How Does Physical Activity Affect Blood Glucose Levels?

One of the important things that I’ve learnt about doing physical activity, from the decade that I’ve spent as an international level athlete with type 1 diabetes, is that different sports and levels of physical activity can have a variable affect blood glucose. It’s an important consideration to remember whilst enjoying sport, as it helps me plan ahead for my diabetes, enabling me to get on with the performance aspects. I have also found that there are numerous benefits to participating in exercise with type 1 diabetes such as; better blood glucose control, the enjoyment of overcoming challenges and improved management of my condition.

Dario Smart Meter

Frequent blood glucose testing is key to knowing what is going on with my diabetes before, during and after exercise. In addition to all of my tests around meal times during the day, I check my glucose levels with the Dario Smart Meter upto an hour and a half before exercise. This gives me the opportunity to act if I need to take on glucose before exercising. Food also plays a fundamental role in physical activity and diabetes management, and I give a lot of thought to the foods that I eat around training, and especially their carbohydrate values. Which is something that I can record on the Dario App, or I can access from its extended database of food. Many athletes like myself love routine, and being able to mark the meals or foods that I enjoy regularly makes logging and calculating what I eat quick and easy. If somebody prefers more gentle exercise activities such as walking or yoga, then logging information such as this can still be incredibly useful in identifying patterns in diabetes behaviour.

The Tools of the Dario Smart Meter

Whether it’s a P.E class at school or an iron man run, sport and physical activity have to be managed safely, in order to get the most enjoyment out of them. In addition to wearing a medical alert band whilst exercising, I also utilise technology to help me stay safe at the track and in the gym. The Dario app has a great feature that utilises the GPS capacity of my phone, and enables me to send my GPS location to anyone in my phone book. An incredibly handy tool for anyone who likes to run alone, but who in the case of getting into difficulty with blood glucose levels whilst out, needed to let a loved one know where they were. The GPS applications can also be utilised whilst out on the run itself, as the Dario app can be integrated with the Runkeeper app, that can track the distance you run, the speed and also the calories you’ve burned whilst doing it. All of which can help better inform both diabetes and physical activity management.

Dario Smart Meter onto a Winner

This is so important because over the years I’ve found that whilst sprinting can drop my blood glucose levels quite quickly, as can Olympic weightlifting and running on sand dunes. Whilst longer distance runs and general weight lifting can keep them quite stable. I’ve learned that adrenaline can cause my blood glucose levels to spike because of the surge of glycogen conversion to glucose for that fight or flight response. The reason that I’ve learnt all of this is because I like to record what I do, and look at the patterns that show me the way that exercise and food affect my blood glucose levels. But technology such as the Dario app, and the compact smart meter that accompanies it make this a lot easier to do, leaving me free to enjoy my sport and manage my diabetes safely!



Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post in partnership with Dario Smart Meter