This weekend I am spending a lot of time dealing with diabetes because my transmitter died and I’m having to manually control my insulin pump. One technique I am using is setting a “Temp Basal.” A temp basal is a setting that allows for a different basal rate to be set for a limited time period.

I find a temp basal to be helpful, both for preventing lows and highs. I like the setting that allows for a percentage to be set, so that I can have it give me less or more insulin than my regular basal rate.

One trick I did is that when my blood glucose went low, in addition to drinking orange juice to treat it, I also set to a temp basal of 0%.

I set this as a way to temporarily disable the basal insulin to help my blood glucose recover. It’s been a rocky couple of days. Here is a picture of my Freestyle Libre (I’m using this as an interim solution) and it’s showing 71. This picture was taken after drinking orange juice, and my blood glucose was already starting to recover. I find orange juice to be super fast way to treat low blood glucose.

Temp Basal Instructions

• For the Medtronic 670G Insulin Pump – Setting a Temp Basal
• For the MiniMed 770G Insulin Pump – Setting a Temp Basal