Post-Exercise Spike

[helli]

Have you found you have to adapt to all the care that's asked about feet when you have diabetes? My climbing shoes are reasonably comfortable (though I'll have to try my old tighter ones again as I push my grade). But climbing is possibly hard on the feet. Of course I'm not affected by that at the moment and perhaps shouldn't worry too much about a future. (My doctor sees this as a progressive and inevitable disease, but I think I'm doing well at the moment).

The way I see it, I am not wearing my climbing shoes for that long so I worry more about controlling my BG long term than a few hours a week with the "wrong shoes" on.
I am sure they are no worse than than the stiletto heeled pointed monstrosities I used to wear for days on end as a teenager. Nowadays, my shoes are more likely to be trainers.
Plus, I keep an eye on my feet for any issues and, in 20 years, I have not spotted anything of concern.

 

[PerSpinasAdAstra]

Do I need to be concerned that exercise can have such a dramatic effect on sugar?

No. It's just hormones influencing your liver and antagonising insulin. If you were seeing your BG hit 9.8 three times a day after every meal you might want want to take some action by changing your diet a bit, as that's something that is easy to control and has very little downside. Over a span of years that change in diet should yield benefits. Exercise though always has a net-positive effect and will be better for your health, mental and physical, in the short and long terms.

I doubt anyone knows if hitting 9.8 briefly while doing something as stressful as climbing is even very abnormal. How many climbers wearing CGMs attempting the same climb would be needed in the clinical study required to figure out what the average BG response to climbing even is? How would anyone figure out whether hitting 9.8 a couple of times a week had any negative health implications? Above all else, enjoy your life 🙂

 

[helli]

Talking about climbing, one of my Christmas presents was a heart rate monitor. I usually wear it when cycling or hiking but once decided to wear it whilst climbing. The graph at the end was very spiky - basically 10 minute heart rate spikes every time I climbed. The good news was that my heart rate came down about as fast as I abseiled down the wall.

I want to analyse heart rate and BG but so far I haven't seen much correlation. The only thing I have seen is that my heart rate does not reach as high when exercising if my BG falls fast. This was not what I expected as a hypo symptom feels like my heart rate is soring but the monitor suggests otherwise.