Today was a good day! After much trial and more research (through Facebook groups and medical literature) I finally figured out my recipe for staying in my range during cardio. It turns out I may have been too ambitious with my expectations of not eating before some heavy cardio.
The Process I followed was:
Set a temporary over-ride for my basal (40% reduction) and increase my target to 7.
2. I ate a pre-run snack in the form of low carb granola and yogurt.
3. Waited for my glucose to rise above 6 ( I started at 6.8mmol/l)
4. Ran. I kept the loop closed as I wanted to see what would transpire. All in all I think it went well 🙂
An interesting development from moving over to a pump has been exercise. Whilst resistance training hasn’t resulted in any issues controlling blood glucose (BG), aerobic (cardio) training seems to be heavily impacted by the fast acting insulin being used as basal. My previous strategy was to have no insulin on board (IOB) and fasted, this approach doesn’t work as well when pumping. My ability to stay in range during runs are improving by including fast acting carbs (preferably in liquid form) prior to running, but there is still much tuning to be done. My strategy yesterday was ingesting about 25g of carbs before the run and injecting .3 units just prior to running. I wanted to try this because it was raining and I wanted to disconnect the pump when I ran, as apposed to how I was managing it by reducing basal (50%) 30 min prior to running and for the duration of the run. It was a terrible idea!
I ended up having a little low during the run and then rebounding from adrenaline ( I had a little race with my running partner) from sprinting. This resulted in me needing to wait an extra hour to bring my glucose back into range before lunch.
Time in Range was calculated at <3.9 mmol/l AND >7.8 mmol/l
The daily stats are definitely improving as can be seen by my time in range (TIR) stats above. The morning basal testing revealed that I needed to increase by basal from about 6am up from .8 U/hour to at least 1.1. U/hour, further testing is still required in order to confirm these numbers. I had around 100g of carbs, including ‘fake carbs’ which is added into Loop as 25% of protein and 10% of fat per meal. I’m still not convinced that Loop is particularly effective at managing gluconeogenesis (the conversation of protein and fat into carbohydrates) as I find that if I use 4 hour digestion times I go low and 5 hour digestion times I spike slightly. I suppose more testing in needed 🙂
15 days into starting my Anubis transmitter with Dexcom sensor and so far its working fairly well. I’m interested to see how these sensors hold up on other parts of the body in comparison.
Dick The Diabetic's APS Adventures 