Lantus and high-intensity exercise

[Ella1]

Hello everyone!

My boyfriend plays football on Saturdays, and it's very competitive. We now figured that the effect after this lasts for a couple of days, so on those days he reduces his doses for bolus insulin.. It also affects basal dose. On Lantus you should stick to the same dose for at least 3 days, only then it will be obvious if it is right for you, as a certain amount of Lantus accumulates in the body during these couple of days, and then it is sustained through injecting the usual dose.

So, when playing football on Saturdays, we figured that the insulin requirements drop significantly straight after the football and the effect lasts till Tuesday.... So let's say we reduce the Lantus dose on Saturday evening, but by the time this new dose settles in in the body it's already Tuesday and the insulin requirements get back to normal, i.e. slightly higher... So unless the exercise is evenly spread during the week and we just stick to the same, now lower dose of basal insulin, it won't work. He tries to fit in some form of exercise during a week to minimise the discrepancy, but sometimes it's not possible.

Does anyone have ideas?

[Andrea]

Yeah, i have an idea, but i don't know if it is what you want to here. Two words for you:
INSULIN PUMP!

It is the only way to have a truely flexible schedule with basal insulin. Exercise was one of the main reasons i wanted to go on the pump. It means that i can reduce my basal for the couple of hours before and then during my exercise. Then i don't have to deal with the lows that follow if i don't stuff my face before i work out (which sortof defeats the purpose of the exercise in the first place!).

Sorry, i cannot give any experienced advice on the lantus, having never been on it myself. What if the lower doses of latus were friday night (in light of the expected practice), sat night and sun night, and then back up on monday night for tuesday? Otherwise would it be possible to compensate during the week with more short acting insulin? Or does that just make him go low after meals? What if meals were smaller and more frequent during the day? That would make more injections of rapid acting insulin, but might provide more insulin coverage.

I think there are a lot of different combinations of insulin/exercise/and carb amounts that he could try. It might take a number of weeks of trial and error while writing EVERYTHING down, but i'm sure you could come up with a solution.

Andrea

[Ella1]

Thank you, Andrea!

We are not 100% wure that a pump will be good for him.. Football can be quite aggressive, so there is a lot of tackling, skidding and falling over on a hard ground pitch.

Thank you for the suggestion to try to lower the dose on Friday. we'll try that. We are trying to fall into some sort of routine, but it's just too many external factors which cause constant adjustments.

Thank you :)

[Gina]

Yea i would th ink that playing football would be a little hard to play with the pump....I guess you have to basically do trial and error....what works one day may not work another ya know! just keep checking during the workout and if you see a drop in your blood sugar try drinking some kind of gatorade or sports drink to keep you blood sugars up

[fishy]

I am planning on starting to ride my bike to work again (I was told to stop when first diagnosed) so this might well be an issue for me. Each way its about 4.5 miles (Highbury to St James's) of reasonably intense cycling and takes about 25 minutes.

I do this ride 3 or 4 times a week on a less than predictable schedule so I doubt it would be possible to adjust my Lantus dose to take this into account.

matthew