I was originally diagnosed as insulin resistant and was aggressively exercising and trying to gain muscle in order to gain insulin sensitivity. Turns out that I was misdiagnosed and I'm T1 and I do not have any resistance at all.
I'm still going to continue exercising, but I was wondering... if I do not have insulin resistance, will exercise and gaining muscle still make me more sensitive? Do I want to be more insulin sensitive?
Yes. The more muscle mass you build, the more sensitive you become and the less insulin you need. The less insulin you need, the better it is.
Hi mcfc: I would say, "it depends!" I think it is always a good thing to get exercise, because it helps in SO many ways. I would say, how much is your TDD (total daily dose) versus your weight? If it is 0.5 units per kg or less, that is associated with long life in a Type 1 based on studies of Joslin medalists. Finally, I am glad that you were correctly diagnosed; it is so important.
I'm glad you have the proper diagnosis now and treatment hopefully. If you need to lose weight I would do that and build up muscle etc. I have tried mostly unsuccessfully to build up muscle post dka. I'm very insulin sensitive most of the time as well as exercise sensitive. As Christopher said the more sensitive you are the less insulin you will need to take and that is safer overall. When you have low insulin production it is often more difficult to balance out the insulin in your body properly to avoid highs/lows etc. The more fat you have usually the less sensitive you are to insulin.
Yes your TDD should decrease with more muscle mass but at the same time you need to be aware of some things that might happens along the way. Exercise will lower your requirements for insulin but be careful when it comes to dealing with hypos. Now if you are trying to lose fat weight and gain muscle I would say try to cut back on insulin as your main approach to prevent taking in excessive calories to prevent or treat hypos. Not all exercises are going to elicit the same reaction in your blood sugar and you might find that with resistance exercises you see a spike in your blood glucose during your workouts and then a late onset hypo like 4-6 hours after you work out. Now you can just plan for this by cutting back on your insulin at a meal time post exercise or you can do a mix of lifting with some aerobic exercise. Overall adding exercise to gain muscle and to lose fat weight is very important just be careful along the way.