BGL's prior to menstration

I am a 31 year old female and I have only graduated from DAFNE in the last few days. I am due for my period in a week or so and over the last two days I have found that my lunch and dinner time ratio seems to be wrong. I am getting in the 14's and it doesn't seem to be coming down when I test four hours later. I am so mad at myself for not asking about this during my course. What should I do?

I cant speak from experience but from talking to other diabetics they confirmed that the menstrual cycle does effect thier BGLs, some for a day or two, some for longer....

Talk to you DAFNE team about it....

I think its all about getting to know how you respond at this time, by testing etc...eventually you will be able to predict your BGL behaviour and compensate accordingly.

Good Luck...

My menstrual cycle does affect my sugar levels from what I can tell, and in fact, I was thinking about posting something about it here so well done for doing so first. For the record, I'm a 25 year old female.

Considering even a year or so after doing DAFNE, I still don't understand what my body does during that time because it seems to shift.

When I spoke to my DAFNE nurse, she made it quite clear that often it usually make your sugar levels rise however you have to also remember that it varies from woman to woman on how you need to respond to it. I wouldn't be surprised if it changes each month as well considering I've yet to see what I'm supposed to do for mine. This is why there are no set guidelines about in on DAFNE - you need to learn about your body while on DAFNE, and this is just a big part for a woman about learning about herself when it comes to her sugar level control.

Just out of interest, have you noticed when the highs start karaway? I think it's about a week and a day roughly before the physical stuff starts for the cycle for me... so this is often before I've even stopped taking my pill. I've also known at least one diabetic who's erm, "lucky" enough to get breast tenderness before her highs hit, so she takes that as a signal to put her insulin up.... I sometimes wish I had a signal like that(!). XD

My DAFNE nurse felt it would it would be best to keep adjusting at each meal to help me work out how much BI I would need to put it up by once I'd gone through the week. However, this was before my last one and surprise surprise, the patterns were not clear for the whole week. Very annoying.

Thank you everyone so much, I too get the breast tenderness and I have found that this month I have only suffered high BGL's for two days and today I am heading back to normal now that my period has arrived. Again, thanks so much it has really put my mind at ease knowing that when you're a female diabetic you're not always going to have perfect BGL's. As much as that disappoints me!!!!!

I'm glad we could help.
Good luck with keeping on top of things during our naturally awkward time of the month! XD