Athletic Diabetics – the story so far
I have been diabetic for 13 years and I cannot remember what life felt like before diagnosis. I can remember snippets from my childhood but never the feeling of freedom of being able to eat a meal without having to think of controlling my diabetes; when to inject, how much to inject, how many carbohydrates are in that meal? Growing up with diabetes I often felt different to other children. I would see them running around carefree, not carrying the burden of diabetes, not having to attend numerous hospital appointments or having to carry lifesaving medication 24/7.
Additionally there was complications surrounding my diabetes as it was incredibly hard to control. I guess it would be fair to say that I didn’t fit the typical diabetic stereotype. I loved sports and from an early age my life has revolved around football, swimming, and judo.
A typical week for me included swimming on Monday, football practice on Tuesday and Thursday, judo training on Saturday and a football match on Sunday. As I matured it became apparent that I was quite talented at both judo and football, winning various competitions and trophies but my sporting success wasn’t accompanied by excellent diabetes control. Sometimes I would have hypoglycaemic episodes (hypo’s) 2-3 times a day, and also regularly during the night. It got so bad that one day I didn’t sleep for a week due to the frequent hypos that I had in the night. This was a very scary and dangerous time in my life as if I didn’t wake up and treat the hypo (low blood sugar) there was a very high chance that I would slip into a diabetic coma, which may result in death.
Working alongside my health care team we would try different methods of controlling my diabetes during and post exercise, often with limited success. I felt quite isolated as I didn’t know of any other ‘Athletic Diabetics’ who were having similar troubles, nor did I have contact with them to share tips on how to control my diabetes during exercise. I started to feel like I was a bad diabetic because no matter how hard we tried my diabetes wouldn’t conform to the established methods of control.
Ultimately, I was sent to Liverpool to Alderhey Children’s Hospital to see a sports nutrition specialist. She explained that nutrition and diet is just as important as specialised insulin programs in controlling diabetes.
Whilst different insulin programmes can attempt to control blood sugars in different ways, these methods are not going to be effective without fuelling the body in the correct ways.
Without this advice I would have not been able to be as successful in the sports that I pursed.
Fast forward a few years and I read a post in a Facebook group for diabetic teenagers about a young girl, about 12/13 being unable to do her chosen sport (trampolining) due to erratic blood sugars. Her blood sugars would drop during the exercise and she would experience severe hypo’s, preventing her from participating in the sport that she loved. Reading her story I felt a strong sense of injustice, that her medical condition was preventing her from doing what she loved. I myself had a similar pattern of erratic control (before receiving the specialist information about nutrition and diabetes) and this personal connection between her experience and my own experiences caused me to reach out and offer some advice on how I would control my diabetes when exercising. I felt a sense of duty to share the knowledge that I had learned, as this information could dramatically improve her quality of life, and being a diabetic myself in a similar situation, I didn’t want her to feel alone in her struggle to exercise with diabetes.
The advice, which may seem basic to ‘Athletic Diabetics’ was to drink a sugary drink before exercising, reduce the amount of insulin injected prior to exercising and to reduce the amount of insulin injected post exercise. The very basic advice was explained using my own experiences as an example but highlighted that she would have to discuss this with her health care team in more detail as every individual has different methods of control. (To the non-diabetics there is no universal method of control. Everyone has different levels of insulin sensitivity, different insulin to carbohydrate ratios and there are many different types of insulin that work in different ways). A few weeks went by and I got a very positive response form the girl who after discussing the suggestions with her diabetic team implemented a few of the strategies that I had suggested and was able to trampoline again.
This specific interaction got me thinking about taking a more active role in the diabetic community. I have had unique experiences, both highs and lows that could help motivate and inspire people to take a more active role in managing their condition. I established the blog ‘The Athletic Diabetic‘ raising issues about living with diabetes and my own personal experiences of controlling diabetes during exercise. However there is a multitude of motivational diabetics worldwide who deserve recognition. They have, often unknowingly motivated and supported me in controlling my diabetes, hence the goal of creating a network of ‘Athletic Diabetics’.