Increase in glucose level after exercise

For me it all depends on the type of exercise, a gentle easy walk will lower my levels. Anything more demanding and my liver will help out with a little shot of glucose from it stores.

Don’t be disheartened. Check for the rest of the day. It’s often lower the rest of the day giving an overall benefit.

A short rise is common for a while after exertion. The body gives you a glucose boost to provide energy. But having done so it’s draining excess stores out of the liver which is good. Then there’s the fact muscles recovering after exercise continue to draw glucose out of the blood and bigger better muscles from exercise work at that job all day everyday.

Yes I see this every time I exercise (prediabetic, at least as measured by HBA1C; by other measures dunno). It's 'normal' for this to happen, even to 'normal' people, based on the adrenaline/glucagon response, but it happens to a greater extent (it seems) to people further along the IGT spectrum. I am guessing because the glucagon still functions but the insulin control of that resulting dump of hepatic glucose doesn't work as well.

I can find pretty much nothing about this effect anywhere in the diabetes forums or NHS guidance, so I have been chatting to the Super Sapiens people. These guys have some smart looking software along with the libre sensors to try to optimise fuelling for endurance sport. They are also by and large 'normal'. Some of them see spikes up to 10 or so when doing some hard exercise. Defining 'hard' is somewhat tricky, it depends on your fitness level and typical exercise regime. It seems to be related to how stressful the exercise is, so for me spending an hour at fairly high intensity (threshold HR) on the bike can spike me to 13. Weirdly maintaining the same HR running never gets as high.

I usually exercise in the morning and depending on the strength of the dawn effect that day can go from 5.5 overnight to 13 without any food ever passing my lips.

I am not particularly sporty or active, but I do notice a rise in BG levels when I do a simple thing like going to the supermarket to do my shopping.

That's your body doing what it's supposed to. As you use up the glucose stores in the muscles. the blood sugar drops slightly as it is transferred into the muscles to replenish the store. Our liver dumps some glucose to correct the blood sugar level. HOWEVER due to our problem with Insulin resistance the transfer to muscle takes too long meaning the blood glucose level stays high for longer than ideal. This can then trigger Insulin dumps as well which further throws a spanner in the works.

Yes, always happens to me with stressful exercise : due to my level of unfitness, it seems my body interprets just about any movement as stressful exercise

Any kind of exercise raises my BG. But it goes down again within an hour or so.

Not specifically but any exercise burns energy which needs replacing.