The highs and lows of insulin adjustments

Because I keep having low blood sugar early in the morning, I decided to reduce my dose of Lantus last night. My Autopen only adjusts by two units at a time, so I reduced my dose by two units.

At first, everything seemed great. I slept late this morning for the first time since starting Lantus without getting low blood sugar. When I woke up, my blood sugar was 5.9 mmol/l (106 mg/dl). I also managed to avoid the dawn phenomenon. I decided to add a little extra fast-acting insulin at breakfast just to be on the safe side.

Since I ate breakfast later than usual, I figured I'd have a late lunch. About an hour before lunch, I checked my blood sugar, and all was well: 6.4 mmol/l (115 mg/dl.) But when I was ready for lunch, it had gone up to 13.9 mmol/l (250 mg/dl) without my having eaten anything.

I'm going to have to talk to my endocrinologist about this when I see him next month. In the meantime, I think I'll experiment with different foods for breakfast and see if that makes a difference. And maybe I'll play with my Lantus dosage some more.

There are many things that can cause high blood sugar: too much food, not enough insulin, a rebound from a previous low blood sugar, stress, and hormones, just to name a few. I have to figure out what is causing these lunchtime high blood sugars.