Carbs during exercise

[Straw362]

Hi everyone

Has anyone got any advice that will help my 9 year daughter during exercise. She was diagnosed 7 months ago with type 1 , but we are not stopping do anything
She has been selected to play netball for the county at her age group but training in 2 hours long . Normal training is a hour & we control it ok with jelly babies & carb straight after , But as her sessions will be 2 hours can anyone recommend any carbs she can have mid way through to keep her bloods up & still be able to play / train. Any advice would be great

 

[dancer]

What about a banana? Everyone is different but if I'm worried about the possibility of going low before dancing, I take a medium banana. It works for me but I don't know about a 9 year-old.

 

[bmtest]

It's all down to experimenting, 2 hours is not that long and if the training is at the same time you have a fixed element. First thing is to test before commencing as close as possible to start time but allowing enough time to compensate with food or drink.

For me and there are better method but I used the following in various sports, if I had a low blood sugare before starting I used something like lucozade sport and a full Mar Bar sometime half. This never failed me and sustained me through 2 hour intense Karate and in later years 2 hours boxing classes.

Dont be embarassed to take advantage of any quick break by leaving the lucozade bottle at side, sew in internal pockets for jelly babies etc. I personally always loaded more carbs than necessary if I was in doubt hence I never collapsed, the difficulty is keeping everything as near to normal without spelling out you are diabetic so be prepared test quickly have the food ready and you will get used to eating and training also.

Also condisder lowering the dose on the training day also the tests before and after will tell you this especially if you are having to load in too many carbs.

 

[Circuspony]

Cereal bars and minimal novorapid in my system work for me.

 

[Deleted Account]

I probably a little late in my response - sorry.

Congratulations to your daughter @Straw362

I assume she is managing her diabetes with injections.
If she gets serious at netball (or any other sport), it may be useful to ask about using a pump instead. When injecting, the basal long term insulin assumes your insulin requirements are pretty stable all day every day. However, the reason you are concerned about your daughters BH when exercising is our bodies become more efficient at using insulin when we exercise. Therefore, we need less basal insulin at that time. The way a pump works, you can alter the basal levels at 30 minute intervals so you can ensure your daughter has less basal insulin when she is exercising.
Whilst different CCGs vary about how they assess people for pumps, I was lucky to be assessed as needing one because I exercise a lot.

In the meantime (if your daughter is injecting), have you thought about trying to maintain a low carb intake during the training. If she is able to have a water bottle, she could drink weak fruit squash to maintain her BG during exercise. By using fruit squash rather than premixed drinks, you can adjust the amount of carbs to suit her needs by the amount of squash concentrate you use.

Before I started pumping, this is the approach I used to take at the gym as I found carb loading beforehand would push my BG beyond the ideal levels for exercise and waiting until afterwards would sometimes be too late.

I also recommend taking a look at runsweet.co.uk. This is a website dedicated to exercising with type 1 diabetes so has some great tips.

Looking at people with diabetes doing sport at elite levels (the NovoRapid cycling team doing the Tour de France, Harry Slade playing Rugby Union, some footballers from the past, Steve Redgrave, ...) proves diabetes should not stop us keeping fit.

 

[Straw362]

Hi Helensaramay

Thanks for taking time to reply, that’s some great advice , we will certainly try the fruit squash & will look at the website . My daughter is doing great with netball & her bloods