Practice Calculating Mealtime Insulin

If you take insulin with each meal, your endocrinologist may recommend that you begin dosing your insulin based on 1) the amount of carbohydrates in your food and 2) your pre-meal blood sugar level. This is the ideal way of dosing mealtime insulin because it allows patients to take more insulin when they're consuming more carbohydrates and less insulin when they're consuming less carbohydrates, thus allowing more flexibility with meal planning.

When using this regimen, your endocrinologist will provide you with a unique insulin to carb ratio (ICR) and correction factor (CF) based on your own insulin sensitivity. The ICR and CF settings are unique for every patient so you should not start dosing your insulin this way until discussing these settings with your endocrinologist and diabetes educator. This way of dosing mealtime insulin also requires you to be sufficient in carb counting, another skill which can be reviewed in your office visit if needed.

For patients who are new to calculating their mealtime insulin with an ICR and CF, we encourage you to review the practice problems below and contact our office with any questions.