BG Report: Kumano, Japan and Demon’s Castle
The demon pirates still lurking in old Japan • Kumano City
Watch on YouTube (30:05)
Today was a physically exhausting day in Kumano, Japan – lots of walking over many hours, including lots of ups and downs over rocks.
So I had my work cut out for me, if I wanted to keep blood sugar reasonable.
My FreeStyle Libre CGM said I was 224 when I woke up in my guesthouse. But the 15-minute increment readings report that I was actually in the upper 100s.
Either way, I had a large churro from a convenience store and a banana with coffee for breakfast in my room. About 50 grams, possibly more, of carbs, and I took about 5 units of Humalog. I didn’t want to get too low too soon.
I spent the morning walking along the Onigajō, the rocks and cliffs with a dramatic location on the Pacific Ocean. I hiked the entire thing, which is said to take about 40 minutes.
I took a little over an hour to do it, because I kept stopping to film things and go back and get various B-roll shots for my video.
Walk a path like this for an hour and watch the high BGs fall
My post-breakfast spike only made it to about 240, which is pretty much what I wanted. It slowly fell over the walk time to about 130, and I had some small snacks here and there to catch it when it did get down to that level.
Around 2:00 pm I ate a snack: tofu brownie and coffee in a local cafe. The brownie was thick and sweet, but I knew that such things in Japan are generally (somehow) not as carb-laden as their American counterparts might be. I took a single unit of Humalog, as I knew the walking wasn’t done.
It worked out. I walked around another couple of hours, until my knees could almost literally stand no more. And I experienced no lows all day long.
My hotel room meal
When I got to my hotel room in Matsusaka later, I ate the mackerel sushi roll I’d bought from a vendor in Kumano. It had a lot of rice, and I hadn’t really had a real meal all day. I took a large shot, but the rice sent me over 200.
It got as high as 288, but then went back down. Within 90 minutes, the 200+ readings were over and I hovered right around 100 even for much of the night.
Today was a testament to the power of exercise and the CGM.
