A working pancreas releases insulin after a meal and causes blood sugar to rise for a bit to account for the food intake.
A T1D pancreas just sits there and waits quietly for someone to give it some insulin to perform the same function. If no insulin is provided, all hell breaks loose and blood sugar skyrockets, right?
My question is: What occurs to the body (besides hypoglycemia) when too much insulin is present?
Example… My blood sugar is at 112. I count 85 carbs for dinner and dose accordingly. I eat dinner and then watch my blood sugar. The needle doesn’t move. 30 minutes go by, 45 mins…an hour… hour and a half…and still nothing. My blood sugar is still at 112 or so.
It would appear to me that I have too much insulin in my system. Even a T1D needs to have a bit of a blood sugar increase after eating, right?
What is happening to the food I’ve eaten? Not enuf insulin on board means high blood sugar which, for me, leads to weight loss, dehydration, etc… etc…etc… and too much insulin leads to hypoglycemia with all the fun that entails.
What about those times the blood sugar just stays the same? I mean, it’s great to have such tight control but I cant help but wonder if these instances are detrimental to my digestive system?
Thoughts?
It appears to me you have exactly the right amount of insulin.
My opinion as a non medical person is no, flatline blood sugar is not only not bad … it’s perfect.
If you are going by CGM only, there could be a 30 minute lag for interstitial fluid to catch up with rising blood sugar. If during that time your blood sugar levels off you will see it as a flat line.
A bad CGM could also do the same
You could use a finger stick every 15 minutes but you could still miss a minor rise as it could be buried in the meter allowable error.
Regardless, if you got a flat line then rejoice, it went your way…this time
Hey Andy @AJZimmerman, I understand what you are explaining about flat-lining and similar to what @Joe wrote you may have actually hit the elusive balance between food, activity and insulin. Lately I’ve been able to have a few consecutive days where my standard deviation [one of the first things I look at on my capturAGP report] is 30 or less; maybe I’ve finally got the correct values set in my pump profiles. Andy, I don’t recall if you use a pump.
A properly working pancreas continuously produces and releases insulin whether we eat of not based upon signals from the CGM built into the liver; the liver will also stop the release of insulin and release its stored glucagon if its CGM sees glucose levels dropping - “t-cells”, also produced by a naturally working pancreas carry the messages back and forth.
It has been found that some people diagnosed with diabetes for more than 50 years continue to produce some insulin; I do not appear to produce any insulin based on every c-peptide test result that has read <0.1%.