Hypers management

The common sense has always tended to affirm that what characterises diabetes the most is a prevalence of high blood glucose levels. But we don't want it to be like that. Or better, it absolutely has not to be like that if we want to guarantee to ourselves a long and healthy life.

However, even if we pay the closest attention to our blood glucose levels, it might sometimes happen that they start to rise. Our primary goal doesn't have to be the one of effectively correcting hyperglycemias: in fact, we should aim to a prevention of them, stopping the ascent of BG before it exceedes the level at which, approximatively, the acidification of our blood starts: 180 mg/dl (10 mmol/L). In order to do this, the first thing you have to do is to set the high alarm of your CGM, if you have one, at a value which is lower than the dangerous one, in order to have the possibility to act in advance: 150 mg/dl (8.3 mmol/L) is the perfect limit for me.

What actually allows our blood glucose to drop is insulin. Like me, you probably have been thaught that you have to calculate the correction bolus using the "correction factor", which indicates how much your BG will drop per each unit of insulin. This is usually calculated dividing 1800 by the total amount of your daily insulinic intake. However, since our goal has to be the one of not even reaching values which are reckoned as hyperglycaemic, we have to act in advance. As soon as your BG reaches 150 mg/dl (8.3 mmol/L), or whenever you notice a rise in your blood glucose values which you reckon could continue up to over that level, you have to inject a correction bolus. The amount of this insulin injection is subject to many variables, such as already active insulin, ingested carbs/fats/proteins, physical activity and many more. You will have to proceed by trial and error, gaining the experience which will, after some months, allow you to become a true master: just think that, after not even one year of having adopted this approach, the percentage of my Time in Range over 180 mg/dl (10 mmol/L) is lower than 0.5% on a three months basis. The best advice I can give you is to proceed gradually: nothing denies to you a second injection even 5 minutes after a first one if you notice a fastest rise than expected, while an exaggerated dose could be more difficult to handle.

Last but not least, I want to focus for a moment on physical activity. A fact which I have discovered almost by chance, but which has enhanced my diabetes management results probably more than any other, is the power aerobic activity has on your BG. Just fast walk is extremely beneficial and will often bring your glycaemia down by a bit all alone, and, in general, the effect of aerobic exercise on blood glucose levels is directly proportional to its intensity. But the most powerful strategy we have to fight our hyperglycaemias fast and effectively is the one to combine insulin with aerobic activity. Trust me, the drop in your BG levels will be immediate and shockingly deep: in fact, you should track it cautiously, being careful not to exaggerate, otherwise you would find yourself with a huge hypoglycemia to correct!

However, since the factors which can cause hyperglycemias are innumerate and so are the methods to treat them, I suggest you keep reading the Diabetes Management section of my website to gain more knowledge. Thank you for having read this article, keep surfing my website!