Calling all people who do intense exercise

Brownie1993

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Type of diabetes
Type 1
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I've had so many hypos the past few days! I have football training on Wednesday and Thursday evening (1 hour - intense), and I do parkrun (5km) on Saturday mornings. I'm usually on 10 units of lantus and I've kept it that way despite all this exercise.

Anyway since Friday, despite having reduced my bolus significantly, I've had hypos after every time I've injected fast acting. Even just now, I had a takeout indian stacked with carbs (white rice, poppadoms, lamb tikka massala), injected only 4 units of bolus (my ratio is usually 1:12) and now I'm sitting on 2.6...

So is it my basal that's the problem do you think? Or my bolus? Although my hypos have been post meal, I don't see how it's my bolus that's incorrect as I've been taking so little units considering the amount of carbs I've been eating.
 

noblehead

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Do some basal testing to see if your bg drops in the absence of food and bolus doses, if it doesn't drop causing hypo's then you need to look at your insulin-to-carb ratio's.
 

Brownie1993

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That probably is the best way to find out whether it's my bolus or basal that's causing the hypos. Thing is, the last thing I want to be doing after intense exercise is depriving myself of food...
 

donnellysdogs

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Have some walnuts or nuts (not peanuts)
 

Diamattic

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I would think its a problem with your Basal. Typically when i do intense workouts i lower my basal on my pump by at least 50-60% 1.5 hours in advance of my workout, AND eat about 30-40g of carbs, and still at the end of the 2 hours go home with a reading in the 4s.

When i was on injections I would have to eat A LOT about 1 hours before the workout to keep my levels up, and usually i would have to eat some type of glucose during the exercises like Gatorade of energy bars to keep it up.

The workouts will affect your BS for a few hours post as well, so you will have to really watch them afterwards.

I did find that eating peanut butter pre-workout, about 2 hours before really helped. But ONLY the Kraft PB stuff that was loaded with sugar, that way the added sugar would raise my levels, but the peanuts would slow it to a rate that would basically just bump me up 2mmol/l and keep them there for a couple hours.

Other nuts help as well as they tend to have carbs in them, like cashews and walnuts.
 

ElyDave

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2,087
Type of diabetes
Type 1
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Two things going on here, as others have said there may be a basal adjustment needed, so do the basal testing on a non-exercise day.

Second, you really need to adjust bolus before exercise as well as post exercise. If you are exercising within 2 hours of a meal, you may need a significant reduction (experimentation), and remember that there will be active bolus insulin up to 5 hours after injecting.

Post exercise you remain more insulin sensitive for a while (up to 24 hours) and your body is trying to replenish glycogen stores into muscles and liver, so you can have those post exercise hypos. You may need to reduce post exercise bolus as well. After a long run or ride I may reduce bolus by up to 50%, but that's through my own experience.

Bottom line, experiment on yourself.
 
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Bebo321

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I do not have diabetes
As @ElyDave says, do your basal testing on a day off from exercise and ideally a couple of days after your last bout of exercise (unless you're training most days)
Sounds like you can afford to reduce your bolus with food further after exercise more too (though if you've reduced your basal this may not be necessary).
Have a watch of the TeamBG movie below to get an understanding of the basics and you might like to consider joining the Sporty Diabetics Type 1s FB group where there are loads of experienced Sporty T1s across all sports. :)
www.teambloodglucose.com