I often get asked, “What is the best time of day to exercise?” Like most things related to physical activity—especially with diabetes as an added variable—the answer often is, “It depends.” What is your goal for being active? Are you trying to better balance your blood glucose, or is weight loss your goal? Do you take insulin? What is your normal diet? How much time do you have? Which activities? There are so many questions that likely need answering before you may be able to

It’s possible to gain weight from treating too many bouts of hypoglycemia. I addressed this topic over a decade ago, but it remains relevant and worth revisiting, along with addressing some new insights on weight gain in general with insulin use. Weight Gain from Treating Lows Although you can’t avoid treating a low, everything you use contains calories (at least until mini and nasal doses of glucagon are available) and those extra (albeit medically necessary) calories can st

Above you see part of the first page of a new consensus statement that comes from many of the individuals involved with the creation and launch of the new JDRF PEAK Performance Program, aimed at educating both clinicians and people with type 1 diabetes how to manage the complexities of being active. In my opinion, this recently published consensus statement on exercise and type 1 diabetes is long overdue and much needed. I managed to get the American Diabetes Association to l

Last year I was included in a discussion on a Facebook group for athletes with diabetes about how hard it can be to lose weight through exercise. While I don't have all the answers on this topic, here are some ideas about what can make you gain weight or keep you from losing weight with diabetes, based on my decades of professional and personal experience with diabetes and weight management, and what you can do about it. Insulin: My former graduate student with type 1 diabete

You have to love it when research studies come out and prove what you believed all along. I had this experience recently when a systematic review and meta-analysis (looking at the results from multiple studies simultaneously) e-published ahead of print in Emergency Medicine Journal in September 2016 (1) compared the speed of glucose tablets against dietary sugars for treating hypoglycemia in adults who had symptoms of being low. The dietary forms of sugar tested included sucr

You may potentially be able to prevent, treat, or reverse impending hypoglycemia (low blood glucose) during exercise by some novel means (1). One mechanism is short sprints, while another is to alter the order in which you do different types of exercise. Sprints: Doing a 10-second sprint either before or immediately after moderate exercise keeps blood glucose levels stable for at least two hours afterwards (2). Actually, this technique works anytime during exercise, but it do

The biggest problem most insulin users face is the risk of their blood glucose going too low for up to two days after they exercise. Given that there are no clear recommendations about the best time to exercise with diabetes, a recent study published in the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology early in 2015 tackled this issue head-on. The study compared blood glucose levels and the number of lows during and following moderate exercise for 36 hours. A total of 35 adult