How does intense exercise affect BG?

CrumblingWall said:

Been reading this: https://medium.com/@glucosegoddess/...en-you-exercise-are-good-for-you-5e9bcaa41623

Is it normal that she spikes to 10mmol/l doing intense exercise? To be fair, I noticed me spiking a bit higher after intense bike ride, while my BG drops when walking.

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Yes it's normal. Your brain tells your liver that the body needs energy and the liver kindly obliges by dumping a large quantity of glucose into your system.

Great if you're non diabetic and can use it effectively, not so great if you're diabetic and it hangs around in your system.

Moderate exercise is much better than intense exercise for diabetics. Weight training or Resistance exercise is also good since it builds muscle which can store excess glucose.

I tend to do 30 to 60 minutes cycling at a moderate intensity just after taking my 2 hour after dinner blood glucose reading. I find that my BG has usually dropped by around 1.5 to 2 mmol/l by the time I retest shortly after the ride.

Interestingly, the duration of the ride - 30, 45 or 60 minutes - seems to have little impact on the scale of the BG decrease. I'd like to ride for longer to see if the BG drops further, but my rear can't cope with more than 60 minutes on a static trainer!

I've also noticed that (for reasons I don't understand) my BG has been slightly higher this week than last week , by about 1 mmol/l, and that I also seem to be performing better on the bike this week than last, i.e. producing more watts for same heart rate. I still can't work out whether there's a correlation there between BG levels and performance, or whether other factors, such as the lower ambient temperatures, are responsible for the improved performance. I'd be interested to know whether anyone has any thoughts on this or has explored it at all.