It sounds funny right? Everytime someone mentions a super bolus I picture a pump with a little red cape. I’m a dork. I know. But in all seriousness, I never really paid a lot of attention to this concept even though I know a lot of people have spoken about it.
Ramen has frustrated me for years. I love Ramen for many reasons: it’s cheap, it’s easy to eat at work, it warms me up when i’m shivering in my cold office, I put some cayenne pepper in it to clear my sinuses, etc. I try and try and try to get an acceptable post-pranidal number. I pre-bolus. I wait a half hour. I sit and watch my Dexcom until I can’t go any lower before I have to eat. No matter what I do, I still spike to 200. With my current goals and guidelines, that is unacceptable.
I declared I was going to eat low carb, but I was having a little trouble planning out my lunches with what was in my cabinets at home. So, I did some poking around and came back to this concept of the “super bolus.” It sounded like a good idea. And guess what? IT WAS!
Here is what I did:
- I figured out what 80% of my basal would be (my current basal rate was 1.5u/hr so 80% of that is 1.2)
- I multiplied it by 3 (so 3.6u)
- I figured out my meal bolus for the carbs (my lunchtime ratio is 1u:6.5g and the ramen is 52g so that’s 8u)
- I added the 3.6u and 8u to get 11.6u
- I set a temp basal rate to 20% for the next 3 hours
Which there in itself proves that diabetics are awesome at math. The point of all this math, is to punch those carbs with a huge dose of insulin up front and get more insulin working at one time. Then to prevent your blood sugar from crashing, the basal is decreased and everything “equals out” in the end.
It really did work wonders for me:
To say that I am happy with the results would be an understatement. I am ECSTATIC! I’m stoked to be able to use this when I need to.
Now, I’m not going back to eating loads of carbs all the time. But it is really nice to have this in my pocket if I need it.
Sweet Colleen 
September 13, 2013 at 3:19 pm
Colleen, you brought up my favorite subject! The Super Bolus! It’s my new best friend. I’ve had the exact same experience as you have with it. And thank you for showing how you determined it. I want share mine on a post so that others may share theirs. It took me awhile to figure out how to tweak it and I had wished more people would share what they do so I could get some suggestions. Thanks so much!