Basal test success! Well, kind of.
I woke up on Monday morning, all stoked that I’d been able to do my basal test the night before. I couldn’t wait to find out where my trouble spots were and how I could fine tune my overnight basal rates into perfection. I eagerly reached for my CGM and found…this.
Um. Well then. Ok! Guess that basal rate is TOTALLY WORKING FINE WITH LITERALLY NO PROBLEMS WHATSOEVER OKTHANKSBYE!
As anti-climactic as it was to see that flat line the next morning, it’s actually extremely helpful to prove that it is NOT my basal rates that are the problem. Eliminating the basal as the culprit of overnight blood sugar problems means I can definitively point a finger at boluses and food, and that’s extremely helpful. Jacob and I tend to eat dinner late because of our schedules, and although we cook very low carb, carbs sometimes get replaced by higher-fat content foods, which take hours to digest and can cause a rise much later.
Testing my overnight basal rate was as much of a pain in the arse as I thought it would be, but totally worth it to be able to eliminate at least one of the variables that could be causing issues. And with diabetes, given that there are so many factors that affect our BGs, it’s helpful to know at least the background insulin is rolling steady. I should say that ideally, you’d want to repeat a basal test a few times to corroborate your results…but we all know that’s not going to happen anytime soon for me.
As a result, I’m going to work on playing with my dinner-time boluses. It’s really challenging for Jacob and I to eat earlier than about 8pm, given our schedules these days, but to combat the latent digestion issues, I’m going to try running some higher temp basals for the few hours after eating, and perhaps bolusing ever-so-slighltly before bed on some nights when I can see a steady rise. Love playing mad scientist when I actually have some data to back it up! Well worth the challenge of Monday night to have this information. Happy Friday folks.
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Comments
Depending on your basal rates, a precentage-increase might be way too little for your food.
My doc recommends a 3 hours extended bolus (whatever that is called in your pump - Mine labels it “Multiwave”, giving me a percentage now [for the carbs] and the rest over “period of time” [for the fat]) for pizza. And I’d call that the ideal fat + carbs test. Now three hours appear little, but this means the end of the bolus will stop working sometime between 6 and 7 hours after your bolus - and that should cover the pizza nicely.
Or in other words: Eat more pizza. For science!
(If you skip the carbs entirely this is going to be much much more interesting…)
Glad that your basal test went well! I’m interested in the higher fat content + longer digestion thing… I can see that being a factor for me but it’s never something I learned about or corrected for. I usually eat dinner a good 2+ hours before bed, but often I feel like it’s not long enough to see the true effect of the dinner on my blood sugar before I fall asleep, and I wake up slightly high. Guess what I’m Googling this afternoon? 
Or you could just eat the carbs at dinner…get your spike and then have smooth sailing for the rest of the night…in an ideal world
Floh, anytime I can eat pizza “for science” I am so all in! I think the extended bolus will help but I also notice the biggest spikes at about 3am, which puts things about 5 hours after the meal, but also 2.5 - 3 hours before I get up for a workout…I find myself in that space of wondering if I should bolus more and risk going low…and ruining my chance of a workout…hate that.
Ah, but a bigger bolus at mealtime wouldn’t help. Because there you’d be overcompensating for carbs which aren’t there. After all, your body takes way too long to digest a whole pizza.
What you are fighting (at least - that’s what literature says) is an “insulin resistance” caused by more fatty acids in your bloodstream about 5 hours later (your case… I’d say 6). To overcome that reduced insulin sensitivity you increase (basically) the basal rate - via the extended bolus.
Let me “example” for clarification.
One deep-frozen pizza (over here) is calculated as 100g of carbs (calculated bolus of 10 I.E.). I’d personally bolus for 70% of those right away (70g of carbs -> 7 I.E.) and spread 3 I.E. over 3 hours.
But you’ve got the CGM. You can just test it and sleep through the night, then admire the results the day after pizza.
Pizza… sleep… Science! Technically there is only “Explosions!” missing for a perfect night..
Aww glad the basal test went well! I think overnight is my least favorite to test because I love my sleep but at least you know that’s not the cause. Hope the dinner-time bolus testing goes well!