Why Food Beats Insulin to the Finish Line | Pre-Bolus Science, T1D

Half the planet is watching the World Cup, so Neil explains the mechanism of the post-meal spike in soccer terms. Your food is the striker, already past the defense. Your insulin is the defender who got subbed in late and is still jogging back. That mismatch is the entire reason you spike.

This is the "how it works" episode. Regular rapid-acting insulin takes about 15 minutes to start, peaks around an hour, and lasts three to four hours. Your dinner carbs hit your bloodstream almost immediately. Dose them at the same time and the food scores before the insulin is even in the game. The fix is simply to put your insulin in first, so they arrive together and your CGM line stays flat and boring, which in type 1 is the dream.

In this episode:

How fast rapid-acting insulin actually works vs. how fast carbs hit
The pharmacokinetics of insulin timing, in plain English
Why a "flat and boring" CGM is the whole goal
How pre-bolusing matches your insulin to your food

This Week's Challenge: Keep watching the gap between your dose and your first bite at dinner, and now you know what it means. Every minute your insulin is behind, the food is on a breakaway.

Helpful resources and newsletter

Connect with Neil: TikTok | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Website

Books on Amazon: Type 1 Diabetes – One Day at a Time | Type 1 Diabetes – True Stories

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(250)

Muscle Is Medicine // Strength Training with Type 1 Diabetes (Alex St. John, MSc)

Alex St. John is six foot five, about 295 pounds, and three years into serious lifting when type 1 diabetes showed up mid-semester of his kinesiology degree, at a blood sugar of 504. His response was ...

28 Sep 53min

"Snack" Before You Eat

The graduate seminar of movement snacks, with the loudest safety caveat of the month. A 2014 study in Diabetologia coined the term exercise snacks: short, brisk bursts of movement a few minutes BEFORE...

25 Sep 6min

The After-Dinner Ten

Meet Neil's walking partner: Cora, a 5.9-pound senior Morkie whose hips don't lie and whose top speed is best described as eventually. Every evening, Neil, his wife Gina, and Cora take the after-dinne...

23 Sep 5min

You Don't Need The Gym

Somebody sold all of us the same lie: that getting active means a membership, an hour a day, and a personality transplant. This episode formally cancels that belief system with receipts. Look at the e...

21 Sep 5min

The Movement "Snack"

For once, a study on our actual people. Published in 2026 in Diabetes Technology and Therapeutics: adults with type 1 diabetes on insulin pumps sat for six hours straight on one lab day, and on anothe...

18 Sep 5min

Three Short Walks Beat One Long Walk

Stop looking for 45 free minutes. They don't exist, and it turns out they were never the assignment. A 2013 Diabetes Care study by Loretta DiPietro compared one 45-minute walk against three 15-minute ...

16 Sep 5min

Exercising with Type 1 Diabetes // 34 Years of T1D and Still Moving (Arnie Bunch, the Blood Sugar Ninja)

Arnie Bunch has been living with type 1 diabetes since 1992, the same year Neil was diagnosed. He's a runner, the creator of the #bloodsugarninja, and the kind of friend who gives you the straight ans...

14 Sep 1h 4min

The Bonus That Lasts Two Days

The fact this whole challenge is built on: when you move today, your insulin works better tomorrow. For 24 to 48 hours after movement, the muscles you used stay more sensitive to insulin. One walk buy...

11 Sep 6min