High intensity sport insulin pump

Before people give advice, can you describe what you've tried? It would make it easier for people to assist!

I could give you some rough guidelines, but as Tim says it depends on what you are doing now and your definition of "high intensity sport"

Essentially it's all about balancing insulin with carb intake and your bodies hormonal responses, but with pre-planning needed.

how long ahead of the walking do you reduce basal?

richard077 said:

If planned 1 hour before but if not planned just a few minutes before I began

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All the info I've read with regards to prolonged exercise like hill walking says you should use a TBR 2 hours beforehand, the book Pumping insulin has some great advice on exercising.

I'm interested in whether any of you guys have tried increasing insulin during and after anaerobic exercise, the timing and the doses. I'm procrastinating on starting weights again because I can't really work out what to do.

RuthW said:

I'm interested in whether any of you guys have tried increasing insulin during and after anaerobic exercise, the timing and the doses. I'm procrastinating on starting weights again because I can't really work out what to do.

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I've had a pump for two weeks and have done four weights sessions in that time. I take my pump off for the hour I train. Nothing else. It seems to work out quite nicely as I've seen very little bg spiking as a result of liver dumps and as long as I don't have IOB, which was also an issue on MDI, my bg levels stay fairly constant.

What I do then do is lower my overnight levels to about 80% of my non-training days.

This pattern has worked out okay for me.

Ok that's interesting to know because it's the opposite of what i read, which says to increase for anaerobic exercise. Suppose it really is one of those things you have to work out from experience. Just I would like to do it without the high blood sugar experience that the books say is threatening!

@RuthW I think you need to work to your meter on this really. I've never seen a really massive spike from anaerobic exercise - I've jumped 3-4mmol/l in the worst case and that took me up to about 10, so it was never generating a dangerously high number.
I do seem to react differently to only Novorapid compared to Levemir though. I've noticed that when I'm running in stressed exercise mode I seem to metabolise Novorapid more efficiently than Levemir, so I suspect that with the background level in place, I may well be staving off the spike using my "basal" insulin.

for anaerobic, either weights/yoga or high intensity intervals, I don't make any changes to the pump. I accept the spike, but it's likely to be temporary as the glucose spike due to adrenaline will largely get reabsorbed, so you need to be careful not to over-correct to prevent later hypos.

For planned aerobic exercise I work on a reduction 3 hours ahead, reduce to 30% of norm for running/cycling/rowing, long walks 50%. If I can't do that then I eat to take account of IOB.

EDIT - for the shorter aerobic stuff I also take the pump off, for up to an hour or so.

You need to think about the duration of insulin action, which even with novorapid takes a few hours to die down

I'm going to the UK next week to visit my son, and he has a whole gym's worth of weights, bench, etc, so I think I will do two-week exercise-test-test-test, exercise-test-test-test, exercise-test-test-test, etc trial and try to see a pattern. I have to say that I don't find I do absorb spikes, or at least not fast enough to keep my blood sugar in normal range. That's why I stopped trying anaerobic exercise lately. But I do get night hypos sometimes from long walks (you seriously cannot run or cycle in most parts of Istanbul unless you a already super-fit - it's too hilly - so most walking is as energetic as running, especially where I live). So the spike/bolus/night hypo thing is a concern generally. But in London I should be able to use the weights in the morning so that's a help.

If I can get things under control- see a pattern - then I'll buy weights for myself here.