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Diagnosed With Metabolic Syndrome? Trending Topics. What Parents Need to Know. Share this article via email with one or more people using the form below. Recheck your blood sugar 15 minutes later. If it's still too low, have another 15 gram carbohydrate serving and test again 15 minutes later. If you haven't finished your workout, you can continue once your blood sugar returns to a safe range.
Check your blood sugar as soon as you finish exercising and again several times during the next few hours. Exercise draws on reserve sugar stored in your muscles and liver. As your body rebuilds these stores, it takes sugar from your blood.
The more strenuous your workout, the longer your blood sugar will be affected. Low blood sugar is possible even four to eight hours after exercise. Having a snack with slower-acting carbohydrates, such as a granola bar or trail mix, after your workout can help prevent a drop in your blood sugar.
Exercise is beneficial to your health in many ways, but if you have diabetes, testing your blood sugar before, during and after exercise may be just as important as the exercise itself. There is a problem with information submitted for this request. Sign up for free, and stay up-to-date on research advancements, health tips and current health topics, like COVID, plus expert advice on managing your health.
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Show references Grant RW, et al. Standards of medical care in diabetes — Diabetes Care. McCulloch DK. With increased activity, muscle cells become much more sensitive to insulin. This enhanced insulin sensitivity may continue for many hours after the exercise is over, depending on the extent of the activity. The more intense and prolonged the activity, the longer and greater the enhancement in insulin sensitivity. With enhanced insulin sensitivity, insulin exerts a greater force than usual.
A unit that usually covers 10 grams of carbohydrate might cover 15 or Most daily activities and aerobic exercises activities performed at a challenging but sub-maximal level over a period of 20 minutes or more will promote a blood sugar drop due to enhanced insulin sensitivity and accelerated glucose consumption by muscle cells.
To prevent low blood sugar, one can reduce insulin, increase carbohydrate intake, or a do combination of both. When exercise is going to be performed within an hour or two after a meal, the best approach is usually to reduce the mealtime insulin. If you exercise at a time when rapid-acting insulin is not particularly active, such as upon waking, before meals or midway between meals, it is best to consume extra carbohydrate prior to the activity.
For activities lasting more than two hours, it can also be helpful to reduce long-acting or basal insulin. When adjusting mealtime insulin, both the dose to cover food and the dose to cover a high reading are made more effective by exercise and need to be reduced. Not only do activity multipliers help you to avoid hypoglycemia, they also enable you to lose weight more effectively. Reducing insulin means that your body will store less fat and break more down for use as energy.
If you take medication other than insulin for your diabetes, you may or may not need to reduce or eliminate the dose. Only certain medications can cause hypoglycemia; medications that do not have the potential to cause hypoglycemia should not be changed.
If you take a medication that can cause hypoglycemia, continue to take it prior to your first couple of exercise sessions and see what happens. But check your blood sugar often and be prepared with rapid-acting carbs in case you drop. Check with your doctor before making this type of change on your own.
However, when taken along with rapid-acting insulin prior to exercise, they can lead to severe hypoglycemia that may be very difficult to treat - it is generally not a good idea to take either with insulin right before exercising. Under certain conditions, extra food intake will be necessary to prevent hypoglycemia during exercise. For example, when exercise is going to be performed before or between meals, reducing the insulin at the previous meal would only serve to drive the pre-workout blood sugar very high.
A better approach would be to take the normal insulin dose at the previous meal and then snack prior to exercising. These include sugared beverages including juices, soft drinks and sports drinks , breads, crackers, cereal, and low-fat i. The size of the snack depends on the duration and intensity of your workout. The harder and longer your muscles are working, the more carbohydrate you will need in order to maintain your blood sugar level.
The amount is also based on your body size: the bigger you are, the more fuel you will burn while exercising, and the more carbohydrate you will need. Granted, there is no way of knowing exactly how much you will need, but the chart below should serve as a reasonable starting point. To use the chart, match up your approximate body weight to the general intensity of the exercise.
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