Basketball

[Dimes]

Does anyone play basketball here, and how does it affect you?

I'm going to go back out for my old team.. the first time since I was diagnosed 3 months ago as a type 1 (28 years old).

I have been doing 20 minute sessions of medium intensity exercise, like riding the bike, or jogging, or light weights, but have not done any high intensity stuff yet. My plan is to take some gatorade and snacks and make sure I don't go low.. Any advice?

[Scratch]

Yeah, make sure you carry some easily digestible carbs with you.

Some type 1s find that high intensity exercise like basketball can actually cause the blood sugar to spike upwards early on, probably due to the stress of it causing the body to release sugar from the glycogen stores. Later on, like hours afterwards, this can cause the body to slow down how much sugar is released and can cause a tendency for hypos later on.

Always so much fun. Just try to test a lot and keep track of things. Profiles have individual variance and you're going to have to figure yours out. Good luck.

[Mich]

My youngest daughter played all through junior high and high school along with a friend of hers who wore a pump. She kept a jar of glucose tabs, a bag of sugar wafer cookies, and power bars on the bench along with her testing stuff and water bottle.

It was great exercise and she soon learned how to manage her sugars during the craziness of a game. Her coach was aware and supportive. She was a sneaky little guard and was offered partial scholarships when she graduated to go on to college.

[Dimes]

Mich, sounds like your daughter did just fine..

I've noticed Adam Morrison injects insulin during games, so he must be going high.. My conditioning definitely won't be on that level but it'll be interesting to see what happens.

[johgn]

Basketball lowers my sugar more than any form of exercise I do, also when I am done my sugar will go up (due to the liver still releasing sugar to account for the exercise) unless I bolus for it, so watch out for that too. Good luck, you'll be fine with testing.

[Dimes]

No problems to report.. It was good to get back out there.. Probably went through about 40g of sugar by way of a Powerade for about a 1hr game. I was 8.7 before, 7.0 after, and 5.3 a couple hours later.