Three Signs You Need to Reassess Your Baselines

*Disclaimer: All content and information in this blog is for informational and educational purposes only. Always consult your health care provider before making any adjustments to your exercise routine or diabetes management.

Your baselines are the backbone of your blood sugar management. If your basal rates, carb ratios, and correction factors aren’t fine tuned – any pre-bolus or nutrition strategy you try to implement just won’t matter.

Now, you’re probably wondering “isn’t that my endocrinologists’ job?”. In short, yes. However, you’ve probably been there before… you walk into your endocrinologists’ office with your blood sugar data in hand. Your doctor spots a trend of high or low blood sugars and immediately makes a change to your insulin settings (even though there are a million different behavioral factors that could be contributing to that trend). So now, you’re not sure what settings are accurate – and which ones are compensating for other variables.

What are your baselines?

Your baselines come down to three numbers..

1. Your Basal Rates (or long acting insulin if you’re on injections): Your basal rates are here to offset glucose production of the liver. You can have multiple basal rates throughout the day. These can change based on the time of day, your activity, hormones, stress levels, seasons, body weight, etc.
2. Your Insulin to Carb Ratios: This is the amount of carbohydrates that are covered by one unit of insulin. These can also change based on time of day, activity, hormones, etc.
3. Your Correction Factors: When a high blood sugar hits, this is how much one unit of insulin will lower your blood sugars. You guessed it, these will change based on many different factors.
   

Why Do I Need to Test My Baselines?

Your baselines are the foundation of everything you do. If your basal rates aren’t accurate, you’re likely going to have a more difficult time trusting your blood sugars during the day to day tasks like working out, working or even sleeping. If your carb ratios aren’t accurate, navigating trends around meals also becomes more difficult. It becomes harder to break down if a pattern is contributed to the macronutrient composition, insulin timing, or the insulin amount.

When we can trust that our baselines are accurate, you can break down patterns more efficiently and have more confidence in our daily decisions.

How Do I Know if I Need to Test My Baselines?

Falling into any of these scenarios? It’s time to test your baselines.

1. Having to eat a snack before bed to avoid an overnight low blood sugar: Your blood sugars, when only impacted by basals, shouldn’t fluctuate more than 30 mg/dl.
2. You eat a low carb diet to avoid having insulin on board: The fear around insulin on board is usually activated by frequent low blood sugars after a meal, which could mean your carb ratio isn’t accurate.
3. You’re only taking half of your suggested correction to avoid plummeting: Finding yourself cutting back on your correction dose to avoid a low blood sugar? Time to go through a carb ratio test.
   

Where Do I Start?

First things first, learn how to run through a proper basal rate test. No more random basal rate changes – more data behind your decision! Grab our free basal rate guide HERE:

Next, grab your Keeping it 100 Diabetes Journal to record all of your basal rate and carb ratio tests so you can bring them to your endocrinologists office and be part of the conversation.