Samantha Walsh
Samantha Walsh has lived with type 1 diabetes for over five years since 2017. After her T1D diagnosis, she was eager to give back to the diabetes community. She is the Community and Partner Manager for T1D Exchange and helps to manage the Online Community and recruit for the T1D Exchange Registry. Prior to T1D Exchange, Samantha fundraised at Joslin Diabetes Center. She graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a Bachelors degree in sociology and early childhood education.
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After you exercise for 30 minutes or more, do you notice any of the following with your blood glucose levels after? (Select all that apply) Cancel reply
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If there is insulin in me it will go down. If I exercise before my insulin then it will go up.
I have only ever noticed downward trends, with severity depending on my digestion, time and exertion variabilities.
Tremendous decrease in BG.
When younger, I could walk 6 or 7 miles and hardly notice anything. Now, in my 70’s, I can drop 200 points just by sweeping the floor. What gives? Who knows. 😕
You may want to ask your med team about using Tresiba for basal insulin. This stuff is incredible when it comes to absorption and activation. One dose lasts 24 hours and no matter what level of physical exertion I have, my bg stays stable. I can fast from food, exercise instead of eating lunch, and my bg will not vary more than 10-20 mg/dl. I hate to sound like an advertisement for Novo Nordisk, but they’ve got something here. Good luck!
I have severe drops in my blood glucose when I exercise. Most of my exercise is aerobic, running, elliptical, etc. However, I discovered that having a protein powder drink maintains a much more stable blood glucose while I am working out. However, I need to increase my insulin after my workout.
Yep, I usually have to increase my insulin too after a workout.
Depende da intensidade. Caso seja de baixa intensidade não há alteração, mas se for de alta intensidade e não tiver aplicado insulina, há um aumento.
It depends on the intensity. If it is of low intensity there is no change, but if it is of high intensity and no insulin has been applied, there is an increase.
Having been T1D for 66 of my 83 years, I am longer able
to exercise.
It depends on the type of exercise. I do all kinds of things (weight lifting, various forms of cardio, walking) and, surprisingly, the type of exercise that causes my blood sugar to drop the fastest is just walking. I think more difficult types of cardio (spin classes, etc.) involve a spike in adrenaline so they actually end up causing a rise in blood sugar afterwards.
With aerobic like dance hiit or fast walking/ hiking I trend down but with strength training I go up.
Starting blood sugar of 145. Set the activity setting on Omnipod 5. Eat an apple (no bolus) – still end up Hypo. Very frustrating!
Was much better on Tslim X2 with Control IQ.
That’s good to know. In process of switching to tandem x2 from MDI. Did see a few articles saying tandem has a better system. Excited about Mobi. Almost tube free.
Definitely different for walking vs. weightlifting! I have a 20-ish carb snack before walking, and a 12-ish carb snack before weightlifting/working out. And I carb up high for tennis, too!
After switching to Tresiba and MDI, I can exercise as long or as short as I want with no change to my glucose! In my opinion, Tresiba is a miracle therapy. It’s almost as if it has a mind for its purpose and stays on task no matter what I do physically.
Thats a tricky question! different exercises have different results.
My glucose will typically plummet during the exercise activity, however, it will spike shortly after.
Extremely high
After my workout I have a short rise in glucose levels which is followed by a drop the size of the drop is of course dependent on how hard the workout was.
Issue is running lowers BG while weights increases BG
Depends on the exercise. Weights no change. Some cardio goes lower but other cardio raises. It’s a guessing game.
I answered Other. It depends on what my BS was before I started. The most common reaction is a slight uptick and then a crash about 45 minutes to an hour later.
Depends on my insulin on board and food eaten beforehand. Also depends on the exercise. I will often spike after long runs bc I keep my insulin low during them, but I will plummet if there’s any IOB when I do any sort of activity.
As others have said, I notice the largest effects with aerobic exercise and see little change in BG with resistance training or Pilates. The effect of aerobic exercise seems to depend on my metabolic state. If I have food in my system, aerobic exercise tends to reduce my BG in a way that’s correlated with intensity. If I’m “starving”, I often see my BG increase with exercise. I like to do my cardio workout after meals and reduce my pre-meal bolus to accommodate the expected BG drop.
Trends towards hypo. 30 minutes or less almost no change. But 45 minutes or more of moderate to heavy activity will cause a dramatic decrease for a bit. I try to start in the 150 to 180 range. My rule of thumb is 15g carb for every 5k of run or jog that I do but only when exceeding a 5k. 5k or less there is no need to adjust for myself.
I have seen all of these happen, even with the same exercise.
My exercise is limited to walking up and down two flights of stairs to do laundry, walking during grocery shopping, loading and unloading groceries from the car to our 2nd floor apartment, etc. The usual result is a hypo anywhere from 40 minutes later to 3 hours later. It’s very difficult to accurately guess when I’ll start trending down.
If I exercise for 30 minutes straight I will definitely be headed for a fall.
During exercise I have a moderate to rather sharp drop in my glucose reading. Afterwards, it will rebound to where it was and beyond at a moderate or rather sharp rate of increase.
Depends on the type of exercise. High intensity equals high bg. Low intensity equals low bg.
I don’t know how to answer this question as posed. After 30 minutes of exercise, but while I’m still exercising, my blood glucose will be falling, sometimes requiring me to add carbs. A few minutes after I stop the exercise, I’ll get a rebound, which can vary in size, sometimes taking me all the way to hyperglycemia.
Exactly me too.
Depends on exercise. Moderate walking makes me go down, high intensity I go up, but then go down. I just keep checking my CGM.
At 84, I don’t exercise for 30 minutes at a time. But since not exercising regularly, I find my BG’s are very unstable. Just showering or dressing can lower it quickly. I have to take my activities into account all the time.
At my age, food or activity seems to be taking much longer to have any impact.
Soooo many variables here. Depends on how I did during my ride with nutrition, level of the ride, length of the ride, day of the week, phase of the moon, relative humidity, cloud cover, etc. I have had all the scenarios above.
It really depends on the time I exercise and what my sugars where b4 i exercised and what kind of exercise.
When I do 30 minutes of cardio, if I hadn’t reduced my basal, I always bottom out.
I use the exercise mode plus have a special workout setting of only 25% of my normal Basel as I really crash I I don’t.
Heavily depends on whether we’re doing strength training (hyper) or cardio (hypo).
Good question and hard to answer. Rise or fall in BG during exercise depends on the following factors: 1) my insulin on board; 2) how much fat or protein in the meal prior to exercise; 3) whether the exercise is anaerobic or aerobic. During a match, my electrolytes are really important. So, I bring two different kinds of drinks with me. One for if my blood glucose goes high (>140) and one for if it gets low (<140). My goal is to have my BG between 140 – 160 during matches.
If I do cardio at the gym, it usually drops.
If I do weights at the gym, it usually stays steady or increases.
Dependent on the type of exercise I, initially, see a rise in blood glucose levels, followed up about 1.5 to 2 hours later a fall in blood glucose levels.
I definitely spike for the most part after I exercise. It happens more with evening exercise than exercise than during the day, but even after afternoon exercise, I usually have to give myself extra insulin. And this is with aerobic exercise which usually makes me go low during the exercise time. I think part of the problem is that the activity mode slows down the amount of insulin I get while exercising so after I am finished exercising, the lower amounts of insulin in my system cause the spike. Very frustrating. I feel exercise is my hardest thing to account for in my quest for as little variation in my blood sugar levels.
My answer depends on the type of exercise. 30 minutes of aerobic work (elliptical, walking) results in small decrease in blood glucose. However, I do weight work/cross training after 30 minutes of aerobic. My blood glucose after that goes up drastically. And when I do 60 minutes of training with my personal trainer, BG increase is dramatic and sustained.