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Weightlifting and Type 1

Samwade1

Member
Hi all

This is my first post!

I'm a keen weightlifter but notice that it does strange things to my blood glucose levels - raising them during and post-exercise, but giving me hypos around 8 hours later. Does this sound common or has anyone else experienced it?

I also wondered what experience other type ones have had with building muscle? Do you seem to find it disproportionately difficult compared to other people? I seem to be able to lift much more than other guys, but without gaining their size.

Any thoughts / suggestions / gym buddies out there?

Thanks!
 
Hi Sam,

I am not a weight lifter, I do train very heavy though I'm a keen runner and completed tough guy on the Sunday just gone...

I find if my workout/race is anaerobic I find my sugars behaving like you mention they raise on me finishing exercise and even for a couple of hours after...

I first tried to get them to drop using insulin/skipping food but then the hypos came... it works different for each person but trial and error testing every hour and making small adjustments...

Thing is say you did legs... these will continue to burn energy much longer than say an abs session would... so again record results for different types of training... e.g. Aerobic/anaerobic, intensity... high/low pre/sub/post workout meal or shake etc this can all make a difference in what your saying

Have a look on runsweet website too some great advice on there

All the best izzy
 
Hi Sam,

Congrats on your first post, glad to hear that you are into weightlifing!

I'm also into weightlifting - recently completed the stronglifts 5x5 program and the gains
from it were incredible.

In my first 2 weeks of training, my sugars were all over the place and i would sometimes hypo
at night during my sleep, or by mid morning the next day.

I tracked what I ate & when, also noting down my insulin. My sugars were normally slightly
low after the training.So I would normally take a banana and then get to sleep. I would
usually train at around 9pm, finishing at around 10pm, then going to sleep after 11pm.

I started to take a banana smoothie instead of just a banana, and found that it gave me
stable sugars the next morning when I woke up - this solved my hypos over night. But i still
had some hypos during mid morning, even if my bs were good before breakfast. To resolve this
I just had an extra glass of milk with my breakfast (for breafkast i normally have a toast
with a few boiled eggs). This solved my hypo problem and it also helped with the "day after"
hunger issues I had.

My advise to you:

  1. track food intake
  2. record bs
  3. record insulin dosage
  4. analyse trends in your data collected for 1-2 weeks (food vs insulin vs exercise)
  5. try to either eat extra food, or lower you insulin dosage and see what works best for you (by yourself)
  6. Definately speak to you diabetes healthcare team about this and show them your data collected

The important thing here is that you will know what works best for you, and it's pretty much
trial and error until you get it correct (as Izzy mentioned)

As for muscle gains, this depends on a few things:

  • Body type (ectomorph, endomorph etc)
  • Genetics
  • Trainings type (low vs high reps)
  • Intensity (90% or 60% of your max effort)
  • and many other things...

Figure out what you are and adjust your weightlifting to it (you will need to do a google search here)

I would recommend stronglifts 5x5 if you have not heard of it, the best way to get good
strength and muscle gains, I went from squatting 20kg to 135kg in the 12 week program!

Would be good to let us know how get on in a few weeks!

Best of luck
Wasim
 

Hi @Samwade1 and welcome to the forum.

Are you taking on carbs before you exercise? If not, it could be your liver dumping glucose to give you the energy required during your training, then taking it back later which could lead to your hypos?

@daisy1 will be along later with some more general info.
 
Hi @Samwade1, welcome to the forum. What you are experiencing is not an unusual and there is a rational explanation for it.

When you are weight training, there are two things going on. One is that anaerobic exercise increases glucose levels, and two, this type of exercise stresses the body.

As @IZ THE LEG END has mentioned, anaerobic exercise increases glucose levels, and this is typically because when you do weights, you burn glycogen within the muscles. If it's a particularly heavy session, you use all the muscle glycogen up, which requires that the liver release from its stores to feed the muscles. Secondly, resistance training is stressful and stress causes the body to release epiniphrine, which causes a glucagon release and therefore glycogen to come from the liver as glucose in the blood.

These things together typically result in most people who are weight training seeing a rise from the midpoint of a session onwards.

The second point you mention is that you see hypos around eight hours later. This is linked back to the previous point about glycogen. Due to your muscles and the liver using glycogen stores during exercise, this needs to be replenished. What effectively happens is that they suck back from the glucose in your system. When I was using MDI as a treatment, I used to reduce my overnight Levemir following a gym session by 25% to avoid a night-time hypo. Likewise, on a pump, I'd apply a TBR that was 25% lower.

I don't know what insulins you are currently using, but I found that Levemir gave me a lot more control in relation to resistance training that Lantus, because it worked more effectively in two doses.

Finally, on body shape, if you are lifting more weight and there is a regular step up, you are gaining muscle. You simply can't do one without the other. What you may need to do is look at various different approaches for making the muscle look bigger.
  • One is to reduce your body fat levels, down to sub 10%, to look ripped. This is all about the eating, but believe me, having been there, it works. The best way I've found to do this is reducing the carbs you eat. My most effective gains came when my max carb intake a day was around 60g, and that was only from Brown Rice.
  • The second is to look at programmes like "German Body Composition training". This has worked really well for me, but is properly tough.
Hope this gives you some ideas!
 
@Samwade1

Hello Sam and welcome to the forum Here is some more general information for you which I hope you will find useful. Ask as many questions as you want and someone will be able to help.


BASIC INFORMATION FOR NEW MEMBERS

Diabetes is the general term to describe people who have blood that is sweeter than normal. A number of different types of diabetes exist.

A diagnosis of diabetes tends to be a big shock for most of us. It’s far from the end of the world though and on this forum you'll find well over 147,000 people who are demonstrating this.

On the forum we have found that with the number of new people being diagnosed with diabetes each day, sometimes the NHS is not being able to give all the advice it would perhaps like to deliver - particularly with regards to people with type 2 diabetes.

The role of carbohydrate

Carbohydrates are a factor in diabetes because they ultimately break down into sugar (glucose) within our blood. We then need enough insulin to either convert the blood sugar into energy for our body, or to store the blood sugar as body fat.

If the amount of carbohydrate we take in is more than our body’s own (or injected) insulin can cope with, then our blood sugar will rise.

The bad news

Research indicates that raised blood sugar levels over a period of years can lead to organ damage, commonly referred to as diabetic complications.

The good news

People on the forum here have shown that there is plenty of opportunity to keep blood sugar levels from going too high. It’s a daily task but it’s within our reach and it’s well worth the effort.

Controlling your carbs

The info below is primarily aimed at people with type 2 diabetes, however, it may also be of benefit for other types of diabetes as well.

There are two approaches to controlling your carbs:
  • Reduce your carbohydrate intake
  • Choose ‘better’ carbohydrates
Reduce your carbohydrates

A large number of people on this forum have chosen to reduce the amount of carbohydrates they eat as they have found this to be an effective way of improving (lowering) their blood sugar levels.

The carbohydrates which tend to have the most pronounced effect on blood sugar levels tend to be starchy carbohydrates such as rice, pasta, bread, potatoes and similar root vegetables, flour based products (pastry, cakes, biscuits, battered food etc) and certain fruits.

Choosing better carbohydrates

The low glycaemic index diet is often favoured by healthcare professionals but some people with diabetes find that low GI does not help their blood sugar enough and may wish to cut out these foods altogether.

Read more on carbohydrates and diabetes.

Over 145,000 people have taken part in the Low Carb Program - a free 10 week structured education course that is helping people lose weight and reduce medication dependency by explaining the science behind carbs, insulin and GI.

Eating what works for you

Different people respond differently to different types of food. What works for one person may not work so well for another. The best way to see which foods are working for you is to test your blood sugar with a glucose meter.

To be able to see what effect a particular type of food or meal has on your blood sugar is to do a test before the meal and then test after the meal. A test 2 hours after the meal gives a good idea of how your body has reacted to the meal.

The blood sugar ranges recommended by NICE are as follows:

Blood glucose ranges for type 2 diabetes
  • Before meals: 4 to 7 mmol/l
  • 2 hours after meals: under 8.5 mmol/l
Blood glucose ranges for type 1 diabetes (adults)
  • Before meals: 4 to 7 mmol/l
  • 2 hours after meals: under 9 mmol/l
Blood glucose ranges for type 1 diabetes (children)
  • Before meals: 4 to 8 mmol/l
  • 2 hours after meals: under 10 mmol/l
However, those that are able to, may wish to keep blood sugar levels below the NICE after meal targets.

Access to blood glucose test strips

The NICE guidelines suggest that people newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes should be offered:

  • structured education to every person and/or their carer at and around the time of diagnosis, with annual reinforcement and review
  • self-monitoring of plasma glucose to a person newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes only as an integral part of his or her self-management education

Therefore both structured education and self-monitoring of blood glucose should be offered to people with type 2 diabetes. Read more on getting access to blood glucose testing supplies.

You may also be interested to read questions to ask at a diabetic clinic.

Note: This post has been edited from Sue/Ken's post to include up to date information.

Take part in Diabetes.co.uk digital education programs and improve your understanding. They're all free.
  • Low Carb Program - it's made front-page news of the New Scientist and The Times. Developed with 20,000 people with type 2 diabetes; 96% of people who take part recommend it... find out why
  • Hypo Program - improve your understanding of hypos. There's a version for people with diabetes, parents/guardians of children with type 1, children with type 1 diabetes, teachers and HCPs.
 
What your blood sugar will do will depend on the type of workout. Figuring out for yourself what type of workout effects you how is important so you can adjust to it accordingly. Having a routine makes this doable. Off course increased muscularity will also increase insulin sensitivity and so will having a good exercise regime. Overall being active has the tendency to reduce insulin but you might still need to adjust afterwards. For me i take 1,5 units of fast acting (novorapid) together with my post workout meal. Since my workouts never last longer than 45-60 minutes i don't really spike that much. The time since my last meal or injection also has relevance, i workout about 1 hour after my last meal/injection and find i have pretty stable levels but i'm pretty sure this will have to be assessed individually.

As to muscularity: to be perfectly honest genetics has a lot to do with it, if you're gifted chances are you're not asking this question. Being diabetic only limits you to a small in the direct sense. The problem is trying to maintain an optimal diet for bodybuilding while keeping your blood sugar levels intact. Protein isn't so much of a problem since 2g/kg is sufficient and doable as an active diabetic the problem lies within the carbs. Off course it depends on how muscular you want to become. I'm quite happy with powerlifting as pure strength based workouts don't have much of an effect on my blood sugar in the short term and muscularity follows in a lesser extent but still in a visible way.

Usually when i bulk i "trade in" a lot of carbs for (preferably unsaturated) fat to keep my calories up and even for my small frame i need well over 4000 calories per day to keep gaining weight. Usually in food that translates to nuts and cheese, 100 grams of nuts and 100 grams of cheese can easily stack up to +1000 calories. But it's always a balance between upping the calories and keeping the blood sugar in check, since not having it in check will impede on the gains.
 
Thanks everyone for your comments so far. I tend to work out before work on an empty stomach, not having eaten. So this fasted state explains the glucose dump and later hypos when this is replenished.
 
I used to do a lot of weight lifting when I was younger. My theory, If your diabetes is under reasonable control the buildup of muscle mass is likely a combination of genetics, diet and weight lifting regimens - I was one of those annoying people who didn't seem to have to do much to build large muscles - it got to a point that I stopped going to the gym because I was getting too bulky and it interfered with some of my sport activities. What I did noticed - 10 years ago I ripped my rotator cuff while kayaking and it pretty much made me very inactive for about 5 years and I lost a lot of muscle mass as a result. This may have been more about my age than my diabetes but who knows - regardless it didn;t take long for my muscle mass to come back to normal once my injury healed up.

Weightlifting would affect my blood sugar levels too - at times they would become quite high. I also remember a tri-athalon I went on and after the 5 km paddle my BGs went from 9.2 to 21 but fortunately went back down to normal levels about an hour later.

Just test yourself before and after you weight lift and if after 8 hours you're running very low look at trying to time a meal just before that point in time. Good luck!

First post eh? There's a lot of good information (based on experience) on these forums - I accidentally discovered it last summer - glad I did.

Cheers!
 
I recently started weightlifting too and love it, there's a lot of info in these comments that is very useful and after explaining alot of things that were happening that I hadn't noticed, like the hypo 8 hours later, has happened twice but I had just presumed I calculated the carbs in my dinner wrong.
I've been taking protein shakes and also trying a low carb high protein diet to loose weight and gain muscle any helpful tips on that or things to watch out for. I would have to take insulin even if I just ate 2 eggs as it would raise my Sugar levels
 
I am T2 so wont comment on your T1 issues but have trained for most of my life using various methods over the years, so some tips..

  1. I take it that when you say weightlifting you are trying to lift heavy........ training to failure or 5 x 5 training , either Stronglifts or the earlier (and better imo) Starting Strength are great but are geared toward getting stronger which will also give you a degree of size.
  2. To get big you have to train somewhat differently , higher reps, more volume, more isolation exercises , not to failure etc
  3. Sleeping and eating well is the key, get in the gym hit your muscles with enough stimulus and get out sleep eat and grow.
  4. Exercise choice, Squats ,Deads and Bench are still the core moves but do them in a bodybuilding style (Hypertrophy).
  5. I am a member on here https://www.hardgainer.com/forums/activity.php which has a wealth of info on lifting for the ordinary (drug free) guy.
  6. This is a fantastic tool for exercise selection http://www.exrx.net/Exercise.html
 
I started the gym about 5 months ago and it is the best thing that's happened to me and my t1 diabetes! Went from 89 hba1c to 61 and working my way to the dream bod I want! I have noticed my blood goes high after a hard work out and I mainly do weights. I'm still learning but hope to get tighter control on my diabetes in the process! What do you guys think on taking amino acid and creatine tablets?
 
I’m 80 years old and ten years ago I had both knee joints replaced. In the last 2 months or so one of the joints is failing so we’ve bought a treadmill and I spend 30 to 45 mins on it daily.....it’s a level surface and if the pain gets too severe I can stop immediately. We have 2 meals a day, lunch at 915am and light supper at about 5pm . Those days when we have rice I exercise for 45 mins about 30mins after start of meal so that I’m exercising during peak bg level.
 
There should be no problem taking amino acids (building blocks for muscle after all) Creatine powder would be better taken in juice before a work out so that you can burn off the sugars. You will experience High sugars after training as the body is still burning energy after training and the liver is releasing its glycogen stores to cope, check your sugars and if you are having a post workout meal (low Carbs High proteien) check before and the meal and after to ensure no post work out lows ( I suffer from these lows mostly in bed)
 

When I was younger yes, I could never get calfs, thighs are still solid blocks, arms not so much. I dunno why but I struggled with my lower legs and still to this day they are like sparrows legs, arm yes forearms yes stomach yes lower legs no
 
You've had your eyebrows done!!!!
 
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