In the Type 1 Diabetes world, the first thing we learn is to treat high blood sugar with insulin.
Insulin lowers blood sugar, right?
Avoiding a high in the first place is always preferred. We’re stronger when we’re proactive and not reactive. The most proactive strategy is to pre-bolus for food and give the insulin time to start working before we start to eat. For some people a good pre-bolus is 15 minutes, for others it’s 30. Situationally that can change based on starting blood sugar, type of insulin, and simply each unique person’s biology.
Right about the time we see the blood sugar starting to drop, is when we find the best time to eat. This often eliminates the spike that the food would’ve caused. Keep in mind that if your blood sugar is already low, pre-bolus isn’t necessary.
Sometimes we miss it though. The T-Slim insulin pump makes that easy for us because when we see blood sugars starting to rise, we can simply micro dose. Just bumping and nudging (as Scott from The Juicebox Podcast likes to put it) to let the insulin start to combat the high, that we can foresee, having the possibility to get out of control. If you’ve been Type 1 long, you know that the higher the blood sugar, the more insulin it takes to break through. Those are the times
we work hard to avoid by practicing much of the above.
But what about those times these practices simply don’t work. We may have felt that we did everything right, but we still are finding ourselves with an uncomfortably high blood sugar. What then?
There’s some common go to-s that we check, like: is the pump site change overdue or is it just a bad site? Is the Dexcom reading correctly? Finger poking for confirmation is important.
When those options are exhausted and we’re just not getting a high blood sugar down, what then?
Well, then it’s time to move. Like seriously move.
Pick the type of movement that works for you, but we tend to use running a lot. Jumping jacks work, as well as running flights of stairs. I’m sure some of you have some great methods that have worked for you as well.
Staying fit with Type 1 Diabetes is imperative. Having a normal exercise regimen makes these times less stressful, because stamina is already built up. For instance, if someone leads a sedentary lifestyle it’s a lot harder to work up a good heart rate for long enough of a period to break through that spike and send it downward. One of the many reasons for prioritizing exercise with Type 1. If you regularly go for a run, then it’s not a big deal to utilize a run to breakthrough that stubborn high. If you’ve never run, that may not be an option.
Don’t be discouraged. Of course, all of us “should have” started exercising ages ago, but the next best time to start is today. It can become one of your Type 1 Diabetes non-negotiables as well.
***Nothing in our blog or on the T1Defender website should ever be considered medical advice. ***