Diabetic success on the ninja railway
Ninja are only half the story on the Iga Railway
Watch on YouTube (25:56)
Have a good morning, blood sugar-wise, and the rest of the day falls in to place.
At least, that’s what happened when I set out to explore the Iga Railway in Japan, the so-called “Ninja Train”. And it was only luck (and hey – skill on my part) that led me to the diabetic success.
My plan for the morning was: get up at 7:20 am; go outside to get footage of trains passing by at 7:40 and at 8:00; get breakfast from the hotel buffet; check out and go ride the trains and see the stations all day.
The 8:00 am train. Time for breakfast. (I ended up not using this one in the final video.)
What actually happened was an interesting lesson in morning insulin and BG behavior.
(For background info, like many diabetics I often get an infusion of glucose from the liver throughout the morning, the timing and amount of which are unpredictable and usually lead to high BG spikes which I then correct.)
I got up at 7:20 as planned, and BG was 148. Not bad, but I went ahead and took two units of Humalog before going outside for the footage. I got the two trains going by, and went back inside for breakfast.
But it was a holiday (on a Wednesday) and the breakfast room was crammed full of people. And I had a certain train I needed to catch. If I waited for a spot, I wouldn’t make it. So, up in my room I took my basal shot as always, and checked out and walked a ways to a nearby cafe.
There, I had a large, thick pancake. And I ordered Belgian chocolate dripping sauce extra. For this carb-heavy (but how much?) meal I took five units at the table. Then I left and had a brisk walk for ten minutes, up a steep slope in the road, to the station.
So, two separate Humalog shots an hour apart, and a decent burst of exercise *right* after eating.
The effect was magical: my breakfast spike was no more than 169 at its highest. Around 11:00 am it started going slowly down; I had a small snack with a vending machine coffee. By 1:30 it was 81, so I had a bit of glucose and, a bit later, a snack lunch in an unstaffed train station (Maruyama) – chocolate and pretzels and water. (Hey, nothing was open so I had to eat leftovers from my bag.)
Lunch at Maruyama Station: Calorie Mate chocolate bars and Pretz pretzel sticks.
I took six units for that, and that too worked. Lunch spike was to 150, then it leveled out and stayed sane.
After dinner later at home I went up to about 210, but then glided back down. I bounced around between 100 and 130 as I slept all night.
That morning approach set the tone. I blunted the morning spike with an early shot and a quick dash out the door after eating. If I had more discipline I’d do that more often. But, hanging around sipping coffee for 45 minutes in the morning… that’s a luxury that’s hard to give up.
