High!!!

Insulin before exercise...

Hi Bev - really hope Alex is OK - and his sugars are down - just a note - in my personal experience - if I start exercise (and I used to do a lot!) on anything above 6.5/7 my sugars would always be 17+ after an hour. I found 7 and below was fine to do exercise for an hour - or I put a very small amount of glucose in my water which would give me a continuous trickle top up. Basically - your body still needs insulin to process teh glucose in yor system - and sometimes exercise can cause your body to produce glucose - as it thinks it needs energy!

I am not sure what the levels are for children (as I think children are advised to rhave slightly higher levels than adults anyway??!). I guess that you will have to do the experimenting route.

I completely understand your rationale about reducing insulin, and many people make this mistake - I have read so many posts on different forums about it. But it is one of those cases in diabetes wheerre rationale doesn't work!

Hope this helps

Admin xx
 
Morning Bev

how are things did Alex have a gd sleep x
 
bev, sorry not to see this yesterday. Want to know how Alex is and will check later. Basically, we've been told not to correct more than 2 units at a time, either with or between meals, and indeed, the two times my son was very high (eg over 20) and we gave three units, he crashed into hypo later, though number-wise it made no sense. He *does* get insulin resistant, though, when his numbers are high, so there have been other times when we have had to just *chip away* over several hours at his level, however it was caused, to bring it down, in order to avoid a huge unpredictable swing.

We've also been told that any novorapid correcting of high sugars needs to be given two hours either side of eating: after eatiing because of the effect of the food (sometimes we seem to get very high spikes after eating(regardless of exercise), sometimes not much); and two hours before eating again so as not to mess up the pre-meal reading.

Finally, we've been told not to give novorapid at such a time that levels cannot easily be tracked, eg bedtime or just before. Again, we found this out to our cost, giving a fairly late novorapid for a late snack -- and my son had a hypo in the night, before the time when we thought he was likely to go lowest and when we were going to test him.

I'm sure that experienced hands are able to stray from these rules, but we don't know yet how my son reacts to everything.

The other thing I'd say is that the more we test the more we find crazy, crazy numbers between meals. It's clear that my son spikes absolutely all the time, we just don't usually see it in those pesky tiny windows called the pre and post meal blood tests. Bring on a CGM. We've had several great days, mixed in with the worst see-saws imaginable. Suspect hormones. Rather doing us in at times.

Anyway, hope Alex stable.
 
Admin said:
Hi Bev - really hope Alex is OK - and his sugars are down - just a note - in my personal experience - if I start exercise (and I used to do a lot!) on anything above 6.5/7 my sugars would always be 17+ after an hour. I found 7 and below was fine to do exercise for an hour - or I put a very small amount of glucose in my water which would give me a continuous trickle top up. Basically - your body still needs insulin to process teh glucose in yor system - and sometimes exercise can cause your body to produce glucose - as it thinks it needs energy!

I am not sure what the levels are for children (as I think children are advised to rhave slightly higher levels than adults anyway??!). I guess that you will have to do the experimenting route.

I completely understand your rationale about reducing insulin, and many people make this mistake - I have read so many posts on different forums about it. But it is one of those cases in diabetes wheerre rationale doesn't work!

Hope this helps

Admin xx
Click to expand...

But again, it's one of those things that is different for everyone, if I started exercise on anything below 7 I'd crash down within minutes. I usually have to start around 9/10 and take on some carbs just before or as I'm going along.

If I'm planning the exercise for up to 90 minutes after a meal then I'll reduce (NOT cut out) my insulin at that meal, as advised by my DSN, which works great for me so I don't think it's necessarily a 'mistake' just something you need to work out if it works for you or not.
 
Aymes - that is exactly why I said it was in my personal experience - and worth Bev considering. As we know from these boards - everyone has to find out their own levels.
 
Hi all!

Thanks so much for all your kind enquiries about Alex!:)

I tested him again at 11 o clock and he was down to 16 (phew) and then again a couple of hours later and he was down to 14 - so i think by giving 2 extra units with his evening meal it has done the trick.
It didnt seem a lot of units to give - but the hospital explained that as he is insulin sensitive and because he had so much exercise etc it would be wiser to bring him down slowly (they said for every 1 extra unit that brings him down by 4.5mmls - so they were erring on the side of caution).
I have absolutley no idea why this happened - even taking into account the reduction of insulin with his lunch - it shouldnt have been that far out!
He never stopped running around all afternoon so i am wondering whether he has suffered from the strange phenomenon where exercise increases your levels?
His level this morning was 11 - which although not great - is to be expected i suppose after the night before!
For the past few days i had been feeling 'smug' enough to think that i finally understood how his body worked! I think it also frightened Alex when he saw the 'hi' reading on his meter - we did try to hide our concerns though.
Rather oddly, we tried testing him with a spare meter just in case - and it was 3mmls different!

Katie, thank you so much for helping me last night - i am sorry if i made you worry - i was getting a little panicky whilst waiting for the hospital to ring - but you managed to keep me calm - and i hadnt even thought of doing the keytones until you said - so thankyou again!:DBev x
 
Admin said:
Aymes - that is exactly why I said it was in my personal experience - and worth Bev considering. As we know from these boards - everyone has to find out their own levels.
Click to expand...

Of course, I wasn't disagreeing with you, just pointing out my experience also and that it's not necessarily a mistake to go down the reducing insulin path before exercise.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top