Basal Insulin Dose
 

If you take your basal insulin once per day (Lantus) and the amount of your meal time insulin keeps changing everyday, then how can you accurately set your basal insulin with MDI? In the book Using Insulin by John Walsh, he explains that to find your basal dose that you need to know what your total daily dose of insulin is and your basal should be about 50-60% of the total. My total daily dose of insulin varies everyday and there are some days when my Novolog doses are very low so my therefore my basal is too high. Is there anyway of adjusting this? :confused::confused:

I basal so my between meal is below 100 and bolus for food:)

The DP is the problem.

I dont see how your way can work
if you eat carbs then your basal is going to go up (60% of total insulin) and you will be low between meals.

Would you mind sharing how you arrived at your basal dose? Is your basal the same every day and how long have you been at your current basal dose?

I switched from Humalin N to Lantis 3 months ago. I was taking 35 units in the AM and 40 IU in the pm for a total of 75 IU. The MD started me 54 IU of Lantis about 75% of my dose Humalin N dose.

I then added 2 IU every 3rd day until my BGL was ~100 ( that was 66 IU)
after a week I went up another 2 units and got my fasting BGL to under 100.

Now as I've been riding my bicycle in preparation of the ADA's New England Classic fund raiser bicycle ride. I started to run too low, so Ive had to reduce my Lantis gradually to 54 IU.

Since some days I sit at the computer and other days I do physical work I am thinking of splitting my dose into 2 shots. Then on days that I do Physical work I can cut down on my daytime Lantis without running high at night. and lazy days I can get more Lantis in the AM without running low at night.

Insulin use is a work in progress. Always will be.

Do you take a bolus of rapid acting at mealtime? Thank you for sharing that information. It sounds like you have found something that works. I feel as if I need to start over, but I haven't sat down to figure it all out. There are so many factors involved in taking insulin. My doctor has allowed me to be the director of "my play" with insulin. That is a good thing for the most part. He is an internist and I would say that he knows enough about diabetes to treat it although I know an endo would probably know more.

How are you doing with the donations for your bike ride? If I contribute, how do I make sure that you get the credit?

Yes I take Humalog with carbs.

the only way to make insulin work is by self management. to many things change the amount of insulin needed to wait for the MD to make a change in the dose.

I take 1 IU of humalog for every 3 g of carbs, so I eat very low carb.