Question from Lower Burrel, Pennsylvania, USA:
I am trying to understand how growth hormones affect glucose levels. My daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes on April 20, 2006. She has been doing reasonably well, with her last A1c at 7.0. At present, she is on about five units Humalog, one and a half units of NPH per day. Her glucose readings last week are generally around 70 mg/dl [3.9 mmol/L] to 170 mg/dl [9.4 mmol/L]. But, for the past three or four days, she has jumped up well over 200 mg/dl [11.1 mmol/L] at dinner, way above the norms of the week before. And, today, she was 98 mg/dl [5.5 mmol/L] before breakfast. She got four units of Humalog, no NPH. At school, at lunch time, she at 337 mg/dl [18.7 mmol/L]. She only had a small mid-morning snack as usual, certainly not enough to crank her up to over 330 mg/dl [18.3 mmol/L]. She is not sick and nothing in the diet has changed. Is this a typical symptom of growth hormones kicking in and out ?