Diabetes and Cycling

crankycrank

Der Kaiser wrote:

I've just been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes which explains an awful lot of my dips in energy in several sportives this year.
Just been out for my first ride on medication. I did 16 miles at just over 12 miles an hour and I feel pretty good. I could have done more but for the fading light.
I was reluctant to tell people within my club about my condition but I realised that it is very important that they know in case I go hypo during a club run. Hopefully the combination of Metformin, exercise and improved diet will help me to shift the weight.

As has been mentioned a few times already check your blood sugars during your rides until you can establish a routine and with type 2 in most cases you won't have to bother with checking your blood regularly while riding once you find out what works for you. Very Important, learn to recognize how you feel when your blood sugar level is too low and dropping, you'll need to get some food in you as soon as possible. Too low and you risk having a seizure. I like to just carry some glucose tablets as they're small and fast acting. Also I find reducing my meds on the morning before a long ride helps prevent low sugars as the exercise alone helps keep the levels lower. I rarely run into problems anymore, maybe twice a year, but being prepared could save your life.

team47b

in an ideal world we would all test twice before we set off to establish that we are over 100mg/dl and that our blood glucose is rising, then at least once during exercise and again after exercise.

unless you live somewhere like Australia where you can get, free, and as many test strips as you want, this is not really practical.

what you are trying to do is to make sure your BG is high enough before exercise, so always eat about half an hour before setting off, and assuming you normally eat every three hours (little and often) eat a small amount of carbs say half an energy bar every hour and eat again at your normal time.

Avoid setting off half an hour before you are due to eat a meal or snack, you can drive your numbers down to hypo level within this half an hour.

If it's windy or there are more hills than usual or you try catching that distant cyclist then eat something to allow for this extra effort. Carry something like dried apricots to eat like non diabetics would eat jelly babies.

Carry diabetic ID, ideally cycle with friends who are aware of what a hypo looks like.

I take insulin and have hypo unawareness the only sign that I am hypo is the fact that I get confused, if you start to feel confused check your BG.