worth practicing your best guess and seeing how you wind up. Because someday, you’re going to need to just eat something, and not weigh it. You’ve got this. You just don’t know you’ve got it yet.
That’s a good point. I hate ice cream because scooping it is messy. I recently bought some Mango and Cream popsicles from TJ’s when I was shopping for the macrons everyone was excited about (which, by the way, are not GF, they’ve got glucose syrup that’s wheat based). The bonus is the popcicles are already portioned and they will not make my hands sticky (and they’re GF!).
Close, but no cigar. I thought there was a different one about Eric using the force. But maybe I made that up. I need to go look on the computer. Thanks tho!
Good point! It’s actually on my replacement list as I broke our little one making cookies last winter. Gotta get a new one for holiday baking!!! Thanks for the reminder! (although, I do distinctly recall last January’s A1C being remarkably high because of all of the cookies that I had baked and that we had eaten. Ooops!)
I’ve had incredibly persistent lows (not dangerous-feeling, just like, constant 50s-60s despite treating) when I change my activity level on Tresiba (like on the trip to Paris I just returned from, when I was walking constantly all day long, every day, enough so that I could eat high carb and feed my basal and still sometimes go low, even though I lowered it from 16u to 12u)—it’s fine for me bc my activity level is generally consistently low, but if it were highly variable day to day, I would personally not be able to use it. (Others’ use may vary—I would not expect it to work like it does for @Sam for everyone though.) It’s challenging in part because it takes a couple of days to adjust your dose—likewise I was running high all day long for two days as my body caught up to my returning to my normal dose (16u). Hoping today I’m back to normal.
It’s worthwhile for someone to try. I tried it. I figure, if you are gonna have the disease for your whole life, why not try everything?!?
For me, the issue comes down to basal adjustment, and whether you need it or not. If you are consistent in what you need for basal everyday, it’s a great basal. If your activity changes and your basal changes from one day to the next, there are problems with it.
I agree! If my day-to-day life ever becomes highly variable activity-wise, that’s probably when I’d consider switching to a pump (or maybe when they get to a point where the automated ones are a few steps further along than where they currently are).
It works great for me, I sometimes have to slightly reduce my dose over a couple days at work since I’m more active and my hours are weird but otherwise I can sit in my butt all day one day and climb a mountain the next and have very few problems
I can’t wait to get to that time in my D life. I’m pretty good at it now, but the fatty meals still challenge me terribly and I can obsess over it instead of enjoying my meal😭
I recently had this problem, too, even on the pump. I’m in the middle of a practicum with highly variable activity levels—some days I walk 20,000+ steps, other days I’m lucky if I hit 3,000 steps—and I had several overnight lows that lasted for more than four hours despite me eating an enormous quantity of carbohydrates and despite backing off on my basal by 10-20%. Even on days I’m not active I can wake up with utterly random lows, such as this morning when I took a nap and woke up at 2.6 mmol/L (Dex missed that one and didn’t alarm). I’m going to ask for a sample of Tresiba at my December appointment, just to give it a try, but I’m seriously doubtful that it’s going to result in super stable blood sugars for me, between changes in activity level, female hormones, variable basal needs throughout the day, illness (and allergies, which my body treats as an illness when they get bad, and which I have to varying degrees 24/7/365), and all the other unforseeable factors that make having adjustable basal rates a godsend.
Keep us posted, you might be surprised. I’ll be really curious to see. I watched another poster on a different forum who was a big fan of pumping trial tresiba, literally actually document that their control was measurably improved while using it vs pumping, then go back to pumping citing that they needed adjustable basal… even though they had actual citable data that they’d just laid out piece by piece that their control was superior with tresiba… sometimes I think that people’s psychological connection to the pump makes them favor it disproportionately… which is understandable I suppose…
