Perfect sugars before exercise, horrible after?

[TenTen99]

Hello,

This is my first post, even though I joined in 2016.

This morning, my sugar levels were 4.1 mmol/L. Instead of getting breakfast in first, like I usually do, I decided to weight training in the garden during this quarantine. I used some dumbbells for about 45 mins. Afterwards, I had about 200ml of orange juice, then headed to the shower. This was to make sure I didn't go into a hypo in the shower, what with my sugers being 4.1 few hours ago.

To my surprise, my sugars are now 14.1 mmol/L.

Can anyone make sense of this? (I should add I am on novorapid and lantus insulin)

Thanks,

 

[Wayward Blood]

This is, unfortunately, an extremely common thing, often referred to as the 'Dawn Phenomenon'. For a lot of us, our blood sugars rise for a while after we wake. My breakfast is about half the size of my lunch. But I need 4.5 units of fast acting for breakfast as opposed to 2.5 units of fast acting for lunch. Exercise can exacerbate things even further first thing for some. If you're going to make this a regular occurrence, test as regularly as you can and see if a pattern emerges. You may need to take some insulin to stop the spike. Careful not to go the other way though! Small adjustments are usually the best option.

 

[TenTen99]

Thanks, Wayward. Don’t think I’ll do that again. It was a one off. I’ll stick to having breakfast first, then working out.

 

[NicoleC1971]

Hello,

This is my first post, even though I joined in 2016.

This morning, my sugar levels were 4.1 mmol/L. Instead of getting breakfast in first, like I usually do, I decided to weight training in the garden during this quarantine. I used some dumbbells for about 45 mins. Afterwards, I had about 200ml of orange juice, then headed to the shower. This was to make sure I didn't go into a hypo in the shower, what with my sugers being 4.1 few hours ago.

To my surprise, my sugars are now 14.1 mmol/L.

Can anyone make sense of this? (I should add I am on novorapid and lantus insulin)

Thanks,

This is NOT the dawn phenomenom as you were perfect before. It is a reaction to weight training and the sugar you took before your shower (oj).
Weights or HIIT are a physiological stressor therefore your body/liver produces emergency supplies. I don't think the spike would be prolonged and doing this exercise is a great way to remain or become more insulin sensitive (type 1s need to worry about insulin resistance too).
If your blood sugar hasn't come down again after a normal breakfast and bolus then add a walk/jog to the routine as this low intensity exercise will take your sugars down again.
Note that you might notice a drop later on as your muscles take up extra glucose to replenish themselves.
This is why exercise whilst a great thing is a little more complicated for type 1s or anyone else on insulin but hope you'll keep testing and working out this stuff.

 

[TenTen99]

This is NOT the dawn phenomenom as you were perfect before. It is a reaction to weight training and the sugar you took before your shower (oj).
Weights or HIIT are a physiological stressor therefore your body/liver produces emergency supplies. I don't think the spike would be prolonged and doing this exercise is a great way to remain or become more insulin sensitive (type 1s need to worry about insulin resistance too).
If your blood sugar hasn't come down again after a normal breakfast and bolus then add a walk/jog to the routine as this low intensity exercise will take your sugars down again.
Note that you might notice a drop later on as your muscles take up extra glucose to replenish themselves.
This is why exercise whilst a great thing is a little more complicated for type 1s or anyone else on insulin but hope you'll keep testing and working out this stuff.

That actually makes a lot more sense. I once brought up ”dawn phenomenom” to my doctor when I showed him my morning highs after good night time sugars. He said I needed to increase Lantus, which did the trick.

in this case, the physical exercise demanded sugar (energy), because I didn’t eat it took it from the liver/body and because I didn’t have insulin, it couldn’t get into my muscles and stayed in the Blood?

Lesson learnt. Never exercising before breakfast

My sugars are now 7.3mmlo/L, happy it’s back to normal

 

[JMK1954]

I totally agree that if your BS was 4.1 mml, that was not the time for any sort of vigorous exercise ! Remember that there can be a 15% error on the meter, so your real BS may have been lower than the 4.1 mml your meter showed.

 

[TenTen99]

I totally agree that if your BS was 4.1 mml, that was not the time for any sort of vigorous exercise ! Remember that there can be a 15% error on the meter, so your real BS may have been lower than the 4.1 mml your meter showed.

that also makes sense. If i fell below 4 during exercise, my livers response would be to pump sugar to counteract. I will take this info going forward as well, not to exercise when blood levels are near hypo mode.

(you'd think i'd know to eat something before weight training if my sugar is 4.1, but in this case i had never worked out before breakfast. didn't know how to go about it, but will now!)

 

[Ovi]

This is a normal reaction. Probably a combination of dawn phenomenon weight training and the orange juice(wich made things a lot worse). Even without the juice your bg would've went up. I train in the morning as well(on an empty stomach) and sometimes I have to take 2u of novorapid to keep my bg in range. My advice is check your bg right after you wake up before you start training and during your training as well as after you finish your workout and work from there.

 

[KK123]

Well I don't think it's anything to do with dawn phenomenon. I thought that was your body getting ready to get itself up for the day and rising to a certain level to do that. This scenario (starting off at 4 on waking) looks like a response to very vigorous exercise which is exactly what my body does when I run very fast for a longish period....at ANY time of the day. I sometimes run first thing (I don't usually eat until around 5pm most days) but I either tend to adjust my basal the night before (a nuisance) or I take on around 20 carbs before or during the exercise. x

 

[NicoleC1971]

That actually makes a lot more sense. I once brought up ”dawn phenomenom” to my doctor when I showed him my morning highs after good night time sugars. He said I needed to increase Lantus, which did the trick.

in this case, the physical exercise demanded sugar (energy), because I didn’t eat it took it from the liver/body and because I didn’t have insulin, it couldn’t get into my muscles and stayed in the Blood?

Lesson learnt. Never exercising before breakfast
I do exercise fasted and know that I can take a little extra bolus with meal and remember that your blood sugar rises in the blood then when your insulin is used it will be taken up my the muscle as it replenishes supplies OR it remains high and you pee it out and feel rubbish.
I suppose keeping up whateer you do regualry in the forms of meals/insuln is working well for you so hopefully the exercise can be built in too and you body will get used to it!
My sugars are now 7.3mmlo/L, happy it’s back to normal

 

[Bishop]

Hello
I think there is a combination of morning insulin resistance and anaerobic exercising. I am not a morning guy and in a few occasions, I decided to give it a go and see how I would feel. The result was bad. In the top of mew feeling awful my blood sugar went higher. This led me to take a lot of insulin to counter the pick which was followed of course, by a late drop because of the exercising.
For some people, a morning workout is great but not for me.
Anaerobic exercising is also something really tricky, I am still earning how to deal with it every day. I am BJJ practitioner and this is something I have to deal with very often.
I have a new youtube channel where I share my learnings and experiences. This is a video about type 1 and running,
maybe you will find it useful.

Thanks

 

[NicoleC1971]

I totally agree that if your BS was 4.1 mml, that was not the time for any sort of vigorous exercise ! Remember that there can be a 15% error on the meter, so your real BS may have been lower than the 4.1 mml your meter showed.

Vigorous would always beat gentle exercise for me! If it was 4.1 and I did Hight intensity or weights it could go to 12 by itself but I un plug my pump if taking the dog out for an hour.
Bottom line is that we are all different and I would never tell myself or any other type 1 not to do exercise for fear of hypo/hyper but obviously you go prepared and know how your own body reacts.

 

[Jon47]

sorry to kind of hijack the post but I have similar results, as I am stuck at home due to covid-19 I have been jogging/walking around the house to get some exercise and my BG is all over the place. take yesterday for instance in the morning is was around 14 then got it down to around 8 before evening meal then it went to around 12 couple hours later. Did some light walking/jogging on spot for a little while then about 9pm I checked again before I had a slice of toast and it was 4.1, I checked again 1 and half hours later and it was 4.4. I didn't eat anything else after this (I would have if I felt it dropped more). Just before I went to bed around 2:30am I checked again and this time bg was showing 13.2 and when I woke up this morning I checked and it was 19.1. I am on Novomix 30 twice a day as when I was on Novomix morning, Novorapid evening meal time then Levemir before bed results were even worse and that was with trying lots of different dose for many years. Results have never been as good as they were when I was on Mixtard 30 (I think it was that) before it got discontinued. I am type 1 and have been for 35 years. I have even talked with DSN's before going back to twice a day injections, filling in a food diary/bg readings for a couple of weeks so they could see if there was a pattern, even they couldn't understand the spikes, the food I was having is more or less the same each week and the portions were fine even though the amount of insulin I was taking in theory would be way more than enough to cover what I was eating. Just to add I asked to change from not taking Novorapid and Levemir due to the fact levels seemed worse and Levemir seemed to cause injection site atrophy, my left arm has a very visible dip and when I started to use me legs I used left leg just for the Levemir and that started to go the same way. My last Hba1c was 90, ever since I had to change insulin form the Mixtard it has been high 70's and above the graph just looks like a straight line across before this it was mid 50's or below

 

[KK123]

sorry to kind of hijack the post but I have similar results, as I am stuck at home due to covid-19 I have been jogging/walking around the house to get some exercise and my BG is all over the place. take yesterday for instance in the morning is was around 14 then got it down to around 8 before evening meal then it went to around 12 couple hours later. Did some light walking/jogging on spot for a little while then about 9pm I checked again before I had a slice of toast and it was 4.1, I checked again 1 and half hours later and it was 4.4. I didn't eat anything else after this (I would have if I felt it dropped more). Just before I went to bed around 2:30am I checked again and this time bg was showing 13.2 and when I woke up this morning I checked and it was 19.1. I am on Novomix 30 twice a day as when I was on Novomix morning, Novorapid evening meal time then Levemir before bed results were even worse and that was with trying lots of different dose for many years. Results have never been as good as they were when I was on Mixtard 30 (I think it was that) before it got discontinued. I am type 1 and have been for 35 years. I have even talked with DSN's before going back to twice a day injections, filling in a food diary/bg readings for a couple of weeks so they could see if there was a pattern, even they couldn't understand the spikes, the food I was having is more or less the same each week and the portions were fine even though the amount of insulin I was taking in theory would be way more than enough to cover what I was eating

Hi Jon, I was recently on a course where someone posed a similar problem with levels that were spiking for no apparent reason. Now, you would think that using MORE insulin than you thought you would need would make those levels drop but they said it does not work quite like that in every circumstance. If you take 'way more than enough' to cover your meal, what can happen is that your body thinks your levels are going too low or low too quickly so drops 'sugar' into the system, meaning you start off high, you overdo the insulin for the meal, it then starts to go low and your body reacts by going into panic mode, releases its own stores of glucose and wham, up it goes. I do not know if this is your issue of course and I am certainly no expert but that particular point stood out to me as I (like many I suspect) simply thought 'the more insulin you take the lower you will go' which is true but has a downside if you go beyond the exact amount that you need. Many of the other type 1s went off and put that concept to the test and it did help most of them a lot of the time so there must be something in it. x

 

[JMK1954]

Yes, I found that out for myself after a couple of years of seeing a lunatic doctor at my hospital clinic. She screamed at me, "You can't do that !" when I told her that I had reduced my basal by two units. That brought my Hba1c back to sensible levels after previously following her instructions with the result that I was hypo every time I walked 100 yds and then always spiked unreasonably high afterwards.The see-saw in levels that resulted made me feel dreadful. In the end, I complained to the PALS service and asked not to see her again.

As all our insulin requirements are different, HCPs have to start with an educated guesstimate as to what any individual really requires. It could well be that in your case, you need less insulin than was supposed. In order to sort this out, you are going to need to do lots of testing - before and after exercise, as well as before and after meals. Make any changes gradually and always have your hypo treatment within 'grabbable' distance. I have been in a similar situation and there is no magic answer. Record everything and once you know the pattern, you can consider what needs to change.

 

[EddieA12]

Hi. Just a short note to recommend a book called ‘diabetic muscle and fitness’ the explains everything about weight training and exercise with regards to being diabetic. I highly recommend it (and I’m not on commission!)

 

[bmtest]

A lot of good advice already without detailed analysis of previous day its difficult.

So take it as fact for now it happened and there is only so much you can do with dumbells in 45mins no matter what you do with them.

If it keeps happening look into Dawn Phenonminnominom and also Somogyi effect for completeness

During early hours your body starte churning out stored Glucose ready for waking and also releases hormones to reduce insulin sensitivity. This is why I say 45 mins of Dumbells is not much of counter all else being equal.

if you said you walked at pace with 20kg dumbells in each hand up steep hill for 45 mins then drank your orange and tested 14 i would be surprised.

 

[Bishop]

Here is another video that explains the differences between aerobic and anaerobic exercises for a type 1 diabetic and the impact it has on its own blood sugars.

 

[Ray B]

Hello,

This is my first post, even though I joined in 2016.

This morning, my sugar levels were 4.1 mmol/L. Instead of getting breakfast in first, like I usually do, I decided to weight training in the garden during this quarantine. I used some dumbbells for about 45 mins. Afterwards, I had about 200ml of orange juice, then headed to the shower. This was to make sure I didn't go into a hypo in the shower, what with my sugers being 4.1 few hours ago.

To my surprise, my sugars are now 14.1 mmol/L.

Can anyone make sense of this? (I should add I am on novorapid and lantus insulin)

Thanks,

In my experience natural orange juice is very high in carbs, low carb dilute is better, so I am not surprised at peak in blood glucose levels
You learn through experience.
Ray B