Diabetes Blog – Happy-Medium.net

I don’t know what it is about that time of day, but…

There’s something about 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.

It seems like every single day between 4 and 6, my blood sugar takes a nosedive. Doesn’t matter what I’m doing, doesn’t matter where I am. It’s a strange, strange thing.

This has been happening for years. It goes back over ten years, in fact. Some things have stayed the same during that time, but some have not.

I still work for the same company, though I’ve worked in my current office location for almost a decade. On the other hand, I don’t go to the office five days a week like I did back then. Now I work two days each week from home, and the lows happen on those days too.

On the days in the office, I have about a half mile walk from there to catch the train home. Typically, between the time I leave the office, walk to the subway, get on the train and come home, my blood sugar will drop 50 to 80 points. When I work from home, it will still drop 30 to 50 points during the same time of day.

I’m not as active as I was back when I first noticed this phenomenon. I’m still fairly active for someone my age, but let’s face it, I’m not as young as I used to be either. Who is? My blood sugar is still reacting to this time of day like I was on the spin bike for two hours straight.

Before you say it, I adjusted my pump settings long ago. Between 4:00 and 6:00, I’m getting half a unit of insulin per hour. That’s it. And most days, I could just suspend the damned thing for two hours and I’d be just fine.

One of the hardest things to explain to people who haven’t had diabetes in their lives is the constant changing nature of our endocrine systems. It’s like, they hear you when you say diabetes isn’t “set it and forget it”, but they really don’t understand that it means I need 1.6 units per hour in the morning, and less than a third of that (or less) during those two hours.

And truly, even the regular basal settings on the pump aren’t perfect for each moment of the day, because every day is different, right? Stress, no stress, exercise, diet, caffeine, alcohol, and any number of other things can affect my BGs from day to day, minute to minute.

But if I had to pick a time where my diabetes is most consistent, I’d have to say it’s during that magic time between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m.