Hi Hobo,

Gretchen Becker, a resident expert here, wrote about her travels domestically. While she did not travel out of the country like you are planning to do, she does have some tips and experience that you might find helpful. You can read the article titled "Traveling with Diabetes" here.

Mary Kate Cary has also offered some tips for traveling here in her article called "Spring Break: Tips for Traveling with Diabetes". Among other tips, Mary Kate Cary advises, "Bring enough snacks to survive a long layover or a missed flight - or more likely, a mad dash between planes with no time to eat a full meal. With fewer and fewer airlines serving food on board, don't count on getting something to eat on the plane. Have plenty of food with you that doesn't need refrigeration."

Hope this helps!! Enjoy your trip to London and let us know how you are doing and most of all, let us know how the trip went!

Vicki M

Adjusting insulin doses when traveling across time zones can be tricky. How to do it depends on several factors: what insulin you are using, when meals will be eaten, whether you can get any exercise during the flight, and even whether you're flying west to east, or east to west.

For people who are on an insulin pump, or using mealtime boluses of insulin and a daily basal shot of Lantus, it's really pretty easy. Just stay on the basal dose at the same time as you would take it at your home time zone, and take your mealtime boluses whenever you eat.

On the other hand, for folks who are using a premix like 70/30 twice daily, or a single bedtime shot of NPH, or other programs, it's impossible for me to generalize an answer: speak to your diabetes nurse educator or diabetes doc to work out something that will work for you.

And a final hint for everyone taking insulin and traveling: be sure to check zillions of blood sugars to see how things are going -- due to changes in your meal times, exercise pattern, and sleep cycles, things will inevitably get a little screwy, and checking your blood sugar and knowing how to make adjustments is critical.

Hope this helps!