A good friend of mine and fellow Type 1 Diabetic shares his insights and personal story of being a competitive ski racer and having Type 1 diabetes. Here is his piece.
I am 20 years old, studying Finance and Management at Bishop’s University and have had TD1 for 7 years. I had ski raced for over 10 years and I was diagnosed just before a weekend when I had a race I was to compete in, so I was pretty bummed out at first. The first thing the doctor said to me was TD1 is not your fault. I quickly accepted the fact that I had TD1 and told the doctor, “now what? I have a race on the weekend and I am not going to miss it because of Diabetes.” I had 3 days to learn as much as I can from the doctors about carb counting, injections, insulin doses and checking blood sugar levels. It took a few weeks to start to get the hang of carb counting and dealing with TD1 in general, but with the help from my parents, friends and doctors, managing TD1 became second nature. I took this as an opportunity to change my life for the better. My goal was to control diabetes and not let it control me.
My passion for skiing really drove me to learn as much as I can about TD1 and its affects on you while you are active since I was diagnosed during the ski season. I found that when I skied, I made sure to have a large breakfast each morning to help keep my sugars slightly higher during the day. Most of the time my sugars remained fairly consistent during skiing, but about 3-6 hours after I finished skiing, I noticed that my blood sugars were dropping. To adjust for that, the doctor recommended that I had to have a snack after I ski.
These days I am on a pump and I find it much more effective to control TD1 with a more active lifestyle and being at University. I am able to reduce my basal rates so I receive less insulin while I am training and I keep them reduced for about 6 hours after I train. By reducing basal rates and having healthy snacks, I have managed to maintain blood sugar levels between 6-12 when I am training. There are the occasional highs and lows, which can happen. Sometimes after seeing a pattern of highs or lows, if I was unsure on how much of an adjustment I needed to make to my carb ratios or basal rates, I called my doctor to get his input, which helped me understand more about TD1 and how to better manage it on my own.
When it comes to diet and nutrition for me, I found that when eating healthier it is much easier to control TD1. The effects of eating healthier and staying active with TD1 allowed me to reduce the amount of insulin I use for meals and throughout the day, which has helped me achieve a target A1C of 7.0. When it comes to supplementation for training, I find that Biotsteel is one of the best products to use given that it is diabetic friendly and it contains all natural ingredients to properly fuel you.
Turning Type 1 Into Being Number 1 