i am asking this question b/c not only that i am curious, but b/c i have a challenge during the humid summer months. i simply cannot leave my well air-conditioned home. w/ the hot weather, i feel like i will faint. some days. my BG goes up, other days my BG go down; but, my BG is never steady (as i look to my CGM).
does anyone experience this similar problem? challenge? and, do you have any suggestions/tricks for compensating this pain in the tushy?
Hi Daisy,
I do have problems with the heat and humidity. I have to carry a ton of water with me and back up foods, because I never know where my BS is going to end up. I find that in the other three seasons I do better and have a more consistent BS level. But feel very challenged by the summer heat, and humidity. Not that I can’t go outside, it two things that prevent it.
One is the heat, and walking drain more energy so I can go hypo quickly, the second is the humidity slows me down, making me choose my activities and distances with greater care.
Being a diabetic has challenges all over the place, I personally never thought weather was going to be one of them, but it is. My endo tells me this is not that uncommon.
I don’t know if I helped or if I’m just rambling. Good luck!
This summer I learned that my body needs higher bolus and basal settings. We had waaaay to many days over 100 degrees and I was eating up the insulin - with a decreased appetite and still active (the gym has AC).
Absolutely! I’ve been trying to figure this out for myself this summer. My work rarely turns on the AC, and it’s a physical therapy clinic so we’re all moving around and it gets hot. I had one or two episodes of unexpected (and stubborn) lows at work, so I approached my boss about it and he gave me the OK to control the AC. I know he doesn’t like to turn it on much because it’s expensive (it’s a small business…I get it…kind of), so I try to tolerate as much as I can temperature-wise, but today it wasn’t even excessively hot, it was just humid and I started to feel myself dragging, and my BG was being stubbornly low once again, and even now at home, hours later, it’s still taking some work to get it back up.
I wonder what it is about humidity that affects BG? Or affects our insulin maybe? I don’t know. I wish I had suggestions for how to compensate - I’m just glad we had plenty of halloween candy around today!
One of only 2 ambulance calls for severe low happened on a very humid, hot summer day back in the late 90’s… No real way to explain why I went so low as I was not overly active more than usual , had eaten normally, felt it coming on and started to eat grapes I had for lunch at about 10am, then orange juice but could not get sugar back up until glyco shot from EMT… Always blamed it on the weather that day.