Diabetes and Exercise

Health Care Professionals often confuse what happens with exercise, and leave patients with little concrete information to work with.

Here are the simple facts:

• Generally speaking, exercise magnifies the effect of insulin, and makes your blood sugar go lower than you expect
• If you exercise when you still have a lot of active insulin on board (e.g. soon after a meal), then you will likely get low unless you reduce the dose you have when eating
• If you do low-impact exercise, your blood sugars will gradually reduce
• If you do medium-impact exercise, your blood sugars will reduce if you have active insulin. If not, your blood sugars may rise
• If you do high-impact exercise close to your aerobic threshold, this can cause the release of adrenalin which counter-acts insulin. This leads to HIGH blood sugars
• If you do anaerobic exercise (weights, lifting, mowing the lawn etc) then your blood sugars can drop quite quickly