He is probably the most famous diabetic athlete in the world right now - and he’s sponsored by minimed!
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That’s pretty awesome! It’s great to see a high profile diabetic athlete representing the community and showing what’s possible.
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I don’t know if anyone saw the final, but at a few points during the match Zverev injected something into his thigh related to diabetes. I was wondering what that might have been? It was intriguing because I would have thought that he would be more worried about going low, yet he was injecting something. Anybody have any ideas?
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Definitely insulin. Nobody would be injecting glucagon at that point.
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Glucagon?
Many athletes go high from stress, adrenaline, eating carbs, less insulin on board, etc. Totally expect it would have been insulin.
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From Gemini AI:
Yes, Alexander Zverev uses a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) to manage his type 1 diabetes during tennis matches
How He Uses a CGM on Court
- Live tracking: His CGM sensor sends real-time blood sugar data via Bluetooth to a dedicated secondary phone that he keeps in his bag during matches. [1]
- Matchday access: Grand Slam tournaments grant Zverev a special medical exemption to check this phone during changeovers so he can monitor glucose trends without doing traditional finger-prick tests. [1, 2, 3]
- Insulin management: When his readings show a need for adjustment, he uses an insulin pen during changeovers rather than a pump, which could interfere with his physical movement on the court. [1, 2]
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Here is why I am confident it would not be glucagon.
Simplifying the steps, just to explain the process for energy and how it all relates to glucagon. Reading about the entire metabolic process for everything can make your eyes bleed, so this is a very simple breakdown of it.
Glycolysis is the process that breaks down glucose to produce energy, in the form of ATP and pyruvate.
So…what are pyruvate and ATP?
ATP is the main energy molecule inside our cells. Pyruvate is a three-carbon molecule, and while the process is complex, the simple answer is that pyruvate is also used to create energy.
How does all of this relate to glucgaon, and why are you saying he would not be taking glucagon?
From a pure energy perspective, glucagon is bad for performance because it inhibits glycolysis. Instead of letting your body generate immediate energy, glucagon forces your metabolism to run in reverse - it inhibits the pathway for the quickest energy source and leaves you reliant on slower pathways such as lipid metabolism. Glucagon increases gluconeogenesis, which is the process where you create glucose from non-carbohydrate sources. Glucagon causes rapid fatigue.
And glucagon does not create new energy for the body. Instead it drains your liver’s limited supply of glycogen (stored glucose).
It’s much better to take in carbs during exercise than to use the limited supply in your liver.
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I was thinking maybe he was heading low.
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That’s what I was thinking too.
But our expert panel here (and whatever I could find via AI) all feel that he is injecting insulin.
He’s wearing a CGM while he’s playing, and he has special dispensation to look at his CGM readings during changeovers.
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Wow, so impressive! Thanks for posting this. .y vote would be that he injected insulin, too. I will also sometimes go high during a run.
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An Unlimited Diabetic!
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I always love to hear about a type 1 athlete doing so well! And winning!!!
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