Anaerobic exercise and rising sugar levels

As I understand it when you perform anaerobic exercise (such as weightlifting) the liver and muscles will produce stored glycogen which converts into glucose for energy causing the blood sugar levels to rise. Would eating carbohydrates prior to this type of exercise stop the liver and muscles producing glycogen (as the glucose can be taken from the carbohydrates) or would the liver and muscles produce glycogen anyway?

Kind regards

John

Hi,

From what I've found, most exercise (something that gets heart rate going, not just walking) will dump glycogen/glucose for the first hour (or longer if your bigger or more musclar) until muscles/liver have none left, then if you do prolonged exercise your BG will drop as this glucose is used. Non diabetic cyclist train to do this, known as a glycogen ride, they train with little or no sugar on board, a) to burn fat, b) to be better in races when they have extra sugar on board. As diabetics we can't easily do this, but good to know about this sugar dump.

It was strange when I first started exercising a lot, at school I always assumed exercise lowered BG, turns out I wasn't pushing myself enough, coz if you do it goes up! This makes it awkward to control, you need some QA onboard for the first hours dump, but not too much coz prolonged activity, it will drop after. From that point for me I am constantly eating during cycling, not sure you'll have this issue with weight-lifting, but what will happen if take QA for this dump is after the session your muscles will relax and try to replenish the glycogen./glucose which will come from the blood, so hours after a good workout you could go hypo.

I know this is a bit of a ramble, hope it makes sense and helps.

Phil

EDIT: Just realised I waffled on, but didn't really answer your question, yes BG will go up anyway if you push hard enough, so carbs on board will probably make it worse.

Hello Phil, your reply makes a lot of sense (and is really useful - thanks)

I actually completed reading a book this afternoon called 'your diabetes science experiment' (£6 on Amazon). It talks lots about different types of exercise on blood glucose and confirms that anaerobic tends to increase sugar levels. It makes recommendations for how to test/experiment with QA and Carb requirements when weightlifting- a really good read and aiming to practice the principles in the morning

Kind regards

John