Blog

I haven’t posted much about the IR1250 since it was replaced, but I had a bit of a problem yesterday that one of the IR1200 features “fixed”.

I went low during my cardio session, had to stop and eat dinner and then resume to prevent a crisis. What I should have done, was to set my temporary basal about 2 hours before the planned session.

It wasn’t a problem before because my blood sugar was running too high in the afternoon, and I needed the cardio session to help bring it down.

Since I tend to work out about 4:30, I set an alarm to go off at 2:30. Then I can decide if I need the temporary basal or not.

I think it is important when I do go out of control, to figure out why so maybe it can be avoided in the future.

The best thing I could do, but probably won’t happen, is to NOT resort to eating when I’m stressed out. Even better would be to avoid getting stressed out in the first place, but since I can’t control the outside world and this one was outside generated …

If I do get into the situation, I need to make better choices, and if I do eat, avoid carbs. Unfortunately though, the best comfort foods are pure sugar.

The things I did right included exercising. I only skipped part of one week. I also did keep up with my blood sugar.

One other thing that I should have done differently, and would have ended the episode was to increase basals along with boluses.

My heartburn is finally subsiding, and I actually got my insulin usage below 60 units today without trying. I tweaked my correction factor by 1, so that should help bring usage down too.

Here’s what I find: the more I eat, the more insulin I use. That sounds like a big duh, but I don’t mean that when I eat twice as many carbs, I use twice as much insulin. It’s closer to twice as many carbs, three times or four times more insulin. If you read pumping insulin, it does make sense. Dr. Bernstein lives by that — he calls it “small numbers”.

But Atkins (and the rest of the lo-carb gang are right). The more carbs you eat the more you crave. I get in this vicious cycle.

So yeah, I COULD eat what I want with pump, but that means I use more insulin, crave more carbs, gain more weight.

If I eat less carbs, slower carbs, I stay off the roller coaster and the cravings.

YMMV (Your milage may vary).

I managed to do 40 minutes of cardio (though I had to split it and eat dinner in the middle as I started to go low).

I’m still having reflux problems so I’m doubling up on the Protonix.

But the best part, is that I haven’t had food craving problems all day to day.

4 full days, 4 exam days, 1 teacher day. (Yes, I counting).

GERD and constipation.

I have the worst case of heartburn, but as I am able to cut down on the amount of food I eat and when I eat, it should go away.

I am losing weight though, once I get past the constipation. And I feel better. Mostly because my blood sugar isn’t swinging — and it is definately not swinging now! And it is fairly low.

If I can keep this up a bit longer, my carb ratios should go back down.