? Blood Glucose Curve results

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JessK&Callie

JessK&Callie

Member Since 2024
Hi all,
Our 16 year old girl, Callie, was diagnosed with diabetes last week. Today, she had her BG Curve test done at the vet. They just called and said her numbers went UP, not down, since her diagnosis. Her original # was 405. After 8 days on 1 unit of Lantus 2x a day, they're in the 500's. The vet said to stop dry food immediately and do canned only, and then we'll have to repeat the curve in 10-14 days.

I'm feeling very discouraged. She's been eating dry food her whole life, along with wet food. The wet food we have is low carb already, so that's good, but I think she'll have a hard time not having dry, and I know if she doesn't eat the wet, or eat enough, then we can't give her the insulin.

Obviously for the sake of her health we will stop the dry food immediately, is there anything else we can do? I don't want to lose my baby because of this.
 
You can start testing daily at home. This will give you a much better overall picture.
For most cats, a vet visit is stressful and can raise the blood glucose levels.

Ziwipeak, I believe, has an air-dried low carb food that resembles kibble.
Young Again (online only) and Dr Elsey's Clean Protein are low carb kibbles.
 
They said no dry food at all, so I’m hesitant to give her any. All of the conflicting information is so overwhelming. I’m so scared that I’m not doing the best thing for her.
I’ll check out the Ziwipeak, thank you!
 
I would encourage you to start home testing before you switch 100% from dry food. Cats glucose curves will be elevated from stress in the vets office so you have no way of knowing how low she’s actually going at home. Add in taking away her carb source that are increasing her numbers now, and it’s a recipe for a dangerous situation. You can get a test kit at Walmart for cheap.

ETA: if she needs crunchy food, you could try some freeze dried protein crunched on top of the wet food to give it some texture.
 
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I agree with Erin. There's a good chance that Callie was stressed from being at the vet's office. Stress will elevate blood glucose numbers. I would also not base my dosing decisions on one test unless the test number was low enough to warrant a dose reduction.

The other point is that it can take roughly a week for Lantus to build up in a cat's system and start to be effective. Lantus is a depot type of insulin. What that means is that every time you give a shot, Lantus forms microcrystals that deposit in the fat tissue. They slowly dissolve over the course of the 12-hour cycle. However, not all of the crystals dissolve -- some dissolve more quickly and some more slowly thus forming a "depot". The rate that they dissolve gives Lantus is long duration and gentle cycle. It also causes there to be a constant level of insulin. It takes roughly a week for that constant level to come into play.

What dry food were you feeding Callie? We are pretty rigid when it comes to what members feed their cat. However, your cat has to eat or there are a host of other problems that will occur. In principle, I would agree with your vet. A low carb, canned food diet is preferred. If your cat won't eat a low carb canned food diet, then you don't have a choice and there are a limited number of dry foods that are low in carbs. I would guess that your vet isn't familiar with those foods. Most vets do not get a great deal of training in nutrition. I had a blow out with my vet when I returned all of the canned and dry "diabetic" food. After she lectured me, I asked her what the carb content was of the food she'd sold me. I got a blank stare. I then pulled out our food chart (this was many years ago when there were prescription dry foods on the list) which was compiled by a vet and asked her to compare what I was feeding Gabby vs what she was telling me to feed my cat. The discussion ended with her noting that I knew what I was talking about.
 
SpotsMom said:
I would encourage you to start home testing before you switch 100% from dry food. Cats glucose curves will be elevated from stress in the vets office so you have no way of knowing how low she’s actually going at home. Add in taking away her carb source that are increasing her numbers now, and it’s a recipe for a dangerous situation. You can get a test kit at Walmart for cheap.

ETA: if she needs crunchy food, you could try some freeze dried protein crunched on top of the wet food to give it some texture.
Click to expand...
Hi! Yes we have a kit here, we just haven't home tested yet but we will start today.
 
Sienne and Gabby (GA) said:
I agree with Erin. There's a good chance that Callie was stressed from being at the vet's office. Stress will elevate blood glucose numbers. I would also not base my dosing decisions on one test unless the test number was low enough to warrant a dose reduction.

The other point is that it can take roughly a week for Lantus to build up in a cat's system and start to be effective. Lantus is a depot type of insulin. What that means is that every time you give a shot, Lantus forms microcrystals that deposit in the fat tissue. They slowly dissolve over the course of the 12-hour cycle. However, not all of the crystals dissolve -- some dissolve more quickly and some more slowly thus forming a "depot". The rate that they dissolve gives Lantus is long duration and gentle cycle. It also causes there to be a constant level of insulin. It takes roughly a week for that constant level to come into play.

What dry food were you feeding Callie? We are pretty rigid when it comes to what members feed their cat. However, your cat has to eat or there are a host of other problems that will occur. In principle, I would agree with your vet. A low carb, canned food diet is preferred. If your cat won't eat a low carb canned food diet, then you don't have a choice and there are a limited number of dry foods that are low in carbs. I would guess that your vet isn't familiar with those foods. Most vets do not get a great deal of training in nutrition. I had a blow out with my vet when I returned all of the canned and dry "diabetic" food. After she lectured me, I asked her what the carb content was of the food she'd sold me. I got a blank stare. I then pulled out our food chart (this was many years ago when there were prescription dry foods on the list) which was compiled by a vet and asked her to compare what I was feeding Gabby vs what she was telling me to feed my cat. The discussion ended with her noting that I knew what I was talking about.
Click to expand...

She's been on the Lantus for 9 days today. She started at 1 unit and is now at 2 so it should already be built up a bit. She was on Hills Science Diet 11+ dry food, and Fancy Feast pate, so thankfully we didn't have to change the wet food. We do have some Elsey's Clean Protein here as was recommended by this group.
 
Every time you change a dose, whether it's a dose increase or decrease, the depot has to catch up. What that translates to is that it can take a few days for the depot to refill when you increase or to siphon off if you decrease the dose. It may have been nine days but you had a dose increase to factor in. (Sorry, I know this is confusing but the longer you're at this the more it will make sense.) It's going to be a bit more challenging in that you just doubled the dose. It's going to take longer for the depot to catch up since we make changes in dose in much smaller increments. In most cases, we recommend that the dose is changed by 0.25u

You may want to look over the sticky on Lantus dosing.

I don't know what your notation means: Hills Science Diet 11.
 
I don't think I've ever seen the notation for a cat's age on a Science Diet label. They may have had to change their packaging after they were in a class action suit regarding their calling their foods "prescription."
 
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