PollQuestion

For insulin pump users, how often do you test your basal rates?

October 13 - 20, 2021

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For insulin pump users, how often do you test your basal rates?
More often than once a month
0%
Once a month
14%
Once a quarter
14%
Twice a year
0%
Yearly
0%
Less than yearly
29%
I haven't ever tested basal rates
43%

A basal rate is the minimum amount of insulin required to manage normal daily blood glucose fluctuations, and when living with diabetes, setting a basal rate on your insulin pump means working with your medical team to calculate what your basal rate should be, and then fine-tuning that rate through basal testing.

Basal rate testing involves waiting several hours (usually around four) after your last bolus and closely monitoring your blood sugars to see if your basal rate is working to cover your baseline metabolic functions. Basal rate testing can be thrown off by the need to correct a high blood sugar or treat a low blood sugar, so the test themselves can be stopped at random. If blood sugars are running higher or lower than your personal thresholds, then basal rate adjustments should be made.

Just over half of the CWD community is doing basal rate testing here and there, but just under half of our respondents have not ever tested basal rates. We encourage families with diabetes who are also using insulin pumps to check in with their care team to see if a basal rate test would be helpful for overall management.

 

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