I am having a problem with overnight hypos, at all times of the night-sometimes between the typical midnight to 3am slot, but also later on towards dawn.
I do my exercise in the evening, most of the time a run, a long walk, dynamic (not relaxing) yoga or training session with my running group, lasting an hour and a half of strength and sprint/series/changes of rhythm runs. I finish between 7pm and 830pm.
I get home, shower and have dinner, which is always 100gr of full-fat, Greek yoghurt with walnuts. (I live in Spain, we eat a bigger lunch and smaller dinner, also aiming, with help of a shrink, to never skip any meals and we decided this dinner I can do-bit of disordered eating going on, but working on fixing it.)
I have lowered my basal from .85-.80 from midnight to 0230am on the advice of my endo and if my bg is on the low side, under 100, i will lower my basal to 80% for the whole night, but if it is 150 going to bed, like last night, I don´t want to put a lowered basal. (Sometimes I finish very intense workouts high.)
I am looking to see if anyone else exercises at this time and has these problems with hypos and if you have a specific food that you eat that helps combat them. the yogurt has the three macronutrients and the walnuts are fat and some protein, so I am expecting them to keep me high enough to go through the night if I can´t lower the basal when I am higher at bedtime. Or just further experiment with lowering basal.
Sorry, maybe I didnt explain myself. My dinner is at about 10pm, when people in Spain usually have dinner. I eat for dinner 100 grams of yogurt with walnuts in it. I want to know if someone eats something else that they can depend on to keep them level through the night after exercising in the evening. It would probably be something that they have as a snack before bedtime-most people in other countries maybe have dinner earlier. So any bedtime snacks they find that keep them from going hypo overnight.
Are you pretty certain that you are not over-bolusing that evening meal? I have been. That means that 4 hours after bed, I end up with crippling lows in the middle of the night.
It tough when you are running that really tight control range…
Well, I am bolusing using my normal algorithm, maybe I should reduce it for the exercise. Thanks, I will try this for a couple of nights. Tackling it from the bolus side instead of the basal might work.
Ok. I thought yogurt and nuts would work? Otherwise juice to raise bg before you sleep and then drop basal more as well. Juice is what I do but I also have a snack before sleeping that I bolus for and usually raise basal because I often spike up. But I often crash too. I just wake up and drink juice then. There is no way to predict it. I prefer going low to waking up high.
Its prob the bolus if you go low 4 hours after you eat (when any correction would normally hit). I’ve noticed that’s when I’m going down. Might be the same for you.
Generally I am not eating at night. But I do sometimes get on my exercise bike at night and if it’s because I haven’t done my 10 miles yet I am usually drinking a few ounces of soymilk with half a vegan chocolate chip cookie or vegan peanut caramel candy bar (both about 16 carbs) right after I finish or right before bedtime. The soymilk for me has a tendency to raise me later than sooner and while I get a quicker rise from the cookie or the candy bar it usually has a delayed increase for part of the carbs.
I spent many years playing ice hockey at night before the pandemic. A few things that helped me prevent low BG while sleeping were: I always ate after playing and I bolused for that meal-sized snack. My go to late night food was peanuts and 2 or 3 Kind Protein bars with whole milk. Probably around 30-40 grams of low glycemic carbs but with lots of protein and a moderate amount of fat. The exercise was intense enough to prevent me from falling asleep for a few hours afterward so I tried to eat as soon as possible after exercise so I would not have much active bolus still on board when I fell asleep. Basal decreases before, during exercise and while sleeping were necessary but took a lot of trial and error.
I am thinking it is more the exercise, as it hypos happen on the evenings I exercise, but lowering my bolus for my yogurt on those night might help-thanks!
Thanks so much for your input. I wish I could exercise earlier in the day-so much easier! Do you think you will get back to hockey after this nightmare is over?
Yes I plan to restart hockey but I have no idea how much longer the wait will be. I miss the social aspect of it as much as the workout and adrenaline boost. Interestingly, several reports have come out concluding that indoor ice hockey can become a super spread event for COVID.
