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The power of exercise....

C

Caz_B

Well-Known Member
Messages
70
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Still high fasting reading of 14.1. Had my scrambled egg and two hours later 12.6 so had dropped a tad. Had a protein roll and cheese for lunch and chucked my bike in the car. After i had my blood test done spent an hour cycling around Orsett (first exercise for two weeks due to illness). Reading when back 5.5....this is the lowest reading i have ever had!! Still in shock
 
low carb => you are not adding sugar to your blood
exercise => you make your body remove the sugar faster from your blood
 
Thanks Ringi....i am going to be doing a lot more exercise from now on as seems to be only way i an get my sugar level down. At 53 i am not that fit so this is something i have wanted to get into for sometime. I actually really enjoy cycling....love the great outdoors. Xx
 
Resistance training and HIIT have been proven to have the most effect, however, a 10-minute walk after each meal lowers BG more then most people would expect.

You can do HIIT on the bike, by cycling as hard as you can for a few minutes, then taking it easier for 10 minutes and repeat. E.g. go as fast as you can up and hill, then cycle slowly to recover.
 
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Caz_B said:
Still high fasting reading of 14.1. Had my scrambled egg and two hours later 12.6 so had dropped a tad. Had a protein roll and cheese for lunch and chucked my bike in the car. After i had my blood test done spent an hour cycling around Orsett (first exercise for two weeks due to illness). Reading when back 5.5....this is the lowest reading i have ever had!! Still in shock
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I have to say I was getting shockingly good results through walking very fast up and down hills with a heavy rucksack for an hour recently. It allowed me to eat a huge load of carbs, then two hours later have non-diabetic numbers. The "experiment" did get out of hand eventually however and the effect wore off! I'm hoping that if I take things easy that effect will return, and I'll use it more wisely in future.
 
some do however get a higher blood glucose from exercise beuse their adenaline do raise the livers transformation of pproteins into blood glucose... but then later in the day their blood glucose will lower more..
 
I try to walk (at moderate pace) after my evening meal every day. It's good for my BG and also my mental health! There's nothing like spending an hour in your own company for destressing.......
 
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AdamJames said:
I have to say I was getting shockingly good results through walking very fast up and down hills with a heavy rucksack for an hour recently. It allowed me to eat a huge load of carbs, then two hours later have non-diabetic numbers. The "experiment" did get out of hand eventually however and the effect wore off! I'm hoping that if I take things easy that effect will return, and I'll use it more wisely in future.
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When one gets amazingly good 2 hour post-prandial numbers it is a good idea just to check again at 3 hours, as some people (like me) have stomachs which often empty late, in an unpredictable fashion, so that digestion may even not have begun 2 hours after the start of a meal. Also, the timing of digestion can vary according to the nature of the meal eg high fat. All the same, I am inspired by your account. I do regularly have to walk uphill (bringing my food shop back home) but I have to admit I do it rather slowly. I shall try to speed up!
 
ringi said:
Resistance training and HIIT have been proven to have the most effect, however, a 10-minute walk after each meal lowers BG more then most people would expect.

You can do HIIT on the bike, by cycling as hard as you can for a few minutes, then taking it easier for 10 minutes and repeat. E.g. go as fast as you can up and hill, then cycle slowly to recover.
Click to expand...
This seems to me easier said than done, given that cyclists are obliged to share the road with cars, lorries etc. IMO they have more to think about than interval training!
 
Alexandra100 said:
When one gets amazingly good 2 hour post-prandial numbers it is a good idea just to check again at 3 hours, as some people (like me) have stomachs which often empty late, in an unpredictable fashion, so that digestion may even not have begun 2 hours after the start of a meal. Also, the timing of digestion can vary according to the nature of the meal eg high fat. All the same, I am inspired by your account. I do regularly have to walk uphill (bringing my food shop back home) but I have to admit I do it rather slowly. I shall try to speed up!
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I did on a couple of occasions do a 3-hour reading and they were lower. I assume the times when I didn't take a 3-hour reading the same thing was going on, because the calories, food types and exercise were all very similar from one day to the next. But we all know about assumptions!

Re speeding up, I once did the walk that normally takes just over an hour in 50 minutes, very out of breath and sweating all the way. It had an even greater effect on keeping the 2 hr reading lower! I wasn't quite sure what to expect, I wondered if I'd pushed things so hard that I'd experience what some people get when their liver pumps out glucose during exercise as the levels are dropping.
 
AdamJames said:
I did on a couple of occasions do a 3-hour reading and they were lower. I assume the times when I didn't take a 3-hour reading the same thing was going on, because the calories, food types and exercise were all very similar from one day to the next. But we all know about assumptions!

Re speeding up, I once did the walk that normally takes just over an hour in 50 minutes, very out of breath and sweating all the way. It had an even greater effect on keeping the 2 hr reading lower! I wasn't quite sure what to expect, I wondered if I'd pushed things so hard that I'd experience what some people get when their liver pumps out glucose during exercise as the levels are dropping.
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IMO you are entitled to assume that your good numbers were/are genuine without further extended testing. I too have read lots of posts by people who find that exercise pushes their bgs higher. I am SO grateful that this doesn't happen to me, as exercise is very important to me. You have definitely inspired me to experiment more, though there is a limit to how vigorously I can exercise on a full stomach!
 
Just to add to the mix, I have done not one second of any excercise of any kind and yet lowered my levels to acceptable numbers for me. Just goes to show that we are all unique and we all have our quirks. :)
 
Alexandra100 said:
IMO you are entitled to assume that your good numbers were/are genuine without further extended testing. I too have read lots of posts by people who find that exercise pushes their bgs higher. I am SO grateful that this doesn't happen to me, as exercise is very important to me. You have definitely inspired me to experiment more, though there is a limit to how vigorously I can exercise on a full stomach!
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What happened to me was I got addicted to carbs! I ended up on about 4,000 calories a day and 300g carbs, maintaining weight for roughly a week because of the exercise. But my fasting bgs slowly crept up from roughly 5 to 7.

Having just worked something out in another thread, I now think that was more to do with weight maintenance than the carb increase - I was getting the 5's because I'd been losing weight, guaranteeing that the liver will, if anything, be getting lower in fat and glycogen. It's just a thought but it makes sense and ties in with a similar observation (I've just started maintaining weight again, similar calories and exercise but now much less carbs, but the number has crept up to the 7s again).
 
Guzzler said:
Just to add to the mix, I have done not one second of any excercise of any kind and yet lowered my levels to acceptable numbers for me. Just goes to show that we are all unique and we all have our quirks. :)
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Would you mind telling me if you've lost weight?
 
Alexandra100 said:
This seems to me easier said than done, given that cyclists are obliged to share the road with cars, lorries etc. IMO they have more to think about than interval training!
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That is very true and where i live the traffic is far too heavy. However today i was in a village where it would be possible. X
 
Guzzler said:
Just to add to the mix, I have done not one second of any excercise of any kind and yet lowered my levels to acceptable numbers for me. Just goes to show that we are all unique and we all have our quirks. :)
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I was able to lower mine without any exercise when first diagnosed but two years down the line something seems to have changed and although i'm having less carbs readings are higher...so now looks like exercise is the way to go. X
 
Caz_B said:
I was able to lower mine without any exercise when first diagnosed but two years down the line something seems to have changed and although i'm having less carbs readings are higher...so now looks like exercise is the way to go. X
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This is something I am concerned about. Aging itself affects how well we can 'adapt' to the vagaries that our condition can throw at us as well as developing non associated conditions but I have decided that I will cross that bridge when I come to it as best as I can. Being unable to excercise means I am possibly at a greater risk of needing bg lowering drugs or insulin in the future and I am now aware that those possibilities will challenge me in different ways.
 
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