There are times when diabetes seems to be there to annoy and frustrate us.
I am not sure I will ever know everything that diabetes does to my body (and we are all different) but, based on my experience, these are my thoughts.
There are a few things that happen when we exercise
- our liver releases extra glucose to give us energy
- our body becomes more efficient at using insulin
The first will cause our BG to rise and the second will cause our BG to fall.
If we do exercise which is stop - start which usually happens during a team sport (such as hockey) and when we do resistance training (such as weight training), the first of these two things tends to happen but we do not keep going long enough for the second to happen. As a result our BG rises.
My stop - start and resistance training is climbing and I always saw my BG rise high until I changed to an insulin pump.
The only way I managed my BG during climbing on injections was to take "too much fast acting insulin". Instead of targeting a BG of 5.5, I would target a BG of 3.0. This was scary because I know it is in the hypo range but the effect of climbing raising my BG would mean I would no hypo and the extra insulin would mean my BG was not quite in double figures.
I tend to climb for about 2.5 hours with a 30 minute break after 1.5 hours. During this break, I would test and give myself another correction dose but not as aggressive as the first - targeting 4.5mmol/l.
Your prolonged insulin resistance is a little more confusing and not something I experience.
The only thing I can think of is that when our BG gets high (for me this is over 14mmol/l) our bodies become insulin resistant and we need more insulin to bring our BG down. For me, the upper part of the range you mention is high enough for me to need twice my usual correction dose.
Then there is the problem that, when we see our BG rising, we may get stressed about it ... and stress raises our BG further.
Have you had a look at
www.runsweet.com?
This is a site dedicated to people with type 1 doing all sorts of exercise (from archery to ultra marathons and most sports in between) with some useful hints and tips.