What to carry during exercise
What to have with you when you exercise with type 1, and why where you keep your fast sugar matters more than what it is.
The kit that matters during exercise is small, and most of it is one thing: something sugary you can reach without leaving what you are doing. Everything else is useful. Fast sugar in a pocket is the bit that decides whether a low is a two minute pause or a real problem.
- Fast-acting sugar, on your body or at the side of the pitch. Not in a locker, a bag in the changing room, or the car.
- A way to check: your phone if you use a sensor, or a meter and strips. Symptoms are unreliable while you are working hard.
- More sugar than you expect to need, because one treatment is often not the end of it, especially on a long session.
- Something with your name and “type 1 diabetes” on it, and one person nearby who knows what a hypo looks like on you.
- A low can come on during or straight after the session, and again hours later, so the same kit matters on the way home.
Fast sugar, and where it actually needs to be
Glucose tablets, a small bottle of full-sugar drink, jelly sweets, a gel: what it is matters much less than that it works quickly and that you can get to it. Anything with fat in it, chocolate being the usual example, is slower than it feels like it should be, which makes it a poor choice for the moment you actually need one.
Where it lives is the part people get wrong, and it is worth being blunt about. Sugar in your kit bag is no use if your kit bag is in the changing room. Sugar in the car is no use on a run. The test is simple: if you went low right now, in the middle of what you are doing, could you reach it within a few seconds without asking anyone? A pocket, a running belt, a sock, taped to a bike frame, or handed to the person on the touchline all pass that test.
Carry more than one treatment’s worth. A low during exercise often needs a second go, because your muscles are still using glucose while the first one is trying to work, and a long session can produce more than one low.
Something to check with, because feeling it is unreliable here
Exercise produces sweating, a pounding heart, shaky legs and breathlessness on its own, which is also most of the hypo symptom list. You have spent your life reading those as effort. So during activity the usual internal warning is the one thing you cannot lean on, and having a way to check matters more than at any other time.
If you use a sensor, that means your phone or reader somewhere you can see it, and paying as much attention to the arrow as the number: a sensor reads a few minutes behind, so a comfortable figure with a hard downward arrow mid-session is a warning rather than reassurance. If you finger-prick, it means the meter and enough strips actually with you, not at home.
Worth knowing that a sensor can behave oddly during exercise. Sweat can loosen adhesive, and lying on a sensor, common in contact sport and in bed afterwards, can produce a false low from pressure. If the number and how you feel disagree, a finger-prick settles it.
Identification, other people, and getting home
Something that identifies you is genuinely useful and takes no effort: a bracelet, a tag on your laces, a card in your phone case, or the medical ID on your phone’s lock screen. It matters most in the situations where you might not be able to explain yourself, which are exactly the situations where a stranger deciding you seem drunk rather than hypo goes badly.
One person who knows is worth more than any object. Not a briefing, just: you have type 1, if you go vague or grey or stop making sense they should give you sugar and not let you carry on, and here is where you keep it. Coaches and training partners tend to take this in their stride.
Then the bit that gets forgotten, which is afterwards. Getting home, the shower, the rest of the evening and the night are all still inside the window where a low can happen, so the fast sugar should not go back in the bag the moment you stop. On a bike or driving home, that matters more, not less.
What changes what you carry
Swimming is the awkward case, because you cannot carry anything in with you, so it has to be at the poolside and someone has to know. Contact sports rule out anything in a pocket that would hurt to land on. A long run or ride takes you away from any backup, so it needs more with you rather than less. Training alone raises the stakes of every item on this list.
Where the kit earns its place
Examples, not instructions or doses.
You feel it coming on at the far end of the pitch, and your glucose tablets are two hundred metres away in a bag. Everything about the plan was right except where it physically was, and that is the part that decides whether it helps.
You cannot run with a bottle, so it lives with whoever is on the side, and they know it is yours and why. That is the swimming and contact-sport answer too: not on you, but with a person who knows.
The session finished fine, so the sugar went back in the bag, and the low turns up on the bus. The window does not close when the whistle goes, which is why it stays in a pocket until you are home and settled.