They are different, actually, and bouncing is not going high after going too low. Somogyi aka rebound hyperglycemia, is something that was observed in the 1930s and for whatever reason has become pervasive to doctors and vets in regards to diabetes even though it has been disproven. The theory was that people waking up with high blood glucose were having silent hypoglycemia event when sleeping. The fix is to reduce the dose because the problem is too much insulin causing hypoglycemia. If we sung the praises of somogyi around here, we’d have lots of cats with too little insulin, and probably several DKA incidents to show for it. It has also been studied and debunked in cats specifically.
What we call bouncing is a response to having dropped lower than the body is used to or too quickly, including but not limited to low “lime green” numbers. Dropping from 400 to 200 in one hour could trigger a bounce, 200 is not a hypo inducing number, nor is it a number we would want to reduce insulin on, but to a cat that has been diabetic for awhile and is used to numbers in the 400s, it’s a shock to the system. Bouncing is the body freaking out to a sudden change and dumping all this glucose as a protection mechanism because the body thinks it could be in trouble, not because it actually is. Reducing the dose in response to a bounce depends only if the number went below an action number, otherwise, you keep on keeping on and you ignore the bounce. Many cats bounce and are far from having enough insulin on board. You can see this in many of the acro cats on the board, they will bounce from numbers in the 300s, the solution is not less insulin in that case, the solution is more insulin.
