Insulin

My son was diagnosed about 6 weeks ago with type 1.  he has slowly decreased all his insulins and about 3 weeks ago stopped taking insulin to cover his carbs due to low BG.During this time they have bben decreasing his 24 lantus and is now off all insulin for the last week.  Has anyone ever heard of this?  They are telling me it is the honeymoon phase.  The strange thing is that his highest Bg reading in a week was 140 after having birthday cake.

Yes i have heard of this. Sometimes in the beginning ive heard of people going off insulin for a short while.  I was diagnoised over a year ago.  My honeymoon is just coming to an end now i just started insulin this week. my honeymoon lasted almost a year but i think im a bit of a weird case. In the beggining you sometimes dont need any insulin or a very small amount. im only taking 6 units of lantus a day.

This isn't uncommon from what I've heard. If you do a Juvenation search for "honeymoon" there are past threads where people discussed their experiences. There are at least 4 threads, so I'm not going to bother pasting all the links if you don't mind. (:

I hope you and your family are adjusting okay! Welcome to Juvenation -- I hope you'll find it as helpful as I have!

I am going to look them up.  Thank you for the info.   I think I will find juvenation helpful if ever is as helpful as you.

Thank you for the info.  I hope all is well with you.

Yes its the honeymoon! i didn't have one (nor will i for that matter) But it's after you're diagnosed and you're pancreas recognizes that what you're putting in is insulin and starts making some again bbut it won't last forever! Your pancreas will quit again! eventually!

As others have said, yep, it's a honeymoon and it's common.

From what I understand, his pancreas still has some functioning islet cells that were just so worn out from doing the work of what should be performed by many more islet cells... so his BG went up and he was diagnosed and started on insulin.  So now that they're getting help from injected insulin, the islet cells have gotten a rest and are able to keep doing their job for a while.

Not all of us get to totally quit insulin for that time. Like, I'm honeymooning just enough that my basal insulin isn't much at all (but my I:Cs are pretty typical).  Even when he gets to a point sort of like that, the insulin will help keep those islet cells contributing until they're actually gone.

 

don't worry, this is just the honeymoon phase. his pancreas is probably still trying to produce insulin and then he's covering for insulin on top of that. i know because it's happend to me. i was getting lower bg readings all the time, and my highest ones would be the mid 100s. i actually became worried at one point because i would eat all this food and my blood sugar wouldn't raise very high. i was wondering if maybe my meter was broken or something. but i came to find out about the honeymoon phase, and realized that my body was still trying to help. just cut back on the insulin a little, and really watch that bg. experiment, but carefully! good luck! :)

I've been diabetic for a year and a half now and am still in a "honeymoon phase". I take Novolog, but not nearly as much as when I was first diagnosed (about 30g of carb/unit). I did go off of insulin completely for a week last summer, but soon needed it again. I haven't needed any background insulin since I was first diagnosed. I keep pretty tight control of my glucose, and I hear the better managed your diabetes is, the longer the honeymoon period lasts. I would recommend doing the best you can and hope it lasts as long as possible.