Exercise and Insulin Sensitivity

I’m posting my graph from yesterday evening until today at about 2pm. The vertical green bars indicate meals, and you’ll see very slight blood sugar increases afterward, with a return to baseline in the next hour or so.

Starting with dinner last night - at around 8:30pm, you’ll see an increase following the food, and then a lowering of blood sugar to about 70, which lasted for about another hour. What I want you to realize here is that prior to my dinner I had worked out for an hour and a half. Often times we become much more insulin sensitive following exercise, so when you take a normal dose of insulin and see a subsequent “crash” or unexpected lower blood sugar in the hours that follow, this may be a factor. In my case, I took three glucose tablets prior to going to sleep - this accounts for the slight elevation at around midnight, following by a nice smooth return to baseline overnight.

Overnights are very important. I like to sleep with very little food in my stomach, because then my Omnipod 5 needs to do less work trying to correct my blood sugar overnight, and I tend to find that the following day I have better blood sugar as well. This is very much the case today (so far…hope I don’t jinx myself). But you’ll see I’ve had breakfast, mid-morning snack, and lunch, with a blood sugar that’s barely moved. I pre-bolused for each of these meals (taking insulin prior to the ingestion of food) by about 5 minutes, and I’m enjoying a nice stable day.

That’s it for now - no huge conclusions here other than considerations of exercise on insulin sensitivity, and the tendency for my blood sugar to be significantly easier to manage when I’m being consistent with my movement. More to come, including plenty of discussion regarding highs, lows, and other challenges.