• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Use Your Brain :-)

Dazza1984

Dazza1984

Well-Known Member
Messages
134
Type of diabetes
LADA
Treatment type
Insulin
This may sound a bit cryptic but it works....

While at work I noticed a pattern in my blood sugars. At one of the branches of my Vet Practice things can get a tad 'sleepy' and I end up sitting around a fair bit. As you would expect my BG was on the higher side that day. However, take the same day where I am working through paperwork, blood results, lab reports etc etc and my BG was normal (despite the same breakfast and lunch)

The brain can only use Glucose as energy; not proteins or fats etc. It is solely reliant on glucose. My brain was more active on those days where I had the paperwork.

I spoke to my endocrinologist about this and had a good discussion about it. He also added that studies have found that those people (mainly youngsters) that play on their computers, e.g. PS, will have lower average BG levels. They are concentrating more and their brains are more active.

So what I am saying is challenge yourselves, become more mentally active and you will notice a difference. Something as simple as crosswords, puzzles etc; not just sitting watching TV. If you struggle to exercise, for whatever reason, use your brains :)
 
Morganator said:
Does this mean when I curl up in bed with a good book I'm helping my levels. (please say it does lol)

Sent from the Diabetes Forum App
Click to expand...

I think it needs to be a bit more challenging than that I'm afraid. Reading a book will be much like watching TV; however, both are better than just laying there doing nothing. My advice would be experiment. Have exactly the same dinner on two nights but on one of them do your reading. Measure your BG on both occasions and see if it has made a difference. Obviously there will still be margin for error but it'll give you a good idea. I suppose it depends how good the book is lol

D
 
Absolutely! my job can require long periods of fairly intensive brain work but without physical activity, and that always sees my levels fairly low.

Driving as well. Dropped from 5.6 to 4.8 in an hour today of driving at night and the concentration required for that
 
Totally agree, physical exercise lowers my glucose levels but so does mental exercise.
I'm doing a Coursera course on genetics at the moment, way out of my comfort zone. I can sit at the computer following the lectures and then working out the problems for several hours and rather than the normal raising of levels through being sedentary, I'm finding that they are dropping.
(Coursera for the uninitiated is a provider of Massive Open Online Courses ie free University courses from Universites around the world)
 
Back
Top