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Permalink Reply by Theresa on July 15, 2011 at 7:50am

My son does a 60% reduction to his basal during his basketball practice. Once practice is over, he does a 30% reduction to his basal for the next 3 hours. I think you will just have to do a temp basal and test, test, and test to see how it worked. Adjust as necessary. Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Capin101 on July 15, 2011 at 8:10am

The big question here (I think) is do you have a dawn phenemona? This can make exercise before a bolus dificult.

I am assuming that you will be walking shortly after waking and will not have anytime to set a temporary basal reduction ahead of time as you will be asleep. I would do one of two things: My preference would be to test before my walk and bring a snack (or breakfast) with me that I could eat on the walk. Lately I have been eating a protein bar for breakfast and this would be very portabale.

The second way I might handle it is to adjust my pump basals. My minimed pump allows me to program at least 3 different daily basal rates (hopefully your pump has these too). I would program one of these basal rates exactly the same as the original, except I would lower the basal rates shortly before I wake to coincide with the reduction you need while exercising. The night before you go to sleep I would switch to the "walk" basal rate settings and you should have the necessary reduction already in store when you wake up in the morning. Some trial and error to adjust the basal numbers and you should be off and walking in no time. Of course this method would "require" you to do some activity when you wake up rain or shine. You will also need to wake at approximately the same time everyday. You would also need to be diligent and switch to the correct basal rates every night (no walk or walk) in order to avoid hypos and hypers.

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Permalink Reply by jupton on July 15, 2011 at 9:36am

Depends on your waking BG, but you should try lowering by 25% and re-adjust from there.

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Permalink Reply by Angela Lee on July 19, 2011 at 7:11am

Just don't be surprised if your blood sugar goes up when you don't eat. I have to eat and bolus before morning exercise (6 AM) or else I'll go high--though I cut back the bolus and basal %s depending on the intensity.

If you do eat before exercise, you can reduce your bolus-which is generally a good thing. I do 50% bolus reduction, and sometimes cut the basal back to 50% over 30 mins-but I start that an hour ahead of time since basal reductions take awhile to affect the BG. So the basal reduction is taking affect halfway through my 45-60 min workout.

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Permalink Reply by tonilynn20 on July 21, 2011 at 5:24am

Thanks for the reply. Ran 3 miles this morning at 6:30 and now my bs has shot up to 210, I guess I'll have to try something new tomorrow :) Trial and error....the joys of diabetes... :) smiling, have a great day!!!

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Permalink Reply by Penguin_Girl on July 20, 2011 at 12:09pm

I go for a 20-30 fast walk/run on the treadmill before breakfast. It isn't a really long work out, but I find that if I eat half a banana and don't take a bolus for it my BG stays level. I then take my normal bolus with breakfast.

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Permalink Reply by acidrock23 on July 21, 2011 at 6:44pm

I had done ok w/ AM workouts but had a wierd one last weekend and my BG went nutso during and after for a while. Ideally, I like to test my BG right when I get up and then run around in circles looking for all my running crap and test again 1/2 hour later when I have my wits about me and a cup of coffee down the hatch. This way I can see if it's starting to rise or not. If it is, I usually eat some eggs/ egg beaters and just go on that. If it's not rising or going down, I'll eat a piece of toast and leave it at that. I don't think you'd need a ton of carbs, maybe something like 8-10, diminished glas sof skim milk (like 6 oz, instead of 8?) to fuel a workout like that? I got some low carb apple juice for MrsAcidRock and junior to use for smoothies that is only 5G of carbs but I'm so programmed to think "juice= carbs" I haven't tried it yet but that might also be useful.

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