Boot camp style lesson on blood sugar

It was a cold, rainy and foggy day in June 2007, almost 9 AM and I was facing an exhaustive exercise. Those days I had a project to explore the limits and variations of sugar in my blood using one of the continuous glucose measuring devices. I got a pretty good idea about what happens with sugar levels after a regular meal, small snack, during sleep, during giving a lecture or a moderate exercise. Apart from sleeping at night, most other activities raised my blood sugar level. The plan behind the physical activity on that particular June day was to explore how low my blood sugar can fall during simulation of boot camp training. After an hour and a half of self-inflicted suffering I barely managed to connect the glucose sensor back to my laptop to realize in disappointment that the plan failed. My blood sugar did not drop at all, it rose! Almost like I would be taking my favorite chocolate bar!

It soon appeared to me why I failed. I was well trained at the time, which means I could easily mobilize other nutrients apart from glucose to be burnt for the muscle activity. Insulin level in trained people drops faster and more compared to non-trained people. The insulin drop makes it possible for an organism to become catabolic and use energy from its fat stores and proteins. The same as during starvation… The second reason was that I have not been suffering long enough. I estimate that an additional hour would drain my sugar stores and made me hit the wall. But before that, several hormones in my body pushed the blood sugar up and kept my brain and muscles active. For my failure I pay special tribute to glucagon, adrenaline, noradrenalin, cortisol, and growth hormone. And the last reason was my ignorance. If I would prevent insulin to fall during my physical activity, my boot camp session would likely be even shorter and successful. This is in fact very easy to achieve. All what I would need to do on that cold June morning would be to have some heavy breakfast at 8:30 AM.