I'll do a minor hijack and ask a few questions in the open as opposed to PMs. I take Lantus Solostar , 45 units per day, once a day. Here are my questions
1. How much do you guys take?
2. Does it seem like it starts to loose effectiveness, and you need to "up" your dose?
3. Do you suffer from "dawn syndrome"
I always love me some diabetes threads....
Type 1 for 20 years. Was on NPH with regular, then NPH with humalog, then ultralente with NPH with humalog, then ultralente with humalog, then humalog insulin pump, now novolog insulin pump but when I am not on that I use lantus with novolog. (thats a mouthful....). The point where I had NPH with ultralente was trying to deal with dawn phenomenon but that was many years ago. My morning basal rates (1 to 6 AM) I use now are actually lower than the rest of the day these days. (1 unit vs 1.3/1.4/hr)
so with that out of the way....
1. On the pump, as above, plus 1 unit/10 grams carbs and 1 unit per 50 over 150. On lantus, I take about 33 in a single shot each 24 hours, and the correctional stuff stays the same. (I weight about 150 if you care although as said above that isnt really necessarily a determining factor, however I have noticed that as my weight increased I needed more basal insulin. YMMV....)
2. Actually, right now I am getting the opposite effect -- I was becoming, shall we say, a bit.....sedentary.... and had to take more, now I am a bit more in shape (exercising every day) and using less. Lifestyle has a massive effect for me.
3. Not any more. A pump is great for that though. And great for pretty much everything, in fact.....assuming you have insurance to cover it.
edit: Something else with diabetes to note: there are a number of ways that your body can becoming more 'fail-y' over time. For instance, you can develop resistance or b-cell failure......in my life, I notice that over time my body's ability to 'buffer' against a low blood sugar has decreased over time (ie, a low used to be 65, now it is 40, etc.....) which is related to hypoglycemic unawareness (potentially very dangerous) as well as diet and stores of sugar in the body but also might have to do with a decreasing glucagon activity in the body (although I'm not completely sure on that). Anyway, good conversation to have with an endocrinologist.