I was in Sedona hiking last week (put down 15 miles of hiking in 5 days, I am happy to say) I was taking less insulin throughout the week, of course, to account for significant increase in activity for me and maintaining bg between 80 and 110 most of the time.
The night before our last hike, I went low and it took a couple of hours of snacking to bring back up. The next morning, my bg was 193, and I wasn’t surprised…assuming a rebound. I was going hiking right away so I didn’t take any fast acting insulin to adjust, only long acting lantus.
A half hour later–about 20 minutes into the hike–I started feeling a little shaky and checked my dexcom–75 and double arrows straight down. Plummeting. WHAT!? I sat down right on the trail and started shoving raisins from a trail mix I brought with me into my mouth. I managed to stop the plummet at 50, and I ate at least a cup of raisins before I tested at 113 (with glucometer) Ate another quarter cup of raisins and continued the hike. My bg never went over 117 for the entire day.
Frankly, the only logic I can come up with is that my body produced a spurt of insulin on its own. Would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on this.
How confident are you in that 192 fasting reading?
I’ve found that substantial increases in my daily exercise really heightens my insulin sensitivity. I’ve also observered that pulling back on insulin doses can sometimes actually drive me lower, an apparent paradox.
Good for you taking on such aggresive exercise! Next time I’d take along some faster acting glucose. Raisins work but take longer. That means the counter-regulatory hormones stay in play longer and add to the rebound.
Managing exercise can be tricky. You did well and next time you’ll do better!
I think I’m with @Terry4. That kind of drop due to exercise is more common for me than otherwise, especially at certain times of day. I went for my usual bike ride last Sunday while still in the midst of a pretty decent post-prandial spike, backed off my basal a bit too and figured I had plenty of glucose on board for the ride, but thank goodness I had my CGM along because I had to bail out after 20 minutes or so after discovering I was heading into a BG crash (didn’t help that I only had one glucose tab in my kit–how’d that happen!). I think it all had to do with time of day. It was later in the afternoon than I usually go and I do seem to have some endogenous insulin production that kicks in starting around 5pm.
I also found that when I was on MDI my Lantus requirement would not decline steadily with regular exercise and weight loss but would change rather suddenly after “sticking” at a certain point–it behaved more like a threshold phenomenon than a continuous function. Dunno if that fits your circumstances? Took me by surprise before I got used to it.
It was a glucometer test, and I did it twice to make sure because I thought it was too high
Definitely, I was taking less insulin than usual due to exercise and still ‘riding’ under 100 a lot of the time. So, while the rebound high as accurate, you think it could drop to 75 with a double hour down within a half hour without any fast acting insulin due to the long terms impact of increased physical activity?
