About Exercise Glucose Spikes

Overview:

This article provides an overview of why you might be experiencing glucose spikes during exercise and how to remove the spikes from your logs so they don't affect your stability score.

Should I be concerned about glucose spikes during exercise?

If you’re tracking your glucose using a CGM, you might be worried by an apparent glucose rise during high-intensity exercise. You shouldn’t be. Despite the acute rise in glucose, high-intensity training actually improves both fasting glucose and insulin sensitivity over time. Both of these adaptations lead to better metabolic flexibility and glucose control. 

During intense exertion, our stress hormones tell the liver to release stored glycogen into the bloodstream and to produce new glucose from available sources to fuel the fight or flight that's occurring! Thus, it is not unusual to see a rise in your blood glucose during a high-intensity workout. This rise is an indication that you are mobilizing your stored glycogen (meaning the workout is too intense for your body to rely primarily on fat and need to use glucose as fuel). This is a completely different physiological response than eating a cookie that spikes your glucose and causes insulin resistance; exercise-related spikes are associated with enhanced long-term insulin sensitivity, which is a good thing! To learn more about exercise and metabolic fitness, read our blog post here.

How do I remove an exercise spike from my Levels score?

Log an activity as strenuous:

• Open the Levels app
• Tap the green plus button to add a log and select "exercise"
• Enter your exercise details into the log, then select strenuous and save

Edit an existing exercise log: 

• On your Today page, scroll down to your Timeline and tap on the activity you want to edit
• Tap on the 3-dot icon (1) to reveal the menu and select "Edit log" (2)

• Tap on the "Strenuous?" checkbox (1)
• Tap on "Save" (2). Logging the activity as "strenuous" should prevent your workout from negatively impacting your day's score

💡Your activity will automatically be marked as "strenuous" in the Levels app if it's imported from AppleHealth or GoogleFit and your heart rate goes above 150 BPM, which is 85% of a presumed max heart rate of 177. You can also adjust the max heart rate threshold if you have an unusually low heart rate and your strenuous activity isn’t being captured. 

To adjust max heart rate: 

• Open the Levels app and go to settings
• You'll see a 'Max heart rate' option, you can update this according to your max heart rate threshold

Still have questions? Please email the Levels Support team at support@levels.com.