What Happened to My Diabetic Dog's Numbers?
We have talked about season changes in a prior post and being that we are heading into another season change, it’s time for a refresher. For those of you that have been through a season change before just flip back in your journal to the Winter/Spring season change or if you have been on this journey for over a year, flip back in your journal to last year’s Summer/Fall change. Hopefully you took very good notes and will save yourself much angst with this season change as you will see that you’ve been through this before. You will just have to reverse the correction that you made then.
So, if you had to reduce your overall dose with the change to warmer weather, you will likely just have to do an increase for the cooler weather. Do not just increase all at once if it was more than half a unit adjustment. You will need to be patient and diligent when increasing. Now if you need to decrease as a result of the weather change, you can decrease as much as needed, it’s just the increase that needs to be done slowly.
For those of you that are new at this, I know that it sounds a little far-fetched that weather can affect BG (Blood Glucose) numbers, but let me assure you that it can and does in most cases. I promise that I am not making this up. If you step back and think about this from a physiological standpoint, it makes perfect sense.
Keeping in mind that insulin is a subcutaneous medication, meaning that you inject it into the subcutaneous layer of the skin. It absorbs over the next 1 – 2 hours while food is digesting. Depending on the weather, that absorption rate will vary. When it’s warmer outside, some pups will absorb insulin faster some slower. There is no “rule of thumb” here, every dog is different. I can tell you that when the seasons changed from warmer to cooler, I would read on the group (Facebook Group) daily that people had to increase their insulin dose because of the cooler weather. Well, I had exactly the opposite issue, when the weather began cooling off, I needed less insulin. I’m telling you that every dog is different and it’s also likely that you will have a pup that is completely unaffected by a weather change.
Whatever pattern you have observed in the past, there is no guarantee that it will repeat itself. The only guarantee is that there will come a day or season that everything that you have experienced will go out the window and you will have to use all of your knowledge to put the pieces together and get back on track. This is one of the reasons that I encourage you to find a group that will support you and give you a “fresh set of eyes” on your current situation. Trying to figure out all aspects of this disease on your own will limit you in figuring out what is happening. Chances are good that if you are in a situation that you haven’t encountered before, there is someone out there that has and will help you and keep you from taking a bunch of wrong turns on your way out of the maze!
The moral of this story is that we are on the brink of a season change, so don’t panic, just breathe and go with it and we will get through it together!
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Until next time…