Sorry to shout, but I am so confused and pissed off. This the second time I've had this weird BG mystery in the last week. I'm trying to keep up with my bike riding even though the weather in the N.E. this time of year makes it hard. So despite the 30° temp I get myself up for a good ride this afternoon. Test BG as per routine to see where things are, whether to suspend my pump or adjust things, before heading out. BG is 143, a bit high considering all I had for lunch was chicken soup and a bit of cheese but hey, some carrots in the soup, maybe a few carbs. Anyway, for me 143 is fine before a bike ride. I usually drop 40-60 points, but a little low before dinner is fine.
So I go for a good hard ride, some good little hills among the straights, great way to get the heart pumping for 50 minutes and enhance my BG control the natural way, right? WRONG. I get back home, stow bike and helmet etc., then test BG per routine and the number 212 is staring up at me from my tester.
212.
Two hundred twelve???? WTF???? Tested again just to make sure,and it actually goes up to 214.
Can anyone explain this to me? I had a similar thing last week: pre-ride BG at about 140, took the same ride, worked it pretty hard, got back and my BG had gone UP to 173.
Since WHEN is going for a hard aerobic workout for 45-50 minutes supposed to make your BG go UP 30, let alone eighty freaking points???
I've been diagnosed T1 for 31 years, switched to using a pump about 2 yrs ago. Thought I'd finally got it pretty well dialed in, but this is a total mystery to me. No report of failed delivery from my pump, I just changed sets yesterday so the insulin should still be fresh and everything has been normal up to now. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?
Intense exercise, and more importantly being psychologically revved up, is strongly associated with elevated BGs. In fact, one counterintuitive response to a low is to engage in a sprint or other brief bout of very intense activity. What's hard is the unpredictability, i.e. the same workout outside of a competition might lower BG but cause it to spike in a competition. It sounds like this is what you experienced. And it's just something to be aware of, and to try to factor into your routine, no magic bullet solutions to predict when it'll happen with perfect reliability or prevent it, at least of which I'm aware. Hopefully others will weigh in also.
Thanks Niccolo, I've never heard that. Certainly never experienced it until now, but I guess the proof is in the BG tester. I do seem to recall that exercise is supposed to cause your BG reservoirs, particularly the liver, to dump their carbs to give you an energy boost. I wonder if exercising in the cold is a factor--it was definitely chilly out there both times this has happened.
As Nicole said, not unusual for you to see post-workout increases. Not sure if it is from liver dumps while working out or whatever but they correct themselves out fairly quickly.
Well, mine only corrected itself after a 7 unit insulin bolus. Part of the whole reason for the exercise is to lower my daily insulin requirement, so it's kind of annoying for it to have the opposite effect.
Ouch, that's a lot of insulin to cover no carbs. Is it possible your adrenaline was particularly pumping during this ride? Or that you ate differently than you have before other rides?
For me, I find I get BG rises only during morning, pre-breakfast exercise, at other times of the day even intense, sporadic, high-adrenaline activity (like sailing racing) drops me, and steady activity like running, cycling, or swimming really drops me. Being on a pump has been fantastic, though, because I can shut off or reduce my basal insulin so I'm not fighting it during exercise.
I went out about 3 hours after a lunch consisting of a bowl of chicken soup, a few slices of cheese and a glass of ice water. Nothing out of the ordinary. Like I say, I normally expect my BG to drop about 40 points for this particular route with the pump on, and since I was at 143 I left it running. Seeing 212 at the end of my ride was a total gobsmacker. My correction factor for that time of day is 16, so it took 7 units to bring 212 down to 100, my target point.
Barring weather or illness I've been trying to do this ride 4 or 5 times a week and I've never seen this kind of result until last week, and now the one today which was even worse. I have the day off tomorrow as well so I'm going to try doing the same routine and see what happens.
Ah, the delightful little mysteries that make T1 such fun to deal with over the years...
I hear you. In addition to the adrenaline/stress possibility, you might also be coming down with some sort of bug? It does sound like a pretty crazy spike, I've mostly read about others experiencing similar things, have been lucky not to experience them myself so far (knocks on wood).
Cool, DrBB, you in fashionable NE! Thats where my best friend lives. I think you all have had more snow than we have this year, good show on keeping at the bike riding. I've been doing some light exercise testing, just so I know what the current patterns are, in case I go onto a pump. In all the fun aerobic and anaerobic tests, I go high. I have been controlling for the other variables so that I can be pretty sure its the exercise. But, I know that sometimes I, like you, go low. Let me find the data...
Here's one from Xcountry skiing (more aerobic). The yellow is the exercise interval and you can see how it jumps way up to 400, but then comes back down on its own. I went in a little high, expecting to go low, but no such luck. When I go on a brief, boring 30 min casual walk with the dog, BG decreases.
I'm going skiing tonight and Charlie Parr is playing at the hill, so my girlish heart is 'all a flutter.' The skiing is not very intense at this hill, though, so I'm hoping to see how much of the exercise BG increase is due to general excitement. I am very, very excited. Keep biking, man! Screw the data. Here's some Charlie for ya'
Thanks mohe0001--interesting data to add to my understanding. In the weeks since I posted this I've been keeping track and the effect, which has recurred a couple of times, seems to have something to do with the outside temperature. When it gets down to the lower 20s and into the teens, my body seems to shift from "hey, nice bit of aerobic exercise we're getting" into "No one goes out in this on purpose! It must be an emergency survival situation!" and starts dumping all my glucose reservoirs to help me save myself before I freeze to death on the arctic tundra, get eaten by wolves or bears or fail to catch that caribou.
For me it's a really unusual reaction--steady hard exercise has ALWAYS dropped my BG heretofore, but this is the first year I've kept it going outside in the winter months.
Alas, the cold is one thing--I've got the gear for it--but riding on snow and ice is quite another (guess what? you fall over!), and it's now been weeks (arrrggghhh!!!!) since I've been able to get out, thanks to this series of blizzards we've been having, along with single-digit temps to keep it all from melting. For a guy who grew up in Minnesota, I'm ashamed to say I'm really getting sick of all this snow. And another blizzard warning is up for tomorrow...
Do you have your pump tubing tucked deep into your pants so it doesn't freeze? That always worries me about the pump. I always thought it was frozen tubing causing the spikes, but now that I'm back on manual injections, I see that there's something else going on.
We are having the winter of our dreams. Its like a tropical paradise. Virtually no snow here. Ice biking is nerve wracking. I've seen a couple of city police out in the parks with snow bikes, but I think they are pretty expensive. Saw some crazy people out racing their motorcycles on the frozen lake last week. I don't know how they pulled that off. Snow bikes
I keep the tube and pump near my skin while riding, yes, but in any case if the tube froze the pump would start yelling "No delivery!" at you with its loudest alert noise.
Yes I have. I picked up running last year or two and had to go on a diabetic runner's blog to get the information about that. I was going up an hour or 1.5 hours in bloodsugar every time I ran. www.runsweet.com I understand you're biking, not riding, but heavy cardio does this to me, wondering if you're experiencing the same thing. I just add a bolus an hour later and check my bg as well just in case, the amount it goes up is not really consistent, just that is goes up.
mmmm...true. It does alarm. We have a cold front coming in, so maybe I can get some cold weather data. Unfortunately, I think I'll have to be miserable cold in order to get those stress hormones like your describing. Last year, it was real cold, and one night somebody broke out the drivers side window on my car, so I drove 1 1/2 hrs in dangerous wind chill and -20 temp, with no window, because I didn't want to be late. I was so cold that I may have became a bit delirious while driving. I kept getting lost, even though I knew the way. MY BG was very high when I arrived. If I have any more episodes of extreme cold exposure I will let you know the results. I hope I don't, though. We may hit -10 this coming Friday.
