Football
By Darren Spong
Darren
is training to be a professional footballer for Bournemouth Athletic
Football Club. He is a 17-year-old who developed diabetes at around 8
years old, who is now having problems with his glycaemic control in the
presence of his sporting activities. How can he improve his control and
performance?
Football Training Schedule
On
Monday, Wednesday and Friday – he starts training at 10.00 am for 2½
hours. There is a warm up session of running around the pitch at low
intensity for about 15 minutes, followed by stretching. There is then a
low intensity exercise of football drill passing the ball for another
45 minutes. Therefore the first hour of exercise is really of quite low
intensity and with little degree of strenuousness. This is then
followed by 13 minutes of vigorous keeping the ball in squares,
followed by a 45-minute five-a-side competition. He then breaks for
lunch and in the afternoon they have a further training episode of
approximately 2 hours followed by a warm up period, but omitting the
passing the ball exercise and then going on to a five-a-side match. He
then has a snack, his evening meal and then goes to bed.
On
Thursday and Sunday he has a rest day, where he has a normal food
intake and 4 injections of insulin per day. On Saturday’s which is
match is match days, he wakes, has breakfast then has his match at 11
am, lasting 90 minutes. He then has his lunch and a quiet afternoon,
and then goes out with his friends in the evening.
Darren’s
injection regime is that he has approximately 12-18 units of Humalog
three times a day and 36 units of Glargine at nighttime. Darren’s food
intake includes 3 bowls of cereals in the morning, a bottle of Lucozade
with his training session in the morning. For lunch he has 3 rounds of
bread, hot cross bun, sausage roll and a bag of mini cheddars. His
lunch contains approximately 100-120 grams of carbohydrate. His
Lucozade bottle contains 30 grams of carbohydrate per 500 ml bottle. He
then has a snack in the afternoon about another 60 grams of
carbohydrate (4 rounds of toast) and then has an evening meal with
approximately another 120 grams of carbohydrate and a further 40 grams
of cereal snacks.
An estimate that he is taking approximately
520-550 grams of carbohydrate per day, which is equivalent to 2,000
calories as carbohydrate. Darren’s problems are that he is running his
blood glucose chronically high to avoid hypoglycaemic episodes. He
takes Lucozade a bolus before each sporting period and has no idea
whether his blood glucose rises or falls during the exercise period
concerned.