A new goal, "Half Dome in Yosemite National Park"

 As I wrote in my last post,  I have given myself a new goal.  I like to be able to walk up to the top of the Half Dome in Yosemite National Park in the US.  When this is going to happen,  I have no idea, but lets say in about two years time.  As you might have read (https://diabeatic.blogspot.com/2020/09/ ), when I was diagnosed with Diabetes 2,  I planned and trained to walk the Milford track.   To reach  the summit of Half Dome will be a real challenge,  but achieving it would be fantastic.     

                               

                                                        In 2003 I was half way 

The biggest challenge will be to get the BGL's right during this enormous exercise. At the moment,  the BGL's are all over the show, even when I go for a short walk.  To give you an example,  yesterday I did a flat walk off only two hours.  During this time,  the sensor showed me BGL's as low as 3.5 up to 13.  I started the walk with a BGL of 6.1, within 30 minutes,  I was too low and than after eating, but not compensating with insulin, the BGL went up, while I was walking and I had to give insulin to avoid going to high. 

Before I continue  I will explain first some basics of the working of the pump.  The pump continuously pumps a tiny bit of insulin into the body.  This is called basal rate and this is based on the calculation of how much insulin is required to get the BGL's on target (see below).  When I eat something,  I bring in on  the pump the grams of carbohydrates that I will eat. The pump calculates how much  insulin is required.  This is based on the carb ratio. All the "meten en weten" (https://diabeatic.blogspot.com/2020/09/) of the past have determined this. The insulin given is a bolus. 

Both the basal and bolus amount of insulin will help to keep/bring the height of the BGL to the target value.  The target is a number between 4 and 8 mmol/l, to live a healthy life and the calculations are based on for example to reach target value four hours after some food or in the morning before breakfast. 

I can totally understand, if all this information is confusing you.  Please contact me, if you like more information. 

Since I am using the insulin pump I have been doing quite a lot of walks already,  but unfortunately I have not found the correct way of controlling the BGL's.   The advise I have been given is the bring the basal rate as low as 20% or even stop given insulin at all.  This will need to be  done already one hour before I start the exercise.   Also,  I need to adjust the bolus amount of insulin as the body burns of the carbohydrates quicker, so less insulin is required.  It will be a lot of trial and error.  Hopefully the errors will not be too severe.  

I will keep you posted of my progress and about all the other walks I will be doing while training for this event.