[MadRebel]

Hello all. Haven't been around much because of personal committment's, but thought I'd run this one by to see some reaction's and get some input.

When I awake in the morning's I normally have a fasting value of between 4.5-5.5 (81-99). I then eat my breakfast which consist of two swedish knacker brood (a rather large quaker each containing 6 carb's) smeared with a low carb cheese spread (contains only 2 carb's p/100gr and I spread it very, very thin) plus a small cup of skimmed milk. (By small, I mean really, really small. About 100ml only containing 5 carb's).

I know most of you are going to disapprove of what I'm about to say and probably flame me big time, but it's the way I am. I smoke small cigarello's and right after my breadfast I smoke one of these.

Once I'm finished with that I put on some sport clothing and go for a 45 minute, really hard/fast bike ride. Been doing this now for over a year.

Two hour's after my breakfast, and after taking my ride, I check my value's and am normally between the 5.6-8.0 (100.8-144).

Now...here's what I need some input on. This morning I was not able to take a bike ride because of incredibly stormy weather and my bad weather clothing was in the wash. So...I decided to grab an umbrella and take a fast 30 minute walk. Worked up quite a good sweat as well.

Again, two hour's after my breakfast and after my walk, I checked my value's and I was 3.6 (64.8)!

My question is: Is a fast 30 minute walk better, as far as exercising goes, than a very hard 45 minute bike ride, or is it on an individual basis?

I intend to do this again tomorrow morning and see if I have the same result's.

My afternoon value's (at 4:15 pm daily) I'm always between 2.8-4.5 (50.4-81). I attribute these value's to the fact that in the afternoon's about and hour and a half after lunch I always go for a one hours hard/fast bike ride and like my morning ride, have been doing this now for over a year.

I watch my diet and have lost 13 kilo's (28.7 lbs) since February of this year making my weight 80 kilo's (176.3 lbs). My intention's are to lose 5 more kilo's (11.02 lbs) and the Dr. will take me off my insuline and med's (so he says).

My HbA1c was:

- March of this year: 7.2
- July of this year: 6.2 and
- my most recent one of last week: 5.8

This time last year my HbA1c was always around the 15-18!!!

My cholesterol is 3.4 and my b/p is 120/80.

So...for the exercise expert's...how would you handle this? Throw away the bike and concentrate on walking very hard twice a day? Keep the bike and walk very hard in the morning and ride very hard in the afternoon or continue riding very hard twice a day as I've been doing writing this new result off as a fluke?

Just to let you know...I'm shooting 12 unit's of Humolog Mix at breakfast along with taking 2mg Amaryl and 8 unit's Humolog Mix at dinner along with taking 2mg Amaryl.

You input and idea's are most valued and appreciated and I look forward to hearing those. BTW...my apology's for this being such a long post but I wanted to provide as much info as I could, and no...I'm not a long-winded southern Baptist preacher.

Take care everyone and

Greeeeetz

[Scratch]

My guess is this: the hard fast bike ride is more stressful than the fast walk, you probably achieve a higher percentage of your max heart rate and when that happens, my observation of my own self shows that particularly intense exercise of less than an hour in duration will cause my blood sugar to rise, because the body responds by releasing glycogen and turning it into glucose for your body to use.

Better is as always a relative term, depending on what you intend to achieve with the exercise.

Overall, you probably burn more calories with the bike rides, which will help you towards your goal with the weight loss. On the other hand, the hard fast bike rides will tend to spike your blood sugars a bit higher than the walks. On the other hand, you may find over time and observation that the hard fast bike rides will lead to increased insulin sensitivity of longer duration than the walks. Or maybe not, it's individually variant and the best you can do as always is take notes.

Personally I think, the biggest thing is do what you enjoy doing, so long as you're not putting yourself at risk in some way.

[Gangrel]

Originally Posted by Scratch

My guess is this: the hard fast bike ride is more stressful than the fast walk, you probably achieve a higher percentage of your max heart rate and when that happens, my observation of my own self shows that particularly intense exercise of less than an hour in duration will cause my blood sugar to rise

I find the same thing playing ice hockey. Short, hard, bursts of activity, get the adrenaline going, which causes the BG to rise.

I've stopped eating before hockey, or drinking Gatorade, as my BG before->after either stay the same, or rise up, like your bike ride.

[xMenace]

Yes, what they said. But also once is not a pattern. You do have to repeat things.

[MachineHead]

Pardon me while I ramble... I have a similar pattern -- I get into an exercise groove, my sugars at some point seem to get used to the routine, then I do something that I think is not going to have any effect, but it turns out that I get a whole new sugar response (usually lower). For instance, I have an exercise bike I pound on to get my sugars down at night. After a while, this gets too routine, so I switch things up with a brisk walk. I check my sugars and lo and behold, I'm doing MUCH better. So, I think at that point that I've found the magic bullet, so I incorporate the walking. After a while, my sugars quit responding like before, so I go back to biking and I get the same result (i.e., new magic bullet).

The conclusion I've come to is that variety is good because I can't find the "magic bullet" -- the pattern is, there is no pattern, so I work around this by randomly inserting new exercise protocols when I think things are getting stale. Same with eating. Sometimes certain foods don't affect me at all, other times, with the same foods, eaten at the same times, made with the same ingredients, my sugars go through the roof.

You may have stumbled on the same magic...

- jb

[Alice]

Your breakfast seems very low carb for someone burning that many calories in a workout. That means your body is either going to get the carbs from food (you aren't giving it many carbs) or from a liver-dump...you are probably releasing glucose during your workout.

This sounds contrary to what a lot of people say on these boards...(I'm not a believer in extreme low carbs when exercising)...but try just a few more carbs before workout. I find that keeps my numbers pretty even and I don't crash too much afterwards...or have a high increase afterwards.

I'm not talking about carbo-loading for a marathon.

I read years ago that Martina Navratilova (sp?) ate a bagel before every match...what is that, about 45 carbs? She burned that off for energy...but bagels are a pretty slow burn which messes up most of our numbers if we eat an entire bagel.

Try maybe 1/2 bagel before working out?

[MadRebel]

Thnx to all of you who have replied so far. Your input and idea's are most appreciated and meaningful.

For Scratch: I'm asking you this because what with you being busy training for a marathon, you're obviously an experienced and knowledgeable runner. You state, and I quote:

Overall, you probably burn more calories with the bike rides, which will help you towards your goal with the weight loss.

What if...instead of that hard brisk walk I start off running a bit? After not having ran for quite a few year's, I know I have to start of very slow and easily. Say...something like the Airborne Shuffle maybe? (Yes, I'm former military. Army Ranger for 13 year's and for those who don't know what the Airborne Shuffle is...well, you know when you see a movie and it takes place on a military base and you always see a platoon or company of soldier's running and singing in cadence? Well, that's the Airborne Shuffle. You can easily do 10 mile's at that pace once you've worked your way up to it. And working your way up to it at such a pace doesn't take too long a time). Will that help me burn off more calorie's than the walk and incorporate this with my afternoon bike ride?

I actually got three goal's and they are:

1. To maintain as low a blood value as humanly safe without having critical hypo's;

2. To burn off as many calorie's as I can to reach my goal of losing 5 more kilo's, so that the Dr. will

3. Take me off my insuline and med's so that I can try and go the route of treating this diabete's without insuline and med's.

Granted, being 57 yr's old now I'm fortunate that I can still do all this without too much difficulty and to be honest I don't know how the situation will be for me in another, say, 5 - 10 year's. Whether or not I'll be physically be able to maintain this routine, but for now, I have to give it the 'ole college try, so-to-speak and go for it.

Again...thnx everyone for you replie's and input and

Greeeeetz to all

[MadRebel]

Originally Posted by Alice

Try maybe 1/2 bagel before working out?

thnx for you input Alice but I don't know of anywhere here in Rotterdam where a bagel can be had. What would be an alternative to a bagel? Please don't say a donut...eating a donut is almost orgasmic for me and I'm afraid that should I eat one again, that all my work will be down the drain as I know that I wouldn't be able to eat just one.

[Alice]

Yeah, I guess a Krispy Kreme is out of the question! Sometimes on the way to the gym I eat a slice of whole wheat (whole grain) bread ... it usually gives me a pretty even workout. I keep oj in the locker for the ride home if needed, but haven't had too many lows if I eat before.

I just can't stomach a lot of food before a workout...but my workout is not as strenuous as yours!

My new workout is walking to lunch (grins) and walking home...pretty safe walk! It's about 3.6 miles roundtrip.

[Scratch]

Originally Posted by MadRebel

For Scratch: I'm asking you this because what with you being busy training for a marathon, you're obviously an experienced and knowledgeable runner. You state, and I quote:

What if...instead of that hard brisk walk I start off running a bit? After not having ran for quite a few year's, I know I have to start of very slow and easily. Say...something like the Airborne Shuffle maybe? (Yes, I'm former military. Army Ranger for 13 year's and for those who don't know what the Airborne Shuffle is...well, you know when you see a movie and it takes place on a military base and you always see a platoon or company of soldier's running and singing in cadence? Well, that's the Airborne Shuffle. You can easily do 10 mile's at that pace once you've worked your way up to it. And working your way up to it at such a pace doesn't take too long a time). Will that help me burn off more calorie's than the walk and incorporate this with my afternoon bike ride?

I don't know about me being super experienced and knowledgeable.

Personally, I tend to favor the idea of trying to do most of the exercise in the lower end of the aerobic spectrum. Although that may be influenced some by me doing a more stressful weightbearing exercise with running compared to cycling -- in other words, I broke my tibia the first attempt at turning into a runner and that has helped color my view of doing a lot of my running miles at an easy pace.

Overall, though, it's pretty clear that the more intensely you do the exercise, the more calories you'll burn per hour of exercise. The difficulty with that is how well can that be maintained longterm. Maybe for you it can be done, some people have attitudes which are better suited for intense burst of activity. I've discovered I like the longer prolonged sessions of easier exercise, I find often when I get out on runs that last over an hour, that's when the runner's high really kicks in for me.

My suggestion would be that if you think it's possible, see about maybe trying to do a longer walk or a longer bike ride. See if you like it.

Ultimately, I'm a big believer in doing what you like to that keeps you active. By keeping active, I mean staying healthy so you can keep doing it as well. The more intense way of exercising certainly has benefits but you need to be aware that it probably increases the risk of injury. With the risk of injury is the concurrent risk of being disabled from being active.

[Alice]

I have a friend who is an ex-marathon runner. When I asked her why she stopped, she said "I want to be able to run when I'm much older!"...made sense to me! (She was a mother of two, about 38 years old) She still runs several miles a day or whenever she's able.

I have a friend who wrote a book that was released about 1-2 years ago...called something like "A Woman's Guide to Running" or handbook for running...something like that. Her name is Wendy Robbins, if you google or check Amazon.

She told me she found most books on running were geared toward men. She started as a rookie and worked her way up to marathoning. Might be worth checking into...no affiliation except we worked together many years ago.

[Cyborg]

Perhaps the biking involves more of an anaerobic component of exercise than walking...

Anaerobic exercise tends to raise bg, while aerobic exercise tends to lower it.

[gambi]

I agree - I notice when I run 4 miles or do the elliptical for 50 minutes, I'll be lower (80-90) than when I do the stationary bike or a spin class (125-140). I could the resistance on the bike maybe ?

[Ronin]

Hi Mad Rebel!

Any intense exercise will cause your muscle cells to use up the available glycogen which causes the cell to send out a signal for more glucose. This signal is usually that "burn" from lactic acid that tells the liver to release stored glycogen into the blood stream. That, in turn, causes the pancreas to secret more insulin to let the glucose into the muscle cell.

As a fellow cyclist (tandemist actually) I find the same thing happens following hard rides (and we tend to ride hard a lot). However, the effect is short lived and actually insures that you don't become insulin resistant (although I highly recommend that you get a fasting C-Peptide test done to validate that assumption).

I've also had the drop in BG levels from a walk, but the result is not consistent. If you like the hard bike ride, keep pedaling. Your A1c numbers indicate that the routine is working. Don't mess with success!