With June rolling around, that means one thing! Winter has arrived...
I don't know about you lot, but I absolutely despise this time of year when the cold weather and rainy days roll in, for one the rain stops me from riding out doors, which for me is really important, I find it helps me feel present, alive and at my peak being out in nature and breathing in fresh air, I often find it hard to replicate this feeling any other way. Riding indoors on the Ergo (indoor trainer) gazing out the window at the rain just isn't the same or any where near as stimulating.
Being a Type 1 Diabetic over this period can be an even bigger pain in the ass, especially when you fall ill and come down with a cold which is bound to happen at some point.
The biggest struggle for me when I fall sick is insulin resistance, I often get quite agitated and think the insulin I am injecting is useless, it just doesn't work anywhere near as well as usual and I can find my self dosing a meal bolus 1 - 2 hrs prior to eating at an increased dosage, while still having my BGL's hover around 9 - 13 for most if not all of the day, and also introducing a temp basal at 150 - 200% in conjunction.
If i'm at home, I can often find my self out the back with the skipping rope or doing some sort of movement, if I am at work then I can find myself going for a brisk walk or anything possible to raise the heart rate in an attempt to lower my BGL.
Nutrition choices ideally have to be planned in advance and should preferably be a lower fat content, because if you find yourself consuming a meal or snack that is containing carbohydrate and fat on the higher end of the scale, the likely hood of a spike in BGL is very high. With the increased insulin resistance and a higher fat meal, the effort to control your BGL can go on for hours afterwards and even into your next meal time and it just goes round and round until you are no longer sick, which can be a few days or even a few weeks which really takes its toll and can easily cause Diabetes burnout.
A few days after I started writing the draft for this post I actually fell sick and it was basically everything i said above that happened.. what a coincidence ahaha...
Keeping a healthy diet all year round helps to protect and fight against the common cold from happening, although many other factors can affect the effectiveness of just a healthy diet, eg, fatigue, lack of sleep excessive alcohol consumption etc.