I think that’s a first for me, just been using the gym (mainly cable machines) and today I got a late start, went about 12:30 because I had an almost sleepless night, got a solid 2 hour nap from 7:30 am to 9:30am and felt like I could face the day with quite a lot of energy. Ate my typical breakfast that is protein/fat and just spinach for carbs (just a cup).
After my 45 minute to an hour workout, came home and decided to check my BG and it’s 133 or 7.3 Seems weird to me but like I said, first time I ever checked after eating, then half hour later working out pretty hard, I mean I sweat!
Anyone have this happen? I’m thinking I read something on it before but just thought I’d ask some of you first
When we exercise, we need more glucose, so the liver releases some from its store of glycogen. It also has something to do with the cortisol spike from exercise.
So not unusual? I usually go workout at least 2 hours after I eat, today was kind of screwed up as you know but I was determined to get down to the gym.
that’s encouraging on one hand, but on the other, I need to find out for a Type 2 if it goes into the “diabetic” range (not pre), how dangerous, or what damage might be caused in how much time it stays high? That’s something I have never looked into, how long does a T2 have to stay in that high range before damage. It’s early so I might not be making that much sense, but I hope this does. I’m asking minutes, hours days?
Maybe some things that put a T2 in the “red zone” like workouts for example, aren’t as dangerous, or lengthy a time as other things like foods or drink?
Its all about context, makes no difference whether your A1C/LP-IR says you’re diabetic or not, it doesn’t change anything. That only means you wont lower yourself in the same time, high BG in of itself isnt bad, its when its chronically high that’s the issue. Higher BG because of the stress response of a workout isnt the same as an elevated BG from sugars you can’t clear. Because in the context of a workout, youre not still dealing with sugars still metabolizing and keeping you up there. Even when youre insulin resistant it’ll drop faster. Your body knows what its doing when it does that. You’re burning fuel at that point and feeding muscle.
Working out and gaining muscle is the best thing you can do to fix your A1C, your body knows what its doing. Thats why when even diabetics do TKD glucose/dextrose is the preferred carb, because its burns so fast that it can’t hang around long enough to keep you elevated like foods that digest for hours can.
I’m sure you’ve mentioned it before, but what’s your average A1C?
The human body has evolved some highly sophisticated mechanisms over a couple of million years. If blood sugar goes up during physical activity, it’s for a reason. If we are eating the sort of diet we evolved eating, which is mostly meat and the fat that comes with it, then insulin isn’t interfering with our health, and other mechanisms that control serum glucose come into play.
We know these mechanisms exist, because mice that (for various reasons) can secrete neither glucagon nor insulin don’t develop Type I diabetes. It’s only when they can still produce glucagon but not insulin that they become diabetic. It’s a reasonable assumption that the same mechanisms exist in all mammals, though I doubt we have any real understanding of how they might work in our particular bodies, given the difficulties of experimenting on people.
Exercise is a short-term stress, so if you are eating a ketogenic diet, any glucose rise produced by exercise will only be temporary, and will likely not be any higher than necessary. It’s chronically elevated serum glucose, or the chronically elevated serum insulin secreted to deal with the elevated serum glucose, that causes problems.
Lastly, exercise is not necessary. If you are doing it because you have lots of energy you want to burn off, then have at it. But if you are connecting it in your mind with losing fat, even people who adhere to the conventional advice of “eat less, move more” have to admit that exercise is pretty useless for the purpose of shedding excess fat (according to numerous studies done in the last few decades). It does, however, promote health in a number of ways, including helping muscle cells grow healthy new mitochondria. But many people on keto lost significant amounts of weight simply by sitting around on the couch.
I lost several lbs before I took up walking “again” after a Winter of not walking hardly at all, so I know it is true you can lose fat but I still wonder about lean muscle mass loss if no exercise. People were made to move around but with so-called progress lots of us just become couch potatoes with new kinds or jobs/work/hobbies, remote controls etc. I know for me I lost lbs without exercise, but I can’t say I felt very good. I felt such a sense of well-being after my workout yesterday that I got way more done, and slept a full 6-6.5 hours lastnight, huge improvement with nothing but my one Magnesium dose.
It also makes good sense to me about the difference between temporary spikes, and chronically high numbers. Which makes me want to understand the A1c thing and how in the heck they can come to call it an average of, say, the last 3 months.
I don’t know all the ins and outs of HbA1C, but it is basically a measure of how much glycated haemoglobin we have. There will always be some glycation, because red corpuscles live on glucose, after all, so the haemoglobin is always going to be exposed to it. We just don’t want too high a level of glycation, because that makes blood clot more readily, which is a cardiovascular risk.
The idea that the amount of glycation serves as a sort of rolling average of daily glucose levels relies on the correlation between the amount of glycation a red corpuscle picks up over its lifetime and the amount of glucose that’s in the blood stream, doing the glycating. The accuracy of HbA1C depends on the red corpuscles’ living precisely 90 days, however. If we are really healthy, and they live longer than 90 days, the reading is going to be artificially higher, whereas if we aren’t so healthy, and they live less than 90 days, the reading is going to be artificially lower.
That’s interesting because I’m not always able to get my doc to order right on or near the “every 3 month” thing. I guess with all our testing it still isn’t perfectly accurate. Numbers are sure powerful at manipulating my fear or cheer, but if I just go by how I feel (which was pretty good munching out on my caramel M&Ms by the bag), I may not have caught the diabetes so soon, or figured out how I could change the numbers w/o a prescription
Purely out of curiosity I just checked my blood sugar immediately before and immediately after training (1.5 mile run to warm up followed by heavy lifting). No change at all. 5.2mmol (93.6) before and exactly the same after. No clue what this does or doesn’t mean, was just curiosity as so many report swings in blood sugar relating to exercise.
The point is not that you need the tests to be precisely three months apart.
What I was trying to say is that there is some inherent inaccuracy in using the HbA1Cas an average of your serum glucose for the 90 days prior to the blood draw, since the accuracy of using it as an average relies on the red blood corpuscles’ living for precisely 90 days. The idea is that each red blood corpuscle experiences a certain amount of glycation each day of its life. Red blood corpuscles normally live for 90 days, so 90 days’ worth of glycation corresponds to daily serum glucose levels added up and averaged over 90 days.
But suppose the corpuscles are living longer? Then they will be more glycated, and that person’s HbA1C will appear higher than it would if it were a true 90-day average of serum glucose. And this apparently higher HbA1C is actually perfectly healthy.
Conversely, for someone whose red blood corpuscles are not making it to the full 90 days, that person’s corpuscles aren’t experiencing 90 days’ worth of glycation, so that person’s HbA1C is going to be less healthy than it appears to be.
Seems weird to me but like I said, first time I ever checked after eating, then half hour later working out pretty hard, I mean I sweat! 
with nothing but my one Magnesium dose.