My son’s heavy but irregular exercise regimen has always given us a hard time, often creating the need for many basal changes.
He takes part in multiple sports, each of which has very different intensities. These days it is swimming, soccer and volley ball with occasional track.
The fact that daily schedules vary a lot, and, worse, that as seasons change the numbers and types of practices change make big differences to his basal needs. Swimming, of course, makes the biggest difference.
I am reminded of this today. Swimming is between 2 sessions right now, on a three-week hiatus. We just spent two days walking around Washington DC 8-10 hours a day. Last night he and I stayed up till 3am while he was eating carbs every 45 minutes, probably 50 carbs in the evening
How do you deal with basal need changes due to exercise without always being behind your bogey?
One of the most important things is to restore the carbs immediately after exercise. This helps lower the body’s tendency to suck all the carbs out of your dinner from that evening and leave you low all night long.
When the fuel tank is empty, the body will always try to refill it. And that comes at the expense of the dinner you ate. You go to bed with your body taking all those carbs for the muscle glycogen tank.
So after exercise (or just after something like walking around all day) re-fill the tank as much as you can right away, before dinner.
And as always, while it may be pure science, it’s not something you can ever fully quantify. Sometimes you just have to play a hunch on how much you need.
EDIT:
Sorry, that doesn’t answer your question about basal. Are you doing the split Lantus dose? This sort of stuff will be easier for you on the pump. You can cut that basal rate down by any percentage you want for any length of time. But with the split Lantus dose, that nighttime Lantus you could reduce, just based on a best guess.
Yes, we do split Lantus btw morning and evening. But, of course, I did not
think of decreasing basal in time:-)
FYI, yesterday right after walking all day (within 10 mins) we fueled up
with sushi, lots of carbs, and he was still in his postprandial phase when
he took Lantus:-(
The problem for us is that it is always hard to gauge when basal will start
being impacted and by how much.
I just snack more on more active days… it’s hard to plan 24 hours in advance like you say and adjust basal accordingly. If it’s easy to order an appetizer in DC.
Two Amy’s Neopolitan Pizzeria is my D.C. Tradition you should check it out if you get a chance I bet you guys would like it. Super thin crust, manageable, and memorable
Making adjustments always carries possible risk and possible reward. Taking notes on these things helps.
Doing a slight adjustment can partially minimize the risk.
If you’ve been walking around all day, nobody would fault you for cutting your evening basal shot by a slight 15% or 20%. If it works, you are genius! If he is still low, you say “Imagine how low you would have been if we had not cut it at all!”.
Honestly, this is why we pump. The ability to see a down trend, and combine a basal change for 2 hours plus eat some carbs gives you more tools in the toolbox to treat the lows. Even with that said, we are not great (yet) at judging basal for dramatically different days.
