I’m noticing that since my swim sessions are M-F that come weekend my blood sugars are spiked. How do you control your blood sugars when you’re not going to be as active as normal, such as vacations and sick days?
Thanks,
Blessed Diabetic
That was my question too! Thanks for asking it Blessed Diabetic! I do really well till the weekend hits. The harder I workout during the weekdays the worse I spike on the weekends. Help!
I usually set mine to the baseline and turn it down to work out? I try to take 1 day off/ week so it is sort of absurd to do it that way but it seems to work ok most of the time?
I swim at 6:00 am my Diabetes Care Team doesn’t have me adjusting my insulin to cover a swim. What we’re doing (and it seems to work) is I eat a light breakfast and take off 10 carbs in my counting. By doing that I take less insulin and seem to stay stable during my swim, half way through I check my BG then refuel and head back in for the rest of the Work Out. But on the weekends I count all my carbs but I still seem to run much higher then I should. I think perhaps I need a different Basal Rate and possibly sensitivity on my pump settings for the weekends and sick days. Isn’t diabetes so much fun? LOL
The problem with the days off is that I am so afraid to shot more insulin to myself, that it is almost imposible to control.
I try to dont change my basal insulin and I try to guess how insulin I should shot to myself. The days off, Its very hard.
This is the kind of thing you could use a different basal pattern for. I see on your profile that you have a ping. You can set 4 different basal patterns.
Very good question! I use MDI’s so usually it’s difficult to adjust basal too much unless I know for sure what my activity will be (for example on days when I’m flying I can add basal without too much concern). But otherwise, I end up just doing corrections with Humalog which leave me a bit behind the curve.
Are you type 1 or 2?
I swim every day to avoid this problem, I know it's hard to predict how your body will respond once you get off your regular routine. I am a type 1 on an insulin pump, so I pretty much have two rates programmed into my pump; one is for regular swim days, the other is for other non-swim days. Non-swim says should still have some sort of structure... in fact it may be more important to have structure on these days! For me it means no eating carbs past a certain time of the afternoon, and not over-eating on carbs throughout the day. My insulin rate is higher on non-swim days, more especially in the night (but not significantly higher).
Hope you find the solution, whatever it may look like for you!
Cheers,
Valerie