Back in January I posted some preliminary results from my own personal experiment that I had been conducting for a while, regarding when I take my insulin. Those results weren't very conclusive, and so I decided to try some more and then compare February with this past October, in order to cut out the holidays and a beach vacation.
Well now that it's March, I think I've learned a thing or two. Here are some figures:
Reading
October
February
Overall Average:
149
134
% within target:
31
35
Standard Deviation:
64
59
Average pre-breakfast:
150
122
Average post-breakfast:
105
121
Average pre-lunch:
141
114
Average post-lunch:
143
158
Average pre-dinner:
146
136
Average post-dinner: *
230
197
Average night:
166
137
*October did not include as nearly as many post-meal readings, and very few post-dinner; they were usually checked when highs were expected.
Clearly there's still room for improvement, particularly post-lunch and -dinner, but the #s look much better, and tighter. I can't really say for certain that the difference is because of when I've been taking my insulin; however, I feel like it makes sense that this had played a part of the change. The other potential factor is simply my paying close attention by testing more often as well as adjusting my insulin/glucose ratio slightly at breakfast. In October's 28 days there were 102 test (or 3.6/day), v. February's 151 tests (or 5.4/day).
This feels good, this little experiment of mine. I'm looking forward to taking this info back to my endo, and getting another A1C. Unfortunately that's not until mid-April. I wonder what he'll think - at my last appt he wanted me to increase my lantus, and my breakfast and dinner humalogs. I haven't quite done that completely. Even though it's all about counting carbs, I'm always asked by the assistant how much humalog I'm taking at each meal and when I try to say, "Well, it depends on how many carbs I take in" she'll say, "Well, on average...." The problem is that then I meet with the endo and gives me direction based on those "averages", not making it very helpful. And him...well, he's got the personality and communication skills of a fish.
You know what's weird? I'm thinking about how exhausting and overwhelming it'll be to keep this up for another six weeks before my next appointment. Ha! I guess it's my way of forgetting that "...for the rest of your life" part!
It seems like you have a pretty good experiment going on. But to me I think you are just doing what you are supposed to and its not really much of an experiment lol its experiments like this that we all should be doing ALL of the time.
Its hard to think about this stuff 24/7 but when you do you provide results like you have above
No, I guess it isn't much of an experiment. I wonder if the #s would've improved if the only change was the frequency of testing, and not switching from taking insulin the end of to the beginning of meals.
Someone else will have to do that one.