Playing sports with type 1 diabetes

[Tiera20]

I play alot of sports and I am a very active person with me being a daycare assistant i run after little toddlers all day. My doctor told me i should check more often when i am active. What is the best way to avoid low after you have had a snack and you do sports activities.

[LantusFiend]

There are a lot of different strategies but you'll have to find out what works for you.
That could include different foods, putting in types of exercise that raise blood sugar before/between/after exercises that lower blood sugar, and/or decreasing insulin doses before and after exercise.

[Connie(BC)Type 1]

It's a trial and error thing, less basal, more testing, it will take awhile to learn, everyone takes and needs time to adjust!

[nanhsot]

Originally Posted by Tiera20

I play alot of sports and I am a very active person with me being a daycare assistant i run after little toddlers all day. My doctor told me i should check more often when i am active. What is the best way to avoid low after you have had a snack and you do sports activities.

A lot depends on the sport, and of course your own individual reaction. My son plays contact football and he removes his pump entirely during practice and games. He stays pretty level but sometimes he needs to sip on gateraide throughout practice if he's going low. Not a lot, he dilutes it quite a bit, but just a sip throughout keeps him up a bit. For games and hitting practices he tends to go high due to adrenaline, which we do not correct or he will go low.

So much of it varies by sport.

When he works out he does go low, often hours later so that is also something to look at, you might have someone check you or set an alarm to wake up during the night for a quick check. He often uses Extend bars or similar things on nights he is worried about going low. Chocolate milk is another trick he uses frequently, though sometimes I think he just wants chocolate milk. He only boluses for part of it before bedtime.

[Ronin1966]

Hello Tiera20

Food is the easiest to do, eat more of it (carbs). Cutting back on insulin whether the long acting or the short acting is the next easiest route. Any patterns a specific time frame you can identify easily?

If its pretty random when you are dropping low, cutting the long acting back is likely the route you'll take. If its only a particular time frame, you'll likely eat more in that time frame or cut back on the amount of short acting you use which covers that time frame.

Any way you go, its relatively simple. Perfecting it, that's harder, but in general terms easy enough...

Depending on the sport you are doing, there can be better foods, or dosing formulas to use. Marathon running, endurance biking are very different creatures than skeet shooting....