This was a lifetime experience for me which taught me an entirely new lesson about my diabetes, which I was deprived of my whole life. Earlier this year, we were to a hill station, during winters and our journey was by road there. The distance of our destination was around 2000 kilometers from our place, so we did two night halts in between. The weather in our city was not that cold and it was getting colder as we were reaching our destination. 

The reason I’m telling you all of this is, I found a different trend in my Blood Glucose levels as we hailed from a place with a relatively hot weather and as we crossed 3-4 states, weather was gradually getting colder and colder and my Blood Glucose (BG) levels were acclimatizing according to it. 

I already knew this, that my insulin sensitivity gets better during winters, but this was something out of my imagination. During these two days I gradually reduced my insulin dose a bit, as per my previous experience with winters, but as we reached our destination after two days, it was bone-chilling there. 

On very first day itself, I took my first revised routine basal and bolus with three of my meals, but this was alarming, that I got hypos after each meal that day and because of that I was a bit scared and I kept on checking my BGs every half an hour and imagine after taking a perfect meal at dinner time, my BGs were getting lower and lower, so I drank a whole box of mango juice gradually keeping an eye on my numbers. 

After gulping a whole box of juice, my hypo was still not corrected and then I hogged up another box of juice and it was then my BG levels started increasing. I obviously got the rebound hyperglycemia the other morning, but I understood that my Insulin sensitivity has improved like anything in this weather.

The temperature there was -2 degree to -3 degree approximately, so I got the drill that as the environmental temperature goes down, my insulin sensitivity improves. So, we stayed there for 5 days and during that course of time, I gradually reduced my bolus, meal by meal. 

Earlier, I used to take 30 units of basal insulin and 10 units of bolus on meal time and now my bolus came to 1 unit from 10 units and some days I even survived only on basal dose. You can observe the drastic difference of 9 units.

By and large, I improved insulin sensitivity in winters and after this new experience I came out with a new generalisation for myself.

‘Insulin sensitivity is indirectly proportional to environmental temperature‘

My message to all T1Ds here is, ‘Please observe a pattern in your BGs, as you move to other places with different weather conditions and temperature, as it may require major changes in your diabetes management’