How to deal with exercise

[BrendaK]

Horray for Carson, he learned to ride his bike yesterday. In fact, he didn't need help at all, he rode and rode and rode for 3-4 hours yesterday. It's like he's known how to ride for a year, but just started yesterday.

So that brings me to my question... we're dealing w/ LOWS. Yesterday was actually fine, kept him in the low 100's with snacks. But last night and today have been crazy. I was up with my younger one last night at 1am and checked Carson -- normally I wouldn't have checked him until 2am, but was already up. He was 54 :eek:. Treated him, and 4am he was 179, then 7am back down to 73. (I know his basals are fairly good then.)

So today he's at a friends house all day, and took his bike. I did a temp basal of 60% for 5 hours. He STILL went down to 46 right after lunch and we were really conservative with his bolus. He had around 50 uncovered carbs this afternoon and was still at 73 at dinner.

How do you handle this kind of exercise? Riding bikes for 2-4 hours a day? Do I just keep turning basals down and stuffing him w/carbs? And what about night time? I guess he's never had this much intensive exercise for so long... Any advice appreciated!!

[Momof4gr8kids]

Brenda, When Julia gets a lot of activity or does something new that is active we snack her during the day, and then reduce basal by 10% at night. Doesn't always work, and YDMV. I guess you just have to find a starting point for each thing and then go from there. It is all a learning process that is huge and always changing :)

[kimmyg]

Brenda our son has been very active in sports like basketball and football and we have found we needed to reduce his night basal and give him a pretty good snack like a peanut butter and honey sandwich and glass of milk before sending to bed.
Kim

[sam1nat2]

If he is dropping like that and you routinely test at night, suspend him for a few hours.
Our pump trainer said that when you do a new physical activity, it uses different muscles than before and can cause greater drops until your body gets used to it. We've found this to be true for our ds.

I'm sure every kids is different in the amount they need basals reduced. If my ds went swimming and then rode his bike after that, we often suspend the pump for up to 4 hours at night and then run 50% basals, of course with such drastic measures, we are testing constantly.

[payam7777777]

try reducing basals to 50% one hour before begining of exercise.
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CWD Sports Corner
http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/sports/

Top 10 Exercise Traps and Tips to Avoid Them
http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/sports/traps.htm

Smart Pumps and Sports: Using Temporary Basal Rates
http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/sports/tempbasal.htm

Smart Pumps and Sports: Using Insulin On Board
http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/sports/iob.htm

[BrendaK]

If he is dropping like that and you routinely test at night, suspend him for a few hours.
Our pump trainer said that when you do a new physical activity, it uses different muscles than before and can cause greater drops until your body gets used to it. We've found this to be true for our ds.

I'm sure every kids is different in the amount they need basals reduced. If my ds went swimming and then rode his bike after that, we often suspend the pump for up to 4 hours at night and then run 50% basals, of course with such drastic measures, we are testing constantly.


I think you're totally right about using different muscles. Carson is a very active boy in general -- and we can usually manage exercise okay. That's why this bike riding thing really threw me off guard -- I didn't expect the severity and consitant lows for so long.

Then, last night I think all the snacking and reduced basals caught up with him -- he was 485 before bed -- after being 73 at dinner. So we put all the basals back up to normal and corrected and he was 104 when he got up today.

So thankfully it's raining and we'll take a break from the bike today. Then hopefully his muscles will get used to biking and it won't be so drastic... AND next time I'll know to reduce basals first.