What is the significance of sugar in relation to exercise

Physical activity can lower your blood sugar up to 24 hours or more after your workout by making your body more sensitive to insulin. Become familiar with how your blood sugar responds to exercise. Checking your blood sugar level more often before and after exercise can help you see the benefits of activity.

You also can use the results of your blood sugar checks to see how your body reacts to different activities. Understanding these patterns can help you prevent your blood sugar from going too high or too low. People taking insulin or insulin secretagogues oral diabetes pills that cause your pancreas to make more insulin are at risk for hypoglycemia if insulin dose or carbohydrate intake is not adjusted with exercise. Checking your blood sugar before doing any physical activity is important to prevent hypoglycemia low blood sugar.

Every person reacts a little differently to exercise, so she recommends tracking your blood sugar levels for four to five hours after post-meal exercise to see what your trend is. This can help you determine if your levels are healthy or drop too much. Exercising after a meal is a good way to reduce blood glucose levels and lower your risk of complications from diabetes, including heart disease. But, before starting or changing your exercise regimen, talk with your doctor to determine what is best for you.

Your glucose levels spike about 90 minutes after you eat. Find out how timing post-meal exercise can help stabilize blood sugar and lower your heart disease risk. Learn more about vaccine availability.

Advertising Policy. Muscle glycogen, the predominant form of stored glucose in the body, and blood glucose are the main energy substrates for muscle contraction during exercise. Sucrose is an ideal substance for athletes to incorporate because it provides both glucose and fructose. As we exercise or engage in any physical activity, our muscles use glucose as energy to keep the muscle working. Once the glucose runs out, our muscle takes the glycogen out of storage and uses that for energy.

The muscle is then able to take more glucose from the blood if its available and replenish the storage ready for the next time. The issue that arises is that our society has become sedentary.

The muscles are not being used for large portions of the day. With nowhere to go, the glucose remains in the blood and continues to circulate waiting to be taken by the cells. With the copious amounts of blood glucose, the pancreas continues to release insulin to keep the cells aware that there is plenty of glucose that can be used.