My Night-time Basal Rate Tests

Basal insulin refers to our background insulin; the insulin our body needs when we are not eating. People who are on multiple daily injections (MDI) would have their basal insulin in the form of Lantus or Levemir. People on insulin pumps divide their day into sections and would programme their pump to deliver their basal insulin at different rates during the day.

For instance I have divided my day into midnight to 4am, 4am to 7am, 7am to 12pm, and so on. I have programmed my insulin pump to deliver my insulin at different rates for all of those times.

I perform basal rate tests when my blood glucose readings go a bit mental and persist in being mental. My fasting blood glucose have been acting up for a couple of weeks now and I decided that it was time I figured out why.

So, I tested at 10pm, before going to bed, which is normal for me. My result was 6.7mmol, great! So, I'm all set.  I set my alarm for midnight for my next test and fell asleep pretty quickly. The tests followed every 2 hours and results were 5.8, 5,4, 6.3 and 6.1. WHAT!!! I couldn't have wished for better readings.

Initially, I thought to myself that I had just put myself through an interrupted nights sleep for no reason. But the results are telling me that my nights are not the problem and that I need to look at my basal rates for during the day. The thought of doing this is more stressful because it involves skipping a meal and during the day I take care of my children. I'm nervous about both of those things.

However, Joe Solowiejczyk suggested that my husband could help out a little with the driving and the children so that I didn't panic too much about it. I think I'm mostly worried about driving under 5mmols. Then, in the last month my husband has been travelling on a weekly basis.

So, it looks like I'm just going to have to "man-up" and practice lots of deep breathing.

More information on Basal Rate Testing can be found here; http://www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/articles/insulin/getting_down_to_basals/all/