T1 - What does work stress (presentations/training/public speaking) do to your BS?

[mytype1.life]

Just curious... today has been a rollercoaster and I was wondering if anybody else experiences anything similar.

It’s been a very busy and pretty stressful week, consequently I’ve been struggling to sleep in the build up to today delivering training for the day with to our management team/director.

I foolishly had a tiny treat (x1 Quality Street) in the morning which obviously caused a spike. An hour into the training my Libre was showing an upward arrow already at 15. I corrected and was almost in range by lunch. Since getting home (feeling exhausted) I hypo’d (2.4), settled, had the exact same meal I had yesterday which held my BS perfectly, but hypo’d again 1.5 hours after my meal.

Any thoughts (minus the treat) is this variation likely to be due to stress hormones?

 

[catapillar]

Public speaking stresses me out. You can tell when I go into a court room from looking at my cgm. It soars, even when I don't actually feel stressed. Once the stress stops I will crash & hypo. But this is only because the corrections that were fighting with the stress hormones are suddenly able to work once the stess stops.

 

[Deleted Account]

I think of it as my liver having a fixed space for glucose to drip throughout the day. Once it is used up (or depleted), there is left glucose left in my liver to drip and it needs topping up. As a result, less basal is needed for the drip and less bolus is needed because some glucose go to fill up my liver than go into my blood.

Do you use your Libre for insulin doses all the time or do you also use finger pricks?
I was advised only to use Libre to understand trends and use finger pricks for insulin dose. But, hey, constant finger pricks are a pain.
That said, I found the Libre to be more out at extremes (high and low) so take extra care when dosing at these extremes.

 

[phdiabetic]

What a horrible day, feel better soon. Stress always puts me way up, public speaking puts me down due to the exercise of standing/walking/moving arms. I agree with the previous poster that the libre can be inaccurate, so always double check if you are much higher or lower than usual. Also, once you get a bad number, I think it's easy to get on a sort of rollercoaster - up and down and up and down and you never seem to stabilise, that seems to be what happened here. Unfortunately that's hard to avoid, one thing that helps though is being conservative with your treatment decisions and double checking the libre's numbers.

 

[Diakat]

Chairing meetings tends to send me low. I think it is they trying to balance everyone's point of view and keep things on track, a mix of stress and mental energy.

 

[therower]

When it comes to doing work of any kind I tend to see lows/ hypos as two types.
1. Physical. These hypos I can spot a long way off. My brain seems to have the capacity and time to spot symptoms and act upon them.
2. Mental. These hypos have a tendency to sneak up unnoticed. Always amazes me how much energy the brain can use up in a short space of time. Because my brain is busy problem solving ( I'm a man, I can't multi task ) the hypos go almost unnoticed.

 

[Scott-C]

Stephen Ponder in Sugar Surfing calls these "hollow highs", brought on by an adrenaline rush in response to stress releasing glucose from the liver. As they are not backed up by food, he suggests a more modest or no correction compared to a food high.

 

[DavidGrahamJones]

Any thoughts (minus the treat) is this variation likely to be due to stress hormones?

I think a lot will be down to the individual. I did a lot of training, technical pre-sales presentations and speaking at conferences before and after diagnosis. I remember the very first time which I didn't enjoy one little bit, but it got easier and easier So long as I knew exactly what I was talking about (I'm not capable of sales BS) I thoroughly enjoyed myself. After diagnosis I didn't notice any changes although I didn't the benefit of something like a FreeStyle Libre. Certainly my daily monitoring and annual HbA1c didn't show anything.

 

[mytype1.life]

Thanks for your comments all, helpful to know I’m not alone although obviously everyone is affected differently.

Thanks @helensaramay, I always bolus and correct from my meter rather than my Libre to be sure.

@phdiabetic, you are right about the rollercoaster. I think for me it was the combination of the stress of the situation and then the standing/moving arms/mental energy!

I like your hypo differentiation @therower, I agree!

Thanks @Scott-C, lesson learnt should this happen to me again.

Totally with you @DavidGrahamJones, I’m usually very comfortable with training but on this location I was delivering other people’s material, there were some technical issues just before and the audience was rather daunting.

 

[DavidGrahamJones]

this location I was delivering other people’s material,

Never easy especially if you don't have any of the creator's original notes.

there were some technical issues

Might be off topic, but an amusing anecdote. I had a presentation at a conference do after lunch, so before lunch I made sure the room was tidy and that the PC was working and could access the material which the conference people insisted was held on their conference server. I wasn't supposed to use a memory stick because they thought I might have changed something and it wouldn't match the handouts.

Went back after lunch expecting everything to be good to go and found that the conference room had been split into two and I was in the half with a different PC and no time to check anything. I started the presentation with the usual introduction, clicked the wireless "mouse" in my hand, started giving my spiel when I noticed that the presentation on the screen was automatically scrolling forward without me "clicking".

It was a "feature" I'd seen on the presentation software I was familiar with, but still took several minutes to put right. Not a great start. Live and learn eh?

Audiences are usually wanting you to do well and very rarely hostile, although a lot of our clients hated the company I worked for because they had a reputation for making loads of money, especially for it's sale force (that didn't include me).

Apologies for the rambling of an old man, glad to be retired, and there still aren't enough hours in the day.

 

[Robbieswan]

Up until recently, I would not have related stress to my BG. Now, you'd have a very hard time convincing me it doesn't have an effect.

 

[miszu]

I used to be anxious all the time, for me stress spikes me up rather than giving me hypos. Now I rarely feel any anxiety so those stopped. Hope everyones doing okay. X