# Confused re walking



## Ada (Aug 29, 2022)

I read gym exercise can increase the levels. Why is it every morning before breakfast Or after. Just dog walking steadily My level spike. it concerns me.


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## travellor (Aug 29, 2022)

I guess you have gone low carb?
It takes several weeks for that to settle down.


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## Ada (Aug 29, 2022)

travellor said:


> I guess you have gone low carb?
> It takes several weeks for that to settle down.


Hi you are clever. Thank you. Yes I have gone very low carbs. Why does that cause it to spike just through walking.


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## Drummer (Aug 29, 2022)

Ada said:


> Hi you are clever. Thank you. Yes I have gone very low carbs. Why does that cause it to spike just through walking.


Possibly by lowering the amount of insulin you release  - by low carbing - your liver can release the glucose it has been struggling to deal with by filling up all its reserves.
Gradually those reserves should empty and your metabolism should get back to more normal working as they do.


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## travellor (Aug 29, 2022)

Drummer said:


> Possibly by lowering the amount of insulin you release  - by low carbing - your liver can release the glucose it has been struggling to deal with by filling up all its reserves.
> Gradually those reserves should empty and your metabolism should get back to more normal working as they do.


That's just wrong. 
The liver never drops it's reserves.
That's it's "normal" mode of working.


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## Ada (Aug 29, 2022)

Drummer said:


> Possibly by lowering the amount of insulin you release  - by low carbing - your liver can release the glucose it has been struggling to deal with by filling up all its reserves.
> Gradually those reserves should empty and your metabolism should get back to more normal working as they do.


Thank you so very much for helping me understand. Good night. Way past my bedtime


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## travellor (Aug 29, 2022)

Ada said:


> Hi you are clever. Thank you. Yes I have gone very low carbs. Why does that cause it to spike just through walking.



Your pancreas "slows down" as it stops reacting to carbs.
However, your liver, quite normally, releases glycogen, so your BG rises with exercise.
It can take a while, from weeks to months for it to balance out again.
The same as seeing high waking  BG, as your liver dump kicks in, but your pancreas doesn't respond.
It will settle down eventually.


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## Ada (Aug 29, 2022)

travellor said:


> Your pancreas "slows down" as it stops reacting to carbs.
> However, your liver, quite normally, releases glycogen, so your BG rises with exercise.
> It can take a while, from weeks to months for it to balance out again.
> The same as seeing high waking  BG, as your liver dump kicks in, but your pancreas doesn't respond.
> It will settle down eventually.


Thank you so much for your help and patience


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## travellor (Aug 29, 2022)

Ada said:


> Thank you so much for your help and patience


Give it time, and you'll see the results you can achieve


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## helli (Aug 29, 2022)

@Ada I notice you wrote the walk is before breakfast.
The rise may have little to do with exercise or low carb but maybe your morning liver dump, often called Dawn Phenomenon or Foot on the Floor.
I find eating a small amount as soon as I get up reduces this effect. However, it is completely normal - our liver dumps glucose to give us energy to start the day. Livers of people without diabetes react the same way, but their pancreas works to produce insulin to stop the glucose rise.


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## travellor (Aug 29, 2022)

helli said:


> @Ada I notice you wrote the walk is before breakfast.
> The rise may have little to do with exercise or low carb but maybe your morning liver dump, often called Dawn Phenomenon or Foot on the Floor.
> I find eating a small amount as soon as I get up reduces this effect. However, it is completely normal - our liver dumps glucose to give us energy to start the day. Livers of people without diabetes react the same way, but their pancreas works to produce insulin to stop the glucose rise.


Nope, as the post says
 "every morning before breakfast Or after"
Please don't confuse things.


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## Drummer (Aug 30, 2022)

travellor said:


> That's just wrong.
> The liver never drops it's reserves.
> That's it's "normal" mode of working.


I wonder where my huge rock hard 'bay window' went then - I could not bend over without my ribs being pushed out for about a year before diagnosis. It was like being in the last months of pregnancy. It was such a relief when I stopped the high carb diet and I could once again pick things from the floor or a bottom shelf. My waist shrank by 10 inches in the first few months after diagnosis. I am pretty sure that was an enlarged liver struggling to deal with carbs at last able to get rid of its storage problems..


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## Ada (Aug 30, 2022)

After being diagnosed. I had lost 3st over a long period just by basic dieting. Zero sugar etc. But lost a further 2st quickly by cutting out carbs. Still have 2st to lose.


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## Ada (Aug 30, 2022)

travellor said:


> Nope, as the post says
> "every morning before breakfast Or after"
> Please don't confuse things.


Your so right. It can be so confusing     I don’t know the right way to go. Do  I change the morning walk to before evening meal. The problem I have is  I take quite a bit of various medications in the morning and some enable me to do the morning walk. And ware of as the day goes on. But after the morning walk spikes my levels I find I am to scared to eat breakfast afterwards.and constantly testing.  I am so sorry if I have become a bore to anyone but this site is such a amazing help to me.


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## travellor (Aug 30, 2022)

Ada said:


> Your so right. It can be so confusing     I don’t know the right way to go. Do  I change the morning walk to before evening meal. The problem I have is  I take quite a bit of various medications in the morning and some enable me to do the morning walk. And ware of as the day goes on. But after the morning walk spikes my levels I find I am to scared to eat breakfast afterwards.and constantly testing.  I am so sorry if I have become a bore to anyone but this site is such a amazing help to me.



What do you spike to, and when do you measure?


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## travellor (Aug 30, 2022)

Drummer said:


> I wonder where my huge rock hard 'bay window' went then - I could not bend over without my ribs being pushed out for about a year before diagnosis. It was like being in the last months of pregnancy. It was such a relief when I stopped the high carb diet and I could once again pick things from the floor or a bottom shelf. My waist shrank by 10 inches in the first few months after diagnosis. I am pretty sure that was an enlarged liver struggling to deal with carbs at last able to get rid of its storage problems..



I even think that's biologically possible.
However, non alcoholic fatty liver is.
Although there have been various kooky theories put out by book sellers saying only they can provide the answer to that particular condition, I've never invested in them.


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## Ada (Aug 30, 2022)

travellor said:


> What do you spike to, and when do you measure?


I spike to 13. and test as soon as I've sat with a cuppa.


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## travellor (Aug 30, 2022)

Ada said:


> I spike to 13. and test as soon as I've sat with a cuppa.



You should be testing either when getting up, or just before food and two hours after.

During exercise, your liver will dump glycogen, your pancreas will be slower to response on a low carb diet, and you are still insulin resistant.

This is all normal, and is going to take a while to settle out.


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## Ada (Aug 30, 2022)

travellor said:


> You should be testing either when getting up, or just before food and two hours after.
> 
> During exercise, your liver will dump glycogen, your pancreas will be slower to response on a low carb diet, and you are still insulin resistant.
> 
> This is all normal, and is going to take a while to settle out.


Hi I do test the way you say. But I also test after walks knowing it spikes and hoping it doesn't.


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## travellor (Aug 30, 2022)

Ada said:


> Hi I do test the way you say. But I also test after walks knowing it spikes and hoping it doesn't.



Stop testing for a while.
It may sound counter intuitive, but it's telling you nothing, can't be changed yet, is wasting strips, and only upsetting you.
Let things settle down for a while.


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## healthjournal (Sep 1, 2022)

This thread is really informative.


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## Drummer (Sep 1, 2022)

Ada said:


> Your so right. It can be so confusing     I don’t know the right way to go. Do  I change the morning walk to before evening meal. The problem I have is  I take quite a bit of various medications in the morning and some enable me to do the morning walk. And ware of as the day goes on. But after the morning walk spikes my levels I find I am to scared to eat breakfast afterwards.and constantly testing.  I am so sorry if I have become a bore to anyone but this site is such a amazing help to me.


I found that eating breakfast stopped the increase - if your liver is pouring out glucose because it can, as you have lowered insulin output, then it needs to have the situation changed for it to do something different.
From testing after meals I could deduce exactly what was going on.
I saw, by comparing after meal readings, that I was more insulin resistant in the mornings, so I ate 1/4 of my daily carbs first thing, and saw a reduced spike and then hardly any increase at all after a while.
If you eat before exercise is there a change in your 2 hours later reading? 
If you know how you, personally react to various incidents in your day then you can also experiment to see what you can do to make changes. The way others react can only give hints about what might happen to you, the only thing to do is think about how you can make changes.
Personally, though, I'd judge an output of glucose during/after exercise as perfectly normal in your position.


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## harbottle (Sep 1, 2022)

Being more insulin resistant in the morning is natural, isn’t it, even for non-diabetics? My BG seems to be slightly higher in the mornings, usually rises a little about 2 hours after I get up, and long after breakfast, but drops during the afternoon, usually before lunch. (It seems to hover more around the 6 mark in the mornings and then around 5 in the afternoons and evenings.)

I don’t see any rise in glucose with excercise, though, if I walk to work or do a lunchtime run (Or, as I’ve done recently, hike up vesuvius!) it usually goes very low indeed, generally below four and I feel a bit strange (Vision goes weird and I get very lightheaded). When I wear a sensor I can see that when I stop it goes back up until it’s reached somewhere between 5 and 7. I guess maybe for some T2Ds the mechanism to stop it from rising further might not be working properly?

I believe during long fasts (i.e. no nutrition coming in from good) and excercise, the liver also uses gluconeogenesis to generate BG. IE it makes it from amino acids, fatty acids and lactate and will make ketones as well via ketosis. (Glugocen is the signal to tell the liver to release its stores when BG is low, generated by the alpha cells in the pancreas, doing the opposite of the beta cells which tell it to stop - signals that sometimes don‘t work properly with T2D.) Other hormones as well as Glucogen make the liver release its stores.

When the glycogen stores are full, excess calories are then converted into triglycerides, which is a problem as excessive trigs are believed to be a major cause of insulin resistance and also perform a chemical reaction which produces bad LDL proteins. (I saw an interesting presentation that showed how Trigs can lead to elevated ‘bad’ LDL, something that statins can help reduce.)

I did read that in Professor Taylor’s research the response to insulin was somewhat ‘slower’ in T2Ds who had lost weight but had regained full insulin production/beta cell mass.

Fascinating deliving into how this closed system works (Even more interesting, as the company I work for models similar systems!)


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## Drummer (Sep 2, 2022)

Some people are more insulin resistant in the evening, which is why I advised checking.


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## everydayupsanddowns (Sep 2, 2022)

As far as I am aware liver dumps during exercise are more usually seen in anaerobic activity (heavy weights, flat out sprints - the kind of thing where you hold you hardly breathe during the burst). More gentle aerobic activity is associated with lowering BG and increased insulin sensitivity - so regular spikes with gentle exercise do seem slightly unusual to me.

Like @helli my first though was early morning liver dump shenanigans connected to circadian rhythm (dawn phenomenon / feet on the floor).

Perhaps it’s a combination of multiple overlapping things @Ada ?


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## 42istheanswer (Sep 2, 2022)

everydayupsanddowns said:


> As far as I am aware liver dumps during exercise are more usually seen in anaerobic activity (heavy weights, flat out sprints - the kind of thing where you hold you hardly breathe during the burst). More gentle aerobic activity is associated with lowering BG and increased insulin sensitivity - so regular spikes with gentle exercise do seem slightly unusual to me.
> 
> Like @helli my first though was early morning liver dump shenanigans connected to circadian rhythm (dawn phenomenon / feet on the floor).
> 
> Perhaps it’s a combination of multiple overlapping things @Ada ?


Can that depend on the amount of gentle exercise? The only time (so far...) my post-meal BG has shot up over 4mmol (to over 11) was the day I had done a lot of walking, both before and after the meal. I have had more total carbs than that meal, and similar carbs but in the same form, other times and not shot up. (That was lunch so definitely not DP/FOTF)


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## travellor (Sep 2, 2022)

42istheanswer said:


> Can that depend on the amount of gentle exercise? The only time (so far...) my post-meal BG has shot up over 4mmol (to over 11) was the day I had done a lot of walking, both before and after the meal. I have had more total carbs than that meal, and similar carbs but in the same form, other times and not shot up. (That was lunch so definitely not DP/FOTF)



I used to find any exercise went either way.
It all depended on how much BG I had floating around when I started.
Gentle exercise slowly depleted it, if I ate, fine, if I didn't, I got a normal liver dump that raised it, and then I walked it off, or didn't, depending on the timing.
Liver dumps aren't precise, so many would consider it a spike.
If I exercised vigorously, not only did I run down my BG quickly, hormones also prompted my liver to dump more violently, but my muscles were primed already, so I used it more easily.
Again, finished higher or lower depending on timing.
The one takeaway was the more exercise, better muscle development, less insulin resistance, better BG either way.
In the short term, my body benefited from the exercise sessions with a better response for an increasing period after exercise. 
As it the exercise prodded my body to remember how to use insulin effectively, and not be as insulin resistant.

So I stuck with it, and didn't stress the short term one offs.


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