Since Oct. 14th I have done several BBT's a day and have found some really interesting things happen. I am curious if others have the same experience or have an explanation. So every morning I have taken my dog Cosmo for a 30 minute walk with coffee in hand and every morning my blood sugar has gone up. Sometimes a little like this morning it was just 5 points and sometimes a lot like the other day it was 30 points. At lunch I eat and then immediately go for a walk around the industrial park, it has some good hills and I have measured it to be about a mile or so which I finish in about 20 minutes. My blood sugar invariably goes down, regardless of what I have had for lunch. I always bring glucose tabs with me for the hypos and have had to use some more than once. Finally dinner time is a crap shoot. I ride the exercise bike, take Cosmo for a walk, play tennis and there is no discernible pattern to my blood sugar. While I know YDMV it does make me wonder what others are finding.
It also makes me wonder from a purely scientific point whether the time of submission is stamped with each BBT ? Because I know the premise is that exercise is good for you, and will help with blood sugar control but it drives me crazy to enter a BBT where my blood sugar goes up!
I've entered some "up" ones when I do pushups. I also see some "up" ones in the AM. I uusally attribute that to starting to workout before DP hits and then measuring after it's hit. I don't look at "up" as bad. For pushups, I look at that as "proof" that the exercise has done what it's supposed to. My data for that will be pretty screwy I think as I've also had several where I've been lower than I wanted to and eaten something to get me through the run, bike ride, etc. I usually just rely on my CGM while I'm going and don't worry about whether the BBT number doesn't take those other variables into play.
I've used this tool called "Lose It" as a food/ exercise tracker and maybe they could partner with them to use their "sliders" to track things. It has a really handy interface for both food and exercise, allowing you to track mph for walking/ running/ cycling, maybe the other stuff too, along with pretty precise food? Diabetes is such a hugely statistical disease, sort of like baseball, and we've all got number streams going that might more precisely paint the pictures of what we are doing!
BBT??? Can someone help me out?
Big Blue Test
Of course, thanks!
lol
So I find that in the morning, I have a wicked Darn Phenomenon. Exercise will almost invariably cause my blood sugar to rise. In fact Bernstein suggests that you avoid exercise in the morning because of this tendency. Aerobic exercise, as long as it is not too vigorous will almost always cause a slow steady drop in my blood sugars until they are in normal range. As long as I don't have too much IOB, I won't go too harshly low and my body will burn fat and generate some glucose to keep me steady.
Dr. Bernstein, in his book, mentions this as a common pitfall of exercising in the AM. I believe he attributes it to an interaction between exercise and DP. He recommends not exercising until late AM. One has to wonder, if the rise is modest, would there be blood sugar benefits that would manifest later in the day?
Yes but we're still ahead of the German team.
I do not luckily suffer from DP. And to be honest as much as Dr. Bernstein recommends not exercising until late in the morning, unfortunately late in the morning I am in my lab working. I basically have to fit exercise in to my day, not in to my diabetes and have a good 1/2 hour between 6:30 and 7 am to fit in a walk. I could possibly try and cover the slight rise with some humalog, but then risk a hypo so instead I just walk for 1/2 hour, and just expect it to rise some. Then take my lantus and humalog and start my day. I do find though with morning exercise my blood sugars the rest of the morning are pretty stellar and stay that way for most of the day.
I find that if I do proper ex it drives my bg up, I've only been doing moderate walking on the bbt and it hasn't made much of an impact. I do prefer to get a walk in before noon because I eat straight afterwards, evening time I struggle a lot with lows for hours afterwards. My results are slightly all over the place, each day I try to keep the routine the same but I'm coming back with different results. I think the study would need more controls to gain any accurate info from it. We'll see hopefully.
Bold