Type 2 Exercise

Not a T2 so take my comments with a large piece of salt (sugar, whatever).

As a T1 exercise can send my blood sugar down (generally cardio) or up (weights or if I start with a high blood sugar). But whichever, going to the gym reduces my long term insulin resistance (have a T2 family history and am slightly overweight) so it works for me. (I just have to do multiple blood tests while I'm exercising so I don't go too low or high during the session.)

My insulin usage has gone down by 20% since upping my sessions to twice a week....

So my advice would be, do the exercise, the improvement will be long term even if weird stress related highs happen short term. If you're not on hypo inducing meds you don't need to worry about the short term impact, your body will thank you in the medium/long term.

Been T1 and naturally lazy for 49 years, best thing for my health I ever did was take more strenuous exercise when I hit 50.

And enjoy those exercise induced endorphins

Personally I wouldn't worry about dawn phenomenon or the effects of exercise. DP is a result of insulin resistance and will reduce in time if your average glucose is low. Exercise is a good thing for your health in general, if it raises your BG temporarily then that is your liver doing what it is supposed to. Use your meter to decide the effect of various meals and judge your progress longer term with Hba1c. If you want a daily rough check on your BG level then I would test before your evening meal.

Cana said:

But then I’m risking dawn phenomenon.
So surely the idea is to prevent that

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Why is it a risk? And why would you want to prevent it?
The Dawn phenomenon can happen at any time and it's not really a phenomenon. It's just your liver doing one of the jobs it's supposed to do. The glucose it releases is not new, it's already inside of you and it's being moved from storage where you can't see it, to your blood where you can see it and more importantly use it. I would have thought that one of the main benefits of exercise for us is to reduce the amount of glucose in our bodies and improve insulin resistance

Cana said:

But then I’m risking dawn phenomenon.
So surely the idea is to prevent that

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I wouldn't worry too much about that. It's better off in the blood where it can be burned off, rather than causing toxicity elsewhere. A bit of mild DP may seem like a bad thing, but in the context of recovering from diabetes you should view it as your body purging itself of glucose.

EDIT: apologies I see @catinahat has already covered this.

Diet is for health and exercise is for fitness (and a boost to health). Exercise will raise your blood sugars in general. If this bothers you then you can do lower intensity workouts that stay in the fat burning zone. Personally I don't care about the rise as after a while most find that blood sugars go to at least where they were to start with.

I can't prove this next statement, but my research suggests that higher intensity lends itself in some to either higher fbg and or HbA1c's (but not in the diabetic zone, but not as good as diet and mild exercise). I follow sports persons who don't have diabetes, and it is not unusual for them to run higher numbers, usually with really low fasting insulin. I note that those on this site who have the lowest HbA1c's tend to lean more towards diet and not as intense exercise.

Mbaker said:

I can't prove this next statement, but my research suggests that higher intensity lends itself in some to either higher fbg and or HbA1c's (but not in the diabetic zone, but not as good as diet and mild exercise). I follow sports persons who don't have diabetes, and it is not unusual for them to run higher numbers, usually with really low fasting insulin. I note that those on this site who have the lowest HbA1c's tend to lean more towards diet and not as intense exercise.

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I think HbA1c is an overrated metric anyway. It's an estimation of average glucose but is affected by too many variables to be a true measure. Coincidentally it was also briefly discussed in a podcast I've been listening to today, and was described as an "indirect measurement". If you want to know glucose then test glucose, was the message.

helensaramay said:

This is far from my experience as someone who exercise a lot and does many different types of exercise.
The immediate impact of exercise on BG depends on a number of things including type of exercise and your fitness level at that type of exercise.
In general, cardio will reduce BG. However, as any stress is likely to increase BG, if you are doing cardio in a stressful environment (e.g. cycling uphill on a wet, windy day) or a type of exercise you are not used to, the exercise is likely to temporarily increase your BG. Over time, as you get fitter (at this type of exercise), the BG rise will be reduced and you are more likely to see a lowering of BG.
Resistance training and interval training (e.g. HIIT) usually temporarily raises BG.

As I understand it, all types of exercise will improve the effectiveness of our bodies to use insulin. This means over a longer period (up to 48 hours after exercise), our BG is very very likely to fall.

This website has some great pages about exercise and their effect: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/Diabetes-and-fitness.html

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To be fair, @Mbaker did mention the fat burning zone in the opening paragraph. In other words if you switch over into the glycolytic pathway - intensive exercise - then the liver will begin secreting more glucose.

helensaramay said:

And in my experience, when the liver secrets more glucose, the "liver glucose supplies" are reduce which is what leads to lower BG over the next 24 to 48 hours.

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Absolutely, but you appeared to be disagreeing with the quote that you posted. I'm just saying that it was explained in the next sentence (that wasn't included in the quote).

Cana said:

I’m exercising in the morning. Don’t like eating before.
Don’t really have time to do a breakfast before and after
Dr pushing fir exercise and I want to monitor sugars so really just want to know how king after should you rest etc.
Is it like food

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Hi Cana. Its good that you like exercising and are getting back into it.
I am type 1 but I am a trainer so here's my 2p's worth:
1) snacking is unnecessary for a type 2. Eat when you are hungry afterwards with whatever you would normally do to 'break fast' ! Hopefully something low carb or wait until lunch?
2) Not sure what dvds you are doing but if they are aerobic then they are likely to use up stored glucose in your muscles (glycogen) with the effect that your body then uses glucose from your food or converts body fat or protein to re fill those muscles depending on how hard and how long you've worked!
3) Longer term, building more muscle may be really useful though in order for your metabolism to work well and efficiently burn up whatever glucose you are eating (bread, pasta, potatoes as well as sugars) so if you did have some dumb bells or ketle bells these could be useful.
4) Doing weights can temporarily spike bgs but you should not worry about this because for the reasons above you will become more insulin sensitive and do not worry about DP as this is a normal thing whereas type 2 represents an overall problem with controlling blood glucose levels during the day.
5) Test on waking and just after exercise bearing in mind the above points i.e. an hour of Davina or whoever will take your sugars down but if you do some weights the spike may only be temporary and the muscle gain will help.
Hope you enjoy your new regime!

Jim Lahey said:

I think HbA1c is an overrated metric anyway. It's an estimation of average glucose but is affected by too many variables to be a true measure. Coincidentally it was also briefly discussed in a podcast I've been listening to today, and was described as an "indirect measurement". If you want to know glucose then test glucose, was the message.

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Which podcast btw? Agree that HBA1c is a mean average of about 300,000 blood tests over 12 weeks which tells you a useful average which although its a proxy does seem to correlate with real bgs. For those of us with flash monitoring the greater number of blood sugars 'in range' is an even better metric. For those who want to track the here and now in response to food/stress/exercise etc. a BG makes sense. But if you want to see an indicator of your level of insulin resistance surely the HBA1c is a useful tool?

helensaramay said:

This is far from my experience as someone who exercise a lot and does many different types of exercise.
The immediate impact of exercise on BG depends on a number of things including type of exercise and your fitness level at that type of exercise.
In general, cardio will reduce BG. However, as any stress is likely to increase BG, if you are doing cardio in a stressful environment (e.g. cycling uphill on a wet, windy day) or a type of exercise you are not used to, the exercise is likely to temporarily increase your BG. Over time, as you get fitter (at this type of exercise), the BG rise will be reduced and you are more likely to see a lowering of BG.
Resistance training and interval training (e.g. HIIT) usually temporarily raises BG.

As I understand it, all types of exercise will improve the effectiveness of our bodies to use insulin. This means over a longer period (up to 48 hours after exercise), our BG is very very likely to fall.

This website has some great pages about exercise and their effect: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/Diabetes-and-fitness.html

Click to expand...

Had to generalise based on the Type 2's with A1c's under 35 ish and high performing fitness "freaks" like Shawn Baker.

My experience is on both high intensity cardio or resistance training a rise of around 0.5 - 0.7, then a fall after around 45 mins to an hour.

Hard intensity cardio (5 mile under 12 minute mile walking), best fbg 3.8 (850 - 1000 fitbit calories).

Hard heavy no prisoners weights (deadlifts, squat, bench press, leg press, pull downs etc). 1000 calories on the fitbit 3.3 fbg.

If time pressed I need only do 15 - 20 deep squats @ 145 kg, with my home equipment to guarantee fbg of 4.4 or lower.

I am going to keep the weight training, still experimenting what type of cardio, so now on heavy battle ropes.

lovinglife said:

Sorry I'm a bit confused - are you exercising in the morning without eating since the night before? If that's the case and you're worried about dawn phenomenon why not just have a breakfast of bacon and eggs, not a snack but a almost no carb meal shouldn't affect your BG

If you mean a liver dump that can happen any time of day just a square of cheese after exercising should halt this

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This doesn't work for everyone.
I have DP which extends to noon or later at times.

I start each day with coffee, cream and butter so minimal carbs.
Despite this my BG still climbs.

If I exercise, especially multiple hours on a bicycle, the BG can go even higher and faster.

I'm still trying to explain this, but I suspect that when I start to exercise my liver releases glucose (as expected).
However when I am keto adapted I am not burning glucose, but burning ketones, so the glucose tends to hang around instead of being burned off.
I suspect that there is some sort of abnormal glucagon response going on which is encouraging the release of glucose from the liver but inhibiting the release of insulin from the pancreas.

After noon the insulin seems to kick in and my BG then comes back down again more or less as one would expect.

I must say that I'm not convinced that a square of cheese would halt a liver dump in my case.

As a general point I think that the glucose/insulin response is different when you are fully keto adapted and not using glucose as your primary fuel source.

NicoleC1971 said:

Which podcast btw? Agree that HBA1c is a mean average of about 300,000 blood tests over 12 weeks which tells you a useful average which although its a proxy does seem to correlate with real bgs. For those of us with flash monitoring the greater number of blood sugars 'in range' is an even better metric. For those who want to track the here and now in response to food/stress/exercise etc. a BG makes sense. But if you want to see an indicator of your level of insulin resistance surely the HBA1c is a useful tool?

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It was Paul Saladino's latest podcast.

Yeah don't get me wrong HbA1c is useful. I just personally think it is overrated if used as the sole indicator of metabolic health. It largely reflects average glucose in the majority, but in some individuals it can be way off. But hey I'm a bit weird like that - for T2 I even think that blood glucose is overrated. All-body glucose (the overflow hypothesis) and circulating insulin (not too much) is what I'm interested in. Blood glucose is just the symptom.

But we're at risk of going way off topic now! I don't know if you follow Saladino but the latest podcast mentioned above is primarily about the reversal of early diagnosis T1. I linked to it earlier today in the Carnivore Corner thread if you're interested;

https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/carnivore-corner.164920/page-21#post-2136099

Jim Lahey said:

It was Paul Saladino's latest podcast.

Yeah don't get me wrong HbA1c is useful. I just personally think it is overrated if used as the sole indicator of metabolic health. It largely reflects average glucose in the majority, but in some individuals it can be way off. But hey I'm a bit weird like that - for T2 I even think that blood glucose is overrated. All-body glucose (the overflow hypothesis) and circulating insulin is what I'm interested in. Blood glucose is just the symptom.

But we're at risk of going way off topic now! I don't know if you follow Saladino but the latest podcast mentioned above is primarily about the reversal of early diagnosis T1. I linked to it earlier today in the Carnivore Corner thread if you're interested.

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Thanks for the podcast tip. I will load him up as I am certainly interested in beta cell preservation lest any of my kids get the type 1 curse!
I too wish that other tests could be used as to a doctor treating type 2 blood sugar is the nail that they are always trying to hammer/