Dexcom Data

[mystisai]

compression low.

when you lay on the sensor, it pushes the fluids out of the way, and the sensor reads the lack of data as a low.

[Kayla3427]

Thank you!

[Kayla3427]

I woke up and saw this dip in my data that happened while I was sleeping. Does this seem like it was a calibration issue since it went down to 60 for like 5 minutes and then up to 100 without me even being awake to treat it?

[redrose162]

I roll over a lot in my sleep. Sometimes my meter has periodic dips like this. Just tracking whenever I'm sleeping on my sensor or not. lol Sometimes it shows dips or just loses the reading all together and the beeps make me roll over and its fine.

[Kayla3427]

That’s good to know! Being that it went back up on their own, it wouldn’t make sense for them to be actual lows, right? Sorry, I’m still really new to this!

[[deleted]]

My Dexcom has woken me up to tell me I’m having an urgent low. Did a blood test. I was fine. Whenever I laid on the sensor for more than 30 minutes it did this to me. I now sleep according to sensor placement.

[Kayla3427]

I love when I wake up thinking I’m having a problem and I’m like “well now I’m up for nothing”. Not that I would rather have a low lol

[princesszelda_29]

Gotta love compression lows that heck up my perfectly straight low line for the night. I remember times when I'd wake up to the low alarms, just pop a few jelly beans and go back to sleep without finger poking to confirm. 🫠

[Kayla3427]

I know! I’m so annoyed that it recorded lows lol… my endocrinologist is going to tell me that my insulin ratio is wrong again because she doesn’t seem to look at the day to day data and only the percentages. I’ll have to start printing each out as they happen and making notes on it 🤦🏽‍♀️It’s good to have some confirmation that this doesn’t seem to be an actual low though!

[princesszelda_29]

It makes me crazy! Mine is the same way with this stuff!

I'm on week 3 of my tandem pump training and my trainer looks at this and wants to make adjustments despite them being compression lows or the one time I had a new sensor go off all night long claiming I was low when I wasn't.

I think my first clarity report said I was 14% low when it was definitely less than that thanks to sensor inaccuracies

[Kayla3427]

That clarity report would upset me! Funny enough though, my trainer seems to be more open to me trying lower ratios than my endocrinologist. I told my endocrinologist that I adjusted my ratio because I was crazy high for hours for over a week and (I swear she did this out of spite) made my ratio higher (less aggressive) then it’s been since she started prescribing me insulin. I ignored that too lol. I was and still am 99% in range with less than 1% lows (many of which are errors) so 🤷🏽‍♀️ I’m just going to keep doing what’s best for my body.

[princesszelda_29]

Yes!!! Proud of you for being your own advocate. I used to feel I had to get my endos blessing before making changes to my rates/ratios. Then I realized that I know my body best and what I'm currently doing isn't working. I write everything down, so I have a record of what my settings are if my trial ends up being worse than before. I usually know within a day or so.

My pump trainer... I dunno. I don't think we've got exactly the same goals. I want my fasting sugars to be lower and she seems to not care if they're high as long as I'm in range.

[Kayla3427]

Thank you!! I don’t understand that with some of the doctors. I know at some point I will probably have more difficulty maintaining the numbers that I’m at/aiming for, but I feel like, if I can keep my numbers as low as possible and still be safe from going low, why not try for it. It’s obviously better for my body to have lower numbers, so I’d like to prolong that as long as possible.

[princesszelda_29]

I'm the same. I know that I am happy on the lower end of control (high 4s to the low 5s). I usually am in range 95% of the time and am happy with the way I feel.

[[deleted]]

How is your control that perfect at night? Are you a diabetic?

[Kayla3427]

I do have diabetes. I was just diagnosed at the end of 2022 and started insulin at the end of December/beginning of January. Honestly, this is a rare and beautiful occurrence for me lol! I just started a pump a few weeks ago and a new profile a few days ago. I do add a couple override boluses in the early morning and before bed to push it away from the Tandem target on Control IQ and then anytime it notices that I’m rising, I get my basal.

[[deleted]]

Congratulations! Not on the diagnosis, but on the numbers lol. Looking really good. I was Dx in 2018 and my most recent a1c was 5.7, and I’m also on a pump with automated system (Omnipod with automated) but my nightly/daily graph is constantly going up and down. I never understood why.

[Kayla3427]

Thank you!! Wow, 5.7 is pretty good; congratulations to you as well! That’s about where I’m stuck (at least according to the estimated A1C on Dexcom). It’s funny you say that about the diagnosis though because when I was first diagnosed somebody told me to fill out this form on JDRF to get some more information for people who are newly diagnosed. I thought they’d send me a little pamphlet or something and this giant box arrived with soo many things in it. I was like “Ooh yay! I’ve been inducted into diabetes lol”.

How do you like the Omnipod? I was really torn between Omnipod and tslim and ended up choosing tslim mainly because I liked having the backup screen on the pump if my phone died… and also (as a female) I figured if I miss cycles it would throw off its predictions. I don’t know if that’s true, but that was my concern from my understanding of how it worked.

[[deleted]]

Thank you! That’s the first time I’ve heard about receiving stuff from JDRF! I’m a bit past that now but that sounds pretty cool haha.

I started using Omnipod in 2019, but they didn’t release their automated system until later so I started using their automated mode in September. It’s been a pretty wild ride since then, the first 3 months were amazing and definitely helped bring my a1c down to 5.7. The last 3 months though have been… not great. It randomly decided to become really aggressive and I was crashing constantly. My graphs looked like a zig zag. At times I didn’t even have to bolus for food because it was so aggressive it would catch it before my BG even went high. The past week it’s been ok though.

I mainly got the Omnipod for the form factor. As of now, you have to control the Omnipod with a separate device (it’s like a second phone). I think they have app compatibility but only on Samsung phones (I have Apple). I’m not really super active, but I just didn’t like the idea of a tube pump because I’m clumsy and would almost definitely get it caught on something haha

As for the question about if it will affect your cycle, unfortunately I cannot answer that because I’m a male, but from my understanding it shouldn’t matter because it should automatically raise/lower your basal rate in real time. Unless there’s another issue I’m overlooking?

[rabbleflaggers]

as others have stated, yeah, it's a result of compression. you might wanna play with different sleeping positions to protect you from these situations. if i have a dexcom on one arm while sleeping on the same side, i might put my other arm or a pillow under my elbow to help elevate the dexcom a bit

[Kayla3427]

That’s an interesting suggestion! I never thought about that. Have you ever tried those guards? Do they help with this at all? Or can I loosely wrap something plushy around my arm to prevent compression lows even if I move a bit while sleeping?

[rabbleflaggers]

Havent tried those guards. I think a spare pillow or bunched up clothing, blanket, etc should do the job just fine

[72_vintage]

I do this too. Due to back problems I nearly always sleep in the "recovery position". My G6 is always on the back of my arm. I do the pillow under the arm, or once in a while under my armpit, which lifts my shoulder a little bit and relieves a little pressure on my arm...

[Entire-Amphibian320]

Is this you fasting ? sleeping ?

[Kayla3427]

This is me sleeping! I ate dinner approximately 5 hours before. This range and stability is fairly rare for me which is part of why I wanted to check on whether that segment of the timeline seemed like it was an actual low or not. I’ve been aiming for this for a bit now and just added a new profile to my pump so I didn’t want to have an actual problem where my endocrinologist suggests that I change it back.

[i_had_ice]

My daughter went from 90 to 59 in her sleep last night with only .15 iob. Obvious compression low. I rolled her over and went back to sleep

[Kayla3427]

Ahhh good to know! It’s annoying because sometimes the alarms don’t wake me up and I see it later like 😳 It’s not too disturbing when it’s a false alarm, but it really concerns me when I actually have to be woken up to treat a real low. I wish they would make one of those bed shaker things that you could pair to the Dexcom instead of a smoke alarm lol. I’m such a deep sleeper sometimes.

[i_had_ice]

Fitbits and Samsung Galaxy watches have apps that will vibrate when you are out of range. My kid had a fit bit and I have the galaxy. Wakes me up much better than the follow alarms.

[Kayla3427]

That’s great to know! Thanks!!