@deborabaratto I don't have a carby snack before exercise, and if I'm running or cycling I drop my basal to between 20% and 50% of my normal rate, until the moment I stop, which is when I raise my basal rate to between 130% and 150% of my normal rate, for 1 to 3 hours, depending on how hard and how long I've been exercising.
Before swimming (which I do before breakfast, and for which I disconnect) I have 0.5u. After swimming I have my breakfast insulin as soon as I reconnect the pump, plus I raise my basal to 130% for 90 minutes. 20 minutes later I sit down to a cup of tea and several boiled eggs for breakfast, with a blood sugar of between 5 and 6mmol/l. On a good day, that is. And then I can be confident of being between 5.5 and 6.5 pretty much until lunchtime.
If I don't use a raised temporary basal rate after exercise I find I can be above 11mmol/l for hours. I just get 'stuck' there.
Now I'm exercising a lot more (every afternoon at the moment trying to burn off excess energy) I find my blood sugar drops ever more suddenly around 6 hours later.
If I get back from the gym at, say, 5pm, I make sure I have just half of my normal bolus insulin with my evening meal, otherwise I drop very quickly in the late evening and overnight.
My own general pattern is a four-stage process, it seems:-
- getting higher after starting exercise
- dropping during exercise
- higher after exercise for up to several hours
- getting much lower much later
But thanks to making ongoing adjustments to my pump and a lot of testing and flash monitoring I
mostly manage to stay in a straight line. Since starting my relatively-new exercise habit I have treated it as a research project - it's an ongoing 'study', if you like, and I'm only just getting afternoon exercise sessions sorted, but it's fascinating.
Oh, and frustrating....
If I didn't adjust my pump in this way, my sugar level would be in range, then high, then low, then I'd have glucose, then I'd have a post-exercise post-carb hyper, then I'd be low much later. The process described above works pretty well for me.