Managing my Blood glucose levels during football

Chris Bright – Managing Blood Glucose Levels During A Football (Soccer) Game

I’m here today with Chris Bright and we’re going to be talking about how Chris manages his blood glucose level during a football game. Chris is a semi-professional footballer player with caps for Wales in playing futsal, which is indoor five-a-side, at the national level. Chris is going to be talking about how he manages his blood glucose levels during both football and futsal.

Over to you, Chris. What’s your secret?

So for me it’s about lots of testing. I think the best thing I can recommend to anyone is to make sure you’re testing as much as possible around. It gives you the opportunity to know where you are at any given moment and how to respond because in those moments you have to be in a range that allows you to perform. I find for me if I’m sat anywhere above 13, or obviously below 4, then things just won’t happen in the way that I know I can perform. I’m testing all of the time.

Obviously within a game of football I’ve got 45 minutes where I can’t test. I’m out on the pitch until halftime knowing I can’t really do a test. So I go out onto the pitch a little bit hither, knowing that I’ve got 45 minutes where it’s likely to come down because of the nature of the intensity of the exercise. Once I get to halftime I’ll come in, check my blood glucose, and normally they’ll be sat within range. If they are then I’m probably going to take a little bit of glucose on board, just knowing that as I become more tired and my muscles start to sap a bit more energy in the second half, and knowing that I’ve got another 45 minutes to perform, I’m going to need a little bit glucose on board to ensure I don’t hit hypoglycemia, so I’ll take that on board at halftime. Then once we get to the end of the game, it’s smooth sailing for me from a football perspective. It then becomes about what I do in post game.

But in terms of futsal it’s a little bit different because it’s roll on, roll off subs. I’m able to monitor a little bit more closely, so I tend to sort of play for three or four minutes at a time and then be rolled off, and I’m off for probably another three or four minutes. The intensity of exercise is it’s a lot harder. It’s more intense, so the expectation of my glucose levels is they may shoot up slightly more than they would at a football game. Keeping an eye on that is really important, so I tend to check when I’m off the court if I can, if I’ve got enough time. Sometimes I’m rolled on too quickly, but it’s just again keeping an eye on things and responding to what you see.

If the glucose levels are low, then take a little bit of carbohydrate on board. I tend to use Lucozade Sport as a pretty fast-acting isotonic drink. Then I guess if it was slightly too high, I’m tempted to take some insulin on board, but sometimes I will leave it just knowing that this is exercise and it is an aerobic exercise at the end of the day. It is slightly more intense, but at some stage things are going to start to come down as you become more tired and you get further into the game, so I’m tempted to leave it. But futsal just gives me more opportunity to check and observe things.

With the futsal, am I correct in saying that it’s higher intensity exercise and that you’re more likely to be pushing your heart rate through that aerobic zone?

Yes, absolutely. With the nature of the sport, you tend to get three or four minutes of working, I would say, 85% of what you’re able to do. It’s super intense, lots of sprinting, short spaces, and it does have that different effect on glucose levels as a result.

I think there’s an important message there for anybody’s who’s playing football and decides, “Hey, I’ll go and play five-a-side one evening with my mates before we go to the pub.” It’s actually a very different sport to playing football. Would that be a correct assessment?

Yeah, 100%. I think that was the biggest, I suppose, learning for me was because I started to transition to futsal sort of as I left university, and it was one of the biggest shocks for me was how different my glucose levels were. But you learn very quickly. I’ve got an understanding of diabetes from my own studies at university and my experience with football. I knew how to respond to it, and it was just learning as I went and trial and error to get to a routine that worked for me for futsal, and I’ve got a routine now that works for football.

Would it be correct to say that you started out with a foundation point that may well have been informed by research studies and work being done in the laboratory environment by diabetes researchers and doctors, and that you’ve then had to modify that research to make it appropriate to you?

Yeah. I did my undergraduate degree dissertation in the effects of the intensity of exercise on glucose levels in diabetics and non-diabetics. It was my own study and my own research that led me into certain understandings, but I think for everybody it’s always different. Everybody’s body reacts in a different way, so I’ve learned to adapt to what I learned from studying into how that works for me.