No lunch vs. blood sugar on the Geibi Line
A wild day on one of Japan's least-used train lines • Geibi Line
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Today I rode a series of trains along the Geibi Train Line in Hiroshima Prefecture. A calamity with my train at one station meant I had to skip lunch. A blood sugar challenge, to be sure.
As background, BG had been in the mid 100s most of the early morning as I slept in my hotel in Iwakuni. Before breakfast in the hotel at 6:00 am it was 155, and after eating the Japanese-style meal it went up to around 210. Not too bad, for a post-breakfast reading.
Breakfast
I rode to Hiroshima and then found my small diesel train for the Geibi Line, one of Japan’s least-used lines and biggest money losers. BG was dropping steadily, but not precipitously. Gliding downward from breakfast.
And then we got to Karuga Station.
Karuga is not famous, or big. It’s a rural little stop in central Hiroshima Prefecture. We pulled up alongside the platform… but didn’t leave. The train just idled.
This wasn’t in the schedule. Some of us started poking our heads out the windows and doors, and saw the problem: Smoke was pouring out of the top of the train.
The smoke was white, and was more likely steam. Quite unnerving either way.
Eventually the driver announced that we could not continue, and ordered everyone off the train. We had to wait for another one to come pick us up.
What all this meant for me was that at my next transfer, Miyoshi Station, my intended hour-long window was gone. It was my plan to leave the station and get lunch before hopping onto my next train.
Now, thanks to the delay, I had no time for lunch, and nothing to eat in my bag. So, I skipped lunch altogether.
Not eating is a strange thing for a Type 1 diabetic. It removes the challenge of taking the correct insulin dose for food… but the body detects that you haven’t eaten, and can release its own stored-up glucose to compensate. (Without the insulin to cover it, of course.)
Very late lunch
So I kept an eye on my BG with my CGM. It got down to 70 and I had some glucose (for lunch, in a way). It went up to 144 and then instantly went back down, leveling out at around 110. Great.
I finally arrived at my final station, Niimi, and my hotel around 4:00 pm. I immediately went to the nearest convenience store and bought a bunch of stuff for a late lunch, which I ate in my room. BG was 103.
It was a strange day for BGs from then on. I spiked to around 230 for a while after the late lunch, then started coming down – 167 and falling, according to the CGM. Dinner was also from a convenience store, but pretty small – sandwich and stuff. By then it was 124 and falling, so I took a rather modest amount of Humalog.
And that was that. I never reached 200 again until partway through the next day (odd lunch spike). And through the non-lunch of the Geibi Line day, I didn’t get an infusion of unwanted glucose from the liver. So, I call it a success.
And the train ride itself? More problematic than blood sugar, for once.
