Blood Sugar and Exercise

Before surgery I was pre-diabetic.  Since surgery my glucose levels have been good.

For the fun of it, after exercise for the past few days, I have taken my glucose level to see how much it dropped.  I have been surprised to see that it has actually increased each time.  For example, today before I exercised it was 5.0  After 30 minutes of walking, it had spiked to 7.6

Has this happened to anyone else?  I'm going to ask my doctor about it on Friday, but I was wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience?

I would assume that your levels are just taking their time getting to a normal stage. Blood sugar rising after exercise doesn't happen to me. If anything, i have to make sure they don't go too low. Are you eating before you head out? It could be what you ate as well.

Thanks for your reply.  No, I usually go out at 8:30, then have breakfast when I get back!

It's never happened to be before either! (well except for the past few days!) 

Your body is still recovering...It's only been a month. 7.6 isn't a huge number either. How is it after food?

Before eating it's usually around 5, after eating it sometimes goes up to 7.8.

I just thought it was weird that after exercise it increases!  I'm not going to stress about it...I'll wait and see what the Dr. says! :)

Let us know!

It's not exercise alone it's morning exercise factor. during the night (around 3-4am) our sugar drops to its minimum, liver starts pumping up more sugar into blood stream (you know that not all blood sugar comes directly from food, significant portion is generated by liver, right? ). By the wakeup time we have it at pick value, so we can start the day with energy.

At this moment we get breakfast and liver slows down, instead,upon the food "detection", the pancreas pumps insulin and the processing begins, making it all normal and running smoothly.

In your case - the "normalization" mechanism is still a bit out of wack, it takes time to adjust and make this stop pumping/start pumping" signals working properly. When you start your morning exercise, no food is "detected", the "liver STOP!" command doesn't come and your liver keeps on  hard work producing glucose. My guess is that the muscles don't use up all of this sugar effectively yet, so you experience period of elevation.

It should normalize with time. Of course, consulting a doctor is always a good idea, but as far as I see nothing bad or scary is happening - it's a body adjustment.

Good luck!

YOu really need to EAT food before you exercise. Going out and expecting all that hard work from your body with no "gas" is unhealthy.

How far would you expect your car to go if you tried to run it on no gas? Ask some of the other folks who exercise what they eat before they run/swim/lift weights/breathe heavy.

Nata's very right.. it's early in the game.. things are still getting acquainted with each other.. and that's too bad of a spike.

Thanks for your answers everyone!

I realize that eating before exercise is important, but for me, it also causes a lot of cramping, so I try to keep it short (30 min or so) and then have a high protein breakfast when I am done!

I haven't had surgery yet, but have had the same experience of sugars spiking after a workout.  I spoke with my GP and she said it was totally normal and not to worry about it.  Hope that helps a bit.