Type 1.5 Diabetes and exercise

[Chellez]

I am insulin dependent and have signed up to do a 3hr zumbathon for charity. I exercise regularly and my blood sugars are well controlled. My question is, to prevent low blood sugar during the event, do I reduce my background insulin (levemir) for the day? Or my novorapid? I normally only take half my novorapid for my preworkout meal but due to the length of exercise I'm unsure what to do for the best. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Juicyj]

Hi @Chellez

Have a look at runsweet.co.uk for tips on exercise and insulin.

If this was me then I'd want my bg levels to be running slightly higher at 8-12mmol/l with no active fast acting insulin on board, I wouldn't adjust my basal, and would do checks every 30 mins to see what's going on, exercise affects all of us differently so some may run higher due to the release of adrenaline, my focus would be to avoid the lows so if running slightly higher then so be it and adjust insulin afterwards, great challenege btw let us know how it goes ?

 

[EllieM]

and would do checks every 30 mins to see what's going on

This, in my experience of workouts (1 hour interval training) you're likely to get so exhausted that you can't tell the difference between
1) hypo
2) hyper because of exercise stress
3) general exhaustion.

I just test whenever I feel too awful, the 1 minute break is a bonus .

My blood sugar also invariably goes down when I go for long works (over 1 hour), so I suspect that 3 hours of cardio may well do strange things. (During 10 minute sessions of interval training I test between each session and if I have humalog on board can find my blood sugar going down by 2mmol/L each round...)

Keep your meter and your glucose close. Good luck and have fun .

 

[Deleted Account]

I would not adjust my basal before exercise.
I find a BG above 8 would make exercise difficult ... and probably raise my BG higher.
When I was first diagnosed, I was advised not to exercise if my BG was higher than 9. But we are all different.
Therefore, I go for a BG around 6 or 7 and take carbs on board slowly during the workout. I do this by drinking weak fruit squash instead of water. You can drink isotonic type drinks but you have no choice of strength and they cost more. So I carry around one of those mini “Squash’d” things that I can squirt into my water bottle.
As others have said test as often as you can and keep plenty of hypo treatment close to hand.
Your BG may continue to drop for the next 24 to 48 hours. Therefore, I would be tempted to reduce my basal insulin by about 20% for the next day... and test more than usual.

Enjoy your Zumbathon and I hope you raise lots of money.