Speaking out at school
You spend a lot of time at school, so it’s important to look after your diabetes whilst you’re there. When you go back to school after the diabetes has been diagnosed it’s safer and easier for you if teachers, best friends and classmates know you have diabetes so they understand if you have to check your glucose levels, have snacks, take insulin or anything else related to diabetes.
Pe, games and sport at school
Don’t sit out because you have diabetes. There’s no sport you cannot do.
See the ‘Out and About’ section for more information on sports.
Top Tips
- If you have recently been diagnosed with diabetes, you don’t have to give up PE or the sports you love
- Make sure your PE teachers know about your diabetes before lessons and that you have quick acting sugar supplies on the sidelines (e.g. glucose tablets or sweets, non-diet coke, energy or sports drink) and that they know how to help you if you need them to
- Check your blood glucose levels before sport and make sure they are not too high or too low before you start
- If you’re playing quick games you should eat something like sweets or glucose before you start
- A snack bar is a better thing to have before you do vigorous, longer duration sport
- If the physical exercise lasts more than 20-30 minutes you’ll also need to have some fast-acting carbs like glucose to drink or eat during the activity, and will need to eat a snack afterwards as you’ll have used up more of your energy reserves than normal
- Remember that glucose levels can drop very quickly when doing physical exercise and after vigorous and prolonged activities hypos can occur many hours afterwards
- For team games, if you feel hypo have a signal between you and your coach so they can pass you a sugar drink on the sideline and you can play again as soon as you feel better
- Take a break if you need to – check the blood glucose level and correct it if necessary
- Sometimes quick intense exercise, like sprinting, causes a spike in glucose levels, which does not mean you have messed up. This will usually settle fairly soon and if you then carry on exercising watch carefully for a later drop in blood glucose levels