Hey Ginger,
I know that blood sugars that aren't in control, like a low blood sugar, can make you feel really tired, and highs make me feel pretty groggy. My energy is just totally zonked when my blood sugars are all over the place. If I wake up with a high bs then I don't even wanna get out of bed! But I had a question about whether it's okay to workout and exercise when your blood sugars are all over the place on a certain day. I mean, for the most part, I'm in ok control, my A1C is 7.8% and I'm working on it. But if I wake up a 300, then I'm at like 70 at lunch, and then 200 by 2pm 'cause it just got away from me that day, is it okay to exercise?
-Samantha
Hey Samantha,
Ohhhh I hear ya! A bad day of blood sugars totally throws me off, too. And it is absolutely normal to feel completely "zonked" when you're high and low and high and low. If you think about the kind of stress we're putting on our bodies during days like those, it makes complete sense to feel so drained.
Everytime your blood sugar drops really low, your body's energy stores known as "glycogen stores" becomes drained too. Glycogen is the glucose stored in our muscles and our brain and serves as a sort of back-up fuel source. And it can be replaced and refilled but it takes a little while and it also takes at least 40 grams of carbohydrates for most people, non-diabetics too.
On the other hand, if YOU, as a diabetic, eat too much carbs to fix your low (it's easy to do since lows make us feel like we're practically dying and food is the hero!), you'll find yourself with a really high bs a couple hours later.
It's an obnoxious cycle to stop. The best way to prevent that rebound high is to 1. only eat 15-25 grams of carbs for your low or 2. Treat your low and if it's so bad that you have trouble stopping at 25 grams of carbs, you need to take an extra dose of insulin. And that's something we don't like doing because we were just low! But you need to if you're going to purposefully overtreat your low.
As for exercise on days of whacky blood sugars, safety definitely is your first priority. Because of my job as a personal trainer/yoga instructor and my own training in powerlifting, I don't often have a choice. Unless it's clearly an emergency, I will train through a high blood sugar, give myself a bolus, and keep an eye on it. My energy definitely doesn't feel like training when I woke up with a high blood sugar, but I need to train on a scheduled program, so I just do it as safely as I can.
Should you work out if you were low ten minutes ago or a half hour ago? If you treated the low, and you prepped your blood sugar the way you normally would for exercise, then go ahead, but KEEP A CLOSE EYE ON THAT BLOOD SUGAR!
