My mother is a diabetic, and on medication for it. Her fasting sugar in the mornings used to be ~150, and she naturally wakes up at ~7 AM.
After doing a few minutes of moderately strenuous exercise ~25-20 min after a meal and before sleeping (blood sugar spikes slightly later after a meal than after straight glucose ingestion), on my suggestion, she now occasionally finds herself waking up due to hunger pangs at ~5-6 AM; her blood sugar at this point is often ~80-100. Even when she sleeps through the night, her fasting sugar in the morning is now almost always in the 80-120, usually 80-100 range after waking up, whenever she has followed the protocol.
(We’re probably going to reduce her medication dosage after this after consulting and confirming with her doctor, since it appears the reduction is significant enough that her current dose is now slightly too high.)
This seems to be an absolutely busted intervention for hyperglycemia, to the extent that I think a case can be made to upgrade this to the level of population-level general advice (“exercise semi-strenuously for a few minutes ~15-30 min after a meal as just a default thing you do and everyone else does”).
Can confirm with a somewhat spectacular N=1.
My mother is a diabetic, and on medication for it. Her fasting sugar in the mornings used to be ~150, and she naturally wakes up at ~7 AM.
After doing a few minutes of moderately strenuous exercise ~25-20 min after a meal and before sleeping (blood sugar spikes slightly later after a meal than after straight glucose ingestion), on my suggestion, she now occasionally finds herself waking up due to hunger pangs at ~5-6 AM; her blood sugar at this point is often ~80-100. Even when she sleeps through the night, her fasting sugar in the morning is now almost always in the 80-120, usually 80-100 range after waking up, whenever she has followed the protocol.
(We’re probably going to reduce her medication dosage after this after consulting and confirming with her doctor, since it appears the reduction is significant enough that her current dose is now slightly too high.)
This seems to be an absolutely busted intervention for hyperglycemia, to the extent that I think a case can be made to upgrade this to the level of population-level general advice (“exercise semi-strenuously for a few minutes ~15-30 min after a meal as just a default thing you do and everyone else does”).