I am Christel from Diabetes Strong and today we're going to talk about
how your periods can affect your diabetes a lot of things can impact your blood sugars
outside just insulin and food and hormones are probably one of the heaviest offenders
so when it comes to the female hormone cycle most will have to pay attention and adjust
our care throughout our cycle to maintain whatever diabetes management goals we have for ourselves
I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when I was 19 years old and I pretty quickly noticed
that my insulin needs would vary dramatically throughout my cycle and this was even before
CGM's Continues Glucose Monitors so this was just from measuring my blood sugars before and after
meals at that point I was seeing a younger male endocrinologist and during my visit I would
bring this to him I was like so I've noticed that my blood sugars will you know fluctuate
widely throughout my period is there a connection there and he gave me a flat out no so he was wrong
luckily back then I chose to listen to my body and adjust my care throughout my period and I just
hope that he has gained that knowledge as well throughout the years. Menstrual cycles range from
25 to 36 days on average and your hormone levels will change quite a bit throughout your cycle
exact blood sugar management throughout a period probably will never really be a thing
but knowing how the different kind of hormones impact blood sugars and how they fluctuate
throughout your cycle can really help you gain an understanding so that you can adopt your care
to your changing hormone levels. The menstrual cycle has three phases
so there's different hormones impacting this whole process and these hormones will impact
your insulin sensitivity meaning how effective your body is at utilizing the insulin that you
either inject or that your body produces by itself and this is just like cortisol can make
blood sugars go up so can these hormones so let's just look at this graph over the female
hormone cycle I think that's really helpful to see it visualized as you can see up here
as we go through the faces so we start menstruation and then the three phases
comes after that but as you can see the hormones actually go up twice during the menstrual cycle
so the first one is halfway through your cycle during ovulation and the other one is closer
to your period as your body gets ready to for the period so during these two
hormone surges so midway through and before your period a lot of women will see increased insulin
resistance that means that they will need more insulin during these periods of time
I personally don't really see a decrease in my insulin sensitivity mid-cycle
but I have noticed a significant decrease in my insulin sensitivity
right before my period for me, it's about a week for some people's up to 10 days so that means
I'm very insulin resistant up to the week before my period however once my period starts and those
hormone levels comes down I become I quickly go back to my normal insulin sensitivity level
so how will you know whether or not your blood sugars are impacted by your period
what I would recommend is two things I would recommend that you keep a detailed log
of your blood sugars and your insulin needs throughout your period and also hold that up
against when is your when does your period start how long is it and then basically you can hold
those two data set up against each other and see well during different periods of your cycle
are you more insulin resistant or not there's some different ways that you can keep track of
that I mean you can keep a paper log you can use your calendar but there's also some period
trackers like free apps that you can use just use whatever's easiest for you so it's
easy to just say well just you know increase your insulin when you become insulin resistant but in
reality most of us don't know exactly when our period is going to start there's a few
different ways to get around that as I mentioned there are some period trackers that might make
it a little easier for you but at least having a feel for about when your period starts is helpful
so I personally manage it so that I kind of know when my period starts
a week before I'll start to pay additional attention, so extra attention go like okay when
does that insulin sensitivity hit so I would rather wait for it to actually hit before I
change my basal insulin I'm okay with doing corrections until I'm sure that okay
the pre-period insulin resistance has kicked in and once it does then I do change my basal
insulin and just a word of caution though as I mentioned you know as soon as your period starts
your insulin sensitivity is going to go back to normal and that can be like that so
be very careful because it kind of it's kind of like you go from one monster to the other
and you don't want to run around with way too much basal insulin going
so different ways of doing this obviously you need to find out what's best for you
work with your medical team just have a plan because having a week or even two weeks a month
where you go insanely high because you're insulin resistant due to the increase in your hormones
is no fun either I hope this video was helpful and it gave you some more information about
how periods affect diabetes and how to manage it thank you so much for watching