Exercise and Diabetes

[Charran]

I have kind of a new problem and I'm not sure what to do about it at the moment. I could always count on exercise in the past to lower my BG reading. Lately ( since about Christmas or so) I've noticed in taking readings that my BG is actually going up after activity. I don't want to stop exercising as I'm sure it has other health benefits, but not sure what to do about the readings. I test before and my reading will be normal and then afterwards, it will increase...sometimes quite substantially! Does anyone else experience this and if so...what can a person do? Does anyone know off hand why it happens, or why it would suddenly start happening when it never did before? I'm off to do some research! If anyone has any good info...please direct me to it! Thanks in advance! :)

[RobLL]

I have kind of a new problem and I'm not sure what to do about it at the moment. I could always count on exercise in the past to lower my BG reading. Lately ( since about Christmas or so) I've noticed in taking readings that my BG is actually going up after activity. I don't want to stop exercising as I'm sure it has other health benefits, but not sure what to do about the readings. I test before and my reading will be normal and then afterwards, it will increase...sometimes quite substantially! Does anyone else experience this and if so...what can a person do? Does anyone know off hand why it happens, or why it would suddenly start happening when it never did before? I'm off to do some research! If anyone has any good info...please direct me to it! Thanks in advance! :)

The only way I can keep my BGs from going up with medium heavy or intense excercise is to take an insulin shot appropriately timed

[MizKitty]

You know Char, I've always had that problem. I posted in a thread some time back asking about it, and got some pretty good responses. Let me see if I can find it, BRB...

...ok, here it is
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=331836

[Charran]

Rob, Karen...thanks for the responses. I read through that link Karen and I think it explains why it happens. There doesn't seem to be a really good solution to preventing it though...just alot of trial and error things I guess.

[locarbbarb]

Hi Char!

Although I don't have diabetes, I do have hypoglycemia, and would suffer really bad hypo attacks after exercise. I use the Extend Bars.

I have one for breakfast with 1/2 scoop of whey protein in 1/2 c water (plus my coffee!) for breakfast, then I exercise about an hour later. No hypos!

These bars were originally for Diabetes... but now it seems everyone can use them.

Check out the site for more info - LINK (http://www.extendbar.com)

Almost forgot to mention...you can get them at Walgreens drug store if you want to try out a smaller box than on the website, plus no shipping charges. Oops, sorry...didn't realize you were in Canada. Well, maybe you can find them there or just order online.

Barb

[eddiemcm]

I have had somewhat inconsistent results with
moderately heavy aerobic exercise.It lowers my
glucose level maybe 70 percent of the time.No
effect whatsoever maybe 10 percent.About 20
percent of the time,my glucose level goes up-
maybe 20 or 30 points.Frustrating-yes.
Nobody ever said diabetes is easy to understand.
I continue to exercise.
Eddie

[KiaKaha]

I have just started to exercise (semi-regularly) and I already find that it puts my BG up more often than down.

Anyway it got me thinking about BG and exercise (having established I know very little about diabetes just that I have it) and what I was wondering was -

Does regular exercise improve (or otherwise) overnight Blood Glucose ie: upon rising? Has anyone experienced this situation ie: started getting serious about exercise whilst having been LoCarbing for a while? I'd be really interested to know as I would like my morning readings to be a lot better than they are and am looking for some way of getting them down. (I dont think I am ready for IF at this stage)

[v-effect]

It depends entirely on what kind of exercise I am doing. If I am doing anaerobic exercise, I will raise my basal by 20 percent. It I am doing aerobic, I will lower it by 50 percent!
V.

[Lottadata]

Dr. Bernstein writes about exactly this phenomenon in his book. Do yourself a favor and read it. He has a lot to say about exercise and blood sugar.

[RobLL]

A humorous observation: If I do intense exercises for hours on end I don't need insulin and can eat 2 or 3 chocolate chip cookies an hour. This is climbing hills or mountains at just under 1000 feet elevation gain an hour.

[KiaKaha]

So now I know all I have to do is climb the mountain beside my house each day and I can finally eat that chocolate!

[KiaKaha]

So now I know all I have to do is climb the mountain beside my house each day and I can finally eat that chocolate!

[KiaKaha]

So now I know all I have to do is climb the mountain beside my house each day and I can finally eat that chocolate!

[Korban]

And on the plus side - Gretchen Becker says that some BG meters work as high as Mount Everest... Might be worth a climb to verify it.

/smile

[MizKitty]

Do yourself a favor and read it.

I wonder if you have any idea how arrogant that sounds.

[Nancy LC]

I wonder if you have any idea how arrogant that sounds.
Just as a second opinion, it didn't strike me that way at all. She must think he wrote something good.

[dancinbr]

OH here we go again.

Yes, read up on exercise as much as you can.

Aerobic exercise lowers my BG but only after I have had something to eat.

So I get up in the morning.

I will have breakfast and then a little while later go out and do a aggressive walk. A good part of the walk gets into the aerobic range for me since I go up and down hills in my neighborhood. The rest is sub-aerobic but is up there pretty good too.

If I don't eat, exercise ups my BG.

Ralph

[Lottadata]

I wonder if you have any idea how arrogant that sounds.

Sorry! It wasn't intended in any way to be snarky. Perhaps a problem with local idiom?

[dancinbr]

:D Sorry! It wasn't intended in any way to be snarky. Perhaps a problem with local idiom?

Anyway, exercise is good for all of us!

:D

[Lottadata]

Just as a second opinion, it didn't strike me that way at all. She must think he wrote something good.
Nancy,

That is exactly what I meant! Bernstein's writings on exercise are essential reading for anyone with diabetes. By now I must have read his whole book 6 times from cover to cover and each time I read it, something new leaps out at me that I either didn't fully understand in the past, or which wasn't relevant to my experience at the time and hence didn't catch my attention.

[RobLL]

ditto, I have read it through 3 times. And intend to about every 6 months. New things pop out everytime.

[Rose1942]

Dr. Bernstein's book sits on a little shelf next to my kitchen table. It is easy to pull it down whenever I am lounging around with a cuppa coffee or something, and I re-read various chapters all the time. I think the phrase 'do yourself a favor' meant just that. It seemed like a sincere suggestion as to where you might find useful information.

[KiaKaha]

Now you all know why I know nothing about diabetes - I havent read THE BOOK!

Better scoot along to Amazon now!
(Really I was just getting around to it)

[Charran]

I have read the book, several times in fact. I guess as someone said, different things pop out at you along the way depending on the circumstances. I never paid much attention to the exercise section because I never had this problem before, so it probably didn't mean much at the time. I guess I was looking for more personal responses from people who actually have this problem and what they do about it.

I do think we have to be careful here so as not to discourage people, whether newbies or seasoned forum users from asking questions. As I read through various threads and forums on this site, it is quite obvious that a large portion of them could be answered simply by "reading the book" whatever that book is. The thing that makes a forum unique for information is that you can get personal input into your questions and share experiences with each other. I have learned many things from people over the years of how they have solved issues for themselves that were never "part of the book". I am hoping that this forum especially can appreciate that fact as diabetes is a scary thing to deal with. Sometimes it is reasurring to know that we aren't the only ones dealing with a particular problem and that there are people who can give a personal response to us.

[Lottadata]

Charran,

I spend a lot of time answering people's diabetes questions, thanks to my web site, so I understand what you are saying and I honor it.

But a problem I have seen on other diabetes discussion boards with Bernstein's ideas, is that if you reduce them down to a few paragraphs people often think they know all they need to know about what Bernstein is about and then do things that would appall him, and come back and say "I tried Bernstein and I was hypoing all the time."

So my feeling is that with his ideas you really DO have to read the book. If what he had to say could have been said in a few paragraphs he wouldn't need to put out 400 pages and keep updating it every few years.

That isn't the case with a lot of diet books that are 99% fluff and 1% concept. You can take a lot of diet and health books and boil them down to two or three bulletin board posts and not lose a thing. But Bernstein's book is not like that, so people may not realize just how important it is to read through everything he has to say.

That isn't the same as agreeing with everything he says or doing everything he says. I sure don't. But exposure to the way of treating diabetes that he propounds will change the way you think about diabetes and definitely makes it a lot easier to test and evaluate options that might work for you.