type of exercise you find most effective on BG

[FearThePenguin]

Hello everyone. Im a very recent type 2 with a very strong history of diabetes in my family and a love of combat sports. At one time I was an amateur mma fighter and still love to spar, but Im finding it difficult to engage in the very intense aerobic and anaerobic exercise required and not have my meter readings go all over the place for the next three hours. I haven't done much tracking or correlation of my readings yet (did I mention I'm also an engineer?) but was wondering if any evidence exists, empirical or otherwise, that would indicate that more aerobic or mild exercise routines are easier on the sugars. My wife is a researcher and is helping me setup a nice system to gather data and get a grip on whats going on with my insides, but I was looking to see if anyone else had seen similar behaviors.

[Handybear]

I know I am stirring up the pot with this, but I never exercise more than 30 minutes at a time and not strenuously.
I read an article and it said that you shouldn't stress the body if you are type 2.
I have found that 30 minutes of walking, or light weight lifting will drop my number up to 15 points. Which is why I do my exercise 1/2 hour after my evening meal. It works every time.
I am currently maintaing a 14 day bg average of 85.

[xMenace]

Welcome Penguin.

You are bang on! Do a search on 'anaerobic' for more threads like this http://www.diabetesforums.com/forum/exercise/24845-exercise-and-need-carbohydrates.html

[BlueSky]

.. I ... was wondering if ... aerobic or mild exercise routines are easier on the sugars. ....
Aerobic exercise brings blood sugar levels down quickly. And the more insulin resistant you are, the quicker aerobic exercise will reduce the BG level. So this type of exercise is good for dealing with high BG. But it doesn't do anything for long term insulin sensitivity, unless of course if you are using to lose weight. Ultimately, insulin sensitivity is the key driver is blood sugar control.

An-aerobic exercise, on the other hand, doesn't bring down the BG much in the short term, but it builds muscle. And increasing lean muscle mass improves insulin sensitivity. So you get a cumulative long-term payback.

You need to get a mix of anaerobic and aerobic exercise. But if improving your blood sugar control is your main priority, the emphasis needs to be on anaerobic exercise.

Welcome to the forums. ;)

[Stuboy]

Laura and I took up ice skating, we go 3 times a week so we get around 6.5 hours a week consistant exercise... it's been quite good for my blood sugars.

Although being into combat sports... ice skating might not be your thing lol.

[FearThePenguin]

excellent info, thank you for the pointers and the seach suggestions.
I'm not trying to lose weight, in fact much the opposite I'm deperatly trying to maintain to stay in my weight class, but I am 30 years old now and will most likely never fight again, so a little weight loss might not hurt. I'm going to start a little experiment this week and see if I can correlate the amount of time spent in aerobic and anaerobic zones in relationship to my blood sugar. For one week, I'll do my regular routine which places my heartrate in and out of aerobic and anaerobic dozens of times over the course of 45 minutes with 9 minutes of that being the odd hybrid condition that seems to be unique to combat sports. I'll then allow 4 days to recover and ease into pure aerobic and do the same mearsurements for a week and see what I get. I'll graph it all out and send out results when I'm done. Thanks again!

[xMenace]

When I do aerobic, I reduce my basals, maybe, as my BGs will drop slightly. If I go out for a 4 to 6 hr round of golf, I've been known to pack three cans of coke and 3 snickers bars. **** slow public courses :mad: But when I play hockey, a very intense workout, I've recorded shoot-ups from 6.5 mmol/l at the start to 24 mmol/l at the end, one hour later.

I am now in mild exercise mode ;)

Have you ever seen Morrison the basketball play? I've seen him test and bolus during a game.

[BlueSky]

.... I'm going to start a little experiment this week and see if I can correlate the amount of time spent in aerobic and anaerobic zones in relationship to my blood sugar. For one week, I'll do my regular routine which places my heartrate in and out of aerobic and anaerobic dozens of times over the course of 45 minutes with 9 minutes of that being the odd hybrid condition that seems to be unique to combat sports. I'll then allow 4 days to recover and ease into pure aerobic and do the same mearsurements for a week and see what I get. I'll graph it all out and send out results when I'm done. Thanks again!
My understanding is that, when you are in the aerobic zone, your muscles use glucose in the blood stream and fat for energy. When you start exercising, it is mainly blood glucose, but fat becomes the main energy source after about 30 minutes. This is why aerobic exercise pulls blood sugar down very quickly, especially during the first half hour.

Because adequate oxygen is required for fat to be burned and there is a limited supply of glucose in the bloodstream, when you go into the anaerobic zone, muscle glycogen becomes the main source of energy. Your blood sugar is not affected when this glycogen is utilised because the glucose is used in the muscle in which it is stored. There is also a stress response that causes glycogen in the liver to be mobilised, which increases blood glucose. This why intense exercise usually causes blood glucose to go up.

I have been able to observe these effects during and after different types of exercise, like during a 5 hour tramp or after a 1 hour gym workout. But I don't think I would be able to keep track if I was going in and out of the aerobic/anearobic zones. The processes involved are not that clearly defined and the results are likely to be confusing. But I will be very interested to hear what you find. ;)

[Scratch]

excellent info, thank you for the pointers and the seach suggestions.
I'm not trying to lose weight, in fact much the opposite I'm deperatly trying to maintain to stay in my weight class, but I am 30 years old now and will most likely never fight again, so a little weight loss might not hurt. I'm going to start a little experiment this week and see if I can correlate the amount of time spent in aerobic and anaerobic zones in relationship to my blood sugar. For one week, I'll do my regular routine which places my heartrate in and out of aerobic and anaerobic dozens of times over the course of 45 minutes with 9 minutes of that being the odd hybrid condition that seems to be unique to combat sports. I'll then allow 4 days to recover and ease into pure aerobic and do the same mearsurements for a week and see what I get. I'll graph it all out and send out results when I'm done. Thanks again!
Lacking some info here, but guessing that you have been for the most part active throughout your life and in good shape, who diagnosed you and how were you diagnosed as type 2?

There are type 2s who are thin and develop at a young age. But then there are also type 1.5s, LADA, adults whose immune system gets triggered into attacking the beta cells of the pancreas. Seriously, if I were a doctor and I had an active and fit adult presenting with diabetic symptoms, I'd go testing for evidence of it being type 1.5 and not type 2.

If you're just seeing a general physician, be aware that not all general physicians are all that good at treating diabetics and some really don't know much at all, especially about how it's not juvenile or adult-onset diabetes, but how it's type 1, 1.5 and 2. If your GP isn't knowledgeable beyond the rudimentary basics, it might be well worth your while to get a referral to an endo and having the blood drawn to look for the signs of 1.5. If you are 1.5, you owe it to yourself to get properly treated ASAP.

[FearThePenguin]

I was pegged as a type 2 back in November. I had developed what I thought was good control (waking up in the 90s, peaking at 135) until I got knocked down sick with one illness after another for a solid month. Since then , I wake up at 150 and peak in the 300s with the lowest I ever get somewhere around 130. I am in pretty good shape, I stay at 6'2 and 205lbs (in a 185 to 205 weight class, it pays to be the big guy). I'm honestly not entirely sure what my physicians background is when it comes to diabetes, we just moved ino town not too long ago and haven't been seeing her for a terribly long time. I do have an entire regement of blood work coming up soon though that I plan on passing to my most excellent Dr back home.
On a side note, I've hammered out a few more details of my little informal research project. I'm going to go for 3 weeks instead of two, Im going to eat the same exact meals for each week (ala fish on all 3 mondays, chicken on all 3 tuesdays, etc) at as close to the same time as I can. The third week I'm adding in because I'm curious to see if my troubles are coming from the intensity of the workout, or the intensity of getting knocked around. Adrenaline, and controlling it, plays a huge part of a fight, so I'm going to do what amounts to a shadow boxing routine on the third week to try to mimic where there was actual fighting in the first week and see where that gets me.

[FearThePenguin]

The data has started to come in. This first week was just my usual routine which looks like this.
Warm up for 5 minutes on the treadmill just to limber up. Then do 1 minute on, 1 minute off intervals for one mile. The low side of the interval is at 5 mph and the high side is at 8mph. Good and warmed up after that.
Jump rope in 1 minute sets for 4 minutes. The first 3 sets are two turns per second, the last minute is as fast as I can go and usually averages out to a bit over 200 turns in a minute.
starting to breath hard now.
pyramids of situps, pushups, weighted squats and medicine ball slams. 1 minute each to start, then 45s, 30s, 15s with no rest in between activities and a 45s rest between sets.
sweating good now.
4 to 5 minutes on the speed bag, then some light weight work to get the arms ready for about 4 minutes. Mostly focusing on traps and triceps.
15 minutes on the heavy bag doing 3 minute rounds with 30 second breaks.
walk for 2 minutes to cool down, go to work and have lunch.
I did variations of this routine for a week and so far, the numbers indicate that my blood sugar doesn't like this one bit. I increase my blood sugar by roughly 50 points by the time I leave the gym and eating afterwards runs me anywhere from an additional 50 to an additional 200. Roughly three hours later, things start to come back to normal. Keep in mind, I'm on no meds and have fairly lose control of my numbers (Dr agreed to letting me try things on my own for a bit first)
I would call this routine an aerobic and anaerobic mix. Next week I'm going to do pure anaerobic.

[barbarac]

I am still trying to figure out a statement my nurse made. If there are signs of eye trouble (slight bleeding), not to exercise at all (except maybe walking)--no aerobics, sit-ups, weights, or anything that would raise blood pressure. This goes against all I had heard in the past. Don't know what to do now.

[FearThePenguin]

I am still trying to figure out a statement my nurse made. If there are signs of eye trouble (slight bleeding), not to exercise at all (except maybe walking)--no aerobics, sit-ups, weights, or anything that would raise blood pressure. This goes against all I had heard in the past. Don't know what to do now.

while I'm not a dr, that seems to make sense to me. If you have blood coming out of [insert body part here] it would not be wise to work your heart into a frenzy and increase your blood pressure . blood inside good, blood outside bad :) I've also noticed that when I have rapid movement of blood sugars, ie dropping a hundred points or so in a short amount of time, my vision goes all kinds of wonky.

[Evermont]

while I'm not a dr, that seems to make sense to me. If you have blood coming out of [insert body part here] it would not be wise to work your heart into a frenzy and increase your blood pressure .

I did a cardiac stress test, and then a echo stress test a few months ago. The results were very good. The nurse tested my BP before, during and after the Bruce protocol on the treadmill (steady increase in incline and speed). My BP, as expected, started dropping as I warmed up, dropped more and more as I got up to max heart rate and slowly returned to normal (higher) after the exercise.

Just a data point.

[Eddy]

Laura and I took up ice skating, we go 3 times a week so we get around 6.5 hours a week consistant exercise... it's been quite good for my blood sugars.

Although being into combat sports... ice skating might not be your thing lol.

Some people combine ice skating with combat sports. It's called "hockey". ;)

[morrisma]

Some people combine ice skating with combat sports. It's called "hockey". ;)

Yes, did you see that poor Panthers forward Zednik who got his carotid slashed? Yikes, combat indeed and friendly fire at that!

Watching the exercise portion of this thread with interest. I did a lot of spinning classes last winter where the sadistic instructor tried to kill us for an hour after which we we would all thank her and sign up for the next class. Turns out the edge of anaerobic exercise was very good for my bgs even a day later. Wasn't experimenting as carefully as Penguin here so I will be checking back on his results.
Mike

[Ronin]

Hi FearThePenguin!

I have to echo the thought that you may not be a Type-2 but a Type-1.5. There is one way to know for certain. That is to have your C-Peptide level checked. This can be an independent test (Fasting C-Peptide) or combined with an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT). In either case it will determine just how much insulin your pancreas is secreting into your blood stream.

While Blue Sky's assertions about Insulin Resistance are true for most adult onset cases of Diabetes, we are seeing more very active people being diagnosed by MD's who don't check C-Peptide levels.

Now, to your initial question: As a very avid and active tandem bicyclist I know that most of my rides result in a temporary elevation of my BG levels. This is largely due to the intensity of the rides which pretty much exhaust the supply of glucose in my body causing a liver dump of additional glucose which, given my low insulin production, stays up a bit longer than a person with a higher output pancreas would have elevated levels.

Since you like combative sports it is very likely that you train very hard when you train and probably trigger that glucose dump from your liver. Also the adrenilin you secrete causes liver dumps.

I have, on occasion, tested myself following a moderate walk -- much to my pleasure my BG is almost always down into the 70's after a moderate walk. However, I get little-to-no pleasure from a moderate walk, but I get a kick out of a hard tandem ride. I have the feeiling you have the same response to your training regimine.

[FearThePenguin]

Hehe, yeah walking is a real pleasure if I'm with my wife or my son, but I end up feeling like I wasted an hour if it's for my exercise. To echo what some folks have been suggesting, I'm setting up an appointment with an endo in the area to see about getting a bit more testing done while I wait to get back with my other Doctor. My Mom is a Dr (also a diabetic) and has suggested the same tests. Side note, today was the first day of aerobic exercise and I think I have a blip in the system. My expectation was that my numbers would be lower or the same as when I started, but they were in fact 40 points higher! My suspicion is that I was a bit dehydrated (I sweat like a pig), so we'll see how it turns out.

[matingara]

I know I am stirring up the pot with this, but I never exercise more than 30 minutes at a time and not strenuously.
I read an article and it said that you shouldn't stress the body if you are type 2.
I have found that 30 minutes of walking, or light weight lifting will drop my number up to 15 points. Which is why I do my exercise 1/2 hour after my evening meal. It works every time.
I am currently maintaing a 14 day bg average of 85.

WOW!!! that is a great bg average! i assume you do post prandials as well? or is this a fasting average?

my 14 day fasting bgl hovers in the 95-106 (5.3-5.9) range.

my 14 day "all readings" bgl is in the 104-112 range.

-- joel.

[FearThePenguin]

holy beans, what a day! Today is day two of the aerobic exercise and, sure enough, my BGs dropped significantly after working out.
Today's workout was pretty sterile, interval jogging for 30 minutes and then some jump rope followed by some kick boxing with targets. Tried to keep the heart rate in the right range and did a fairly good job, but I did have to boost it up a little at the end because it was a nice cold day and I LOVE to stand outside after working out and just watch the steam roll off of me. It's ridiculously narcissistic, but fun. I went into the gym at 135 (6 hours from my last meal, 3 from my last snack) and walked out at 95! I haven't been at 95 for months! Now, shortly after eating a reasonable meal, I was at 270, but that 95 sure was neat to see :) I feel like I'm on the precipice of finding a really good balance for myself and I may just be able to stay off the meds after all! We'll see.

[Eddy]

Yes, did you see that poor Panthers forward Zednik who got his carotid slashed? Yikes, combat indeed and friendly fire at that!


Ouch. :eek: I think that goes under the "having a bad day" column.


Watching the exercise portion of this thread with interest. I did a lot of spinning classes last winter where the sadistic instructor tried to kill us for an hour after which we we would all thank her and sign up for the next class. Turns out the edge of anaerobic exercise was very good for my bgs even a day later. Wasn't experimenting as carefully as Penguin here so I will be checking back on his results.


I've also been taking a keen interest in various exercise threads. Walking (aerobic) definitely drops me. After a couple wicked scares, I've sort of put exercise on "hold"... but I would like to start working out.

Scare #1, Dec 3: 113 mg/dL + 12 oz Sprite = 24 mg/dL after only 15 minutes walking. No bolus IOB.

Scare #2, Dec 24: 150 mg/dL after minor exercise + normal correction + go to sleep = awaken below meter's 20 mg/dL detection level.

(FWIW, both involved being out in the cold... which I have since found drops me significantly. Shoveling snow in the cold? Up to 10 mg/dL drop per minute.)

Maybe I need to "bite the bullet", cut my Lantus by 15% or 20%, and start working out. And, no, I don't want to switch from MDI to pumping.

[FearThePenguin]

Interesting development. I took great pains today to keep myself in my aerobic heartrate zone, but I was able to spend an extra long time at the gym. So my usual 45 minute routine became an hour and 40 minute routine. When I left the gym, my numbers looked just like I had done my full anaerobic routine. Pushed it too hard I guess.