News from Europe

Sports and diabetes: making it easy

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Published on Thursday, 05 March 2015 13:46

How intensive will be my work out? How do I need to adjust my dose of insulin? Do I need to eat more carbohydrates before exercising? These are questions a person with type 1 diabetes needs to answer before doing sports to prevent hyper or hypoglycaemia.

To make finding the right answers easier, ANIAD – the Italian Association of Athletes with Diabetes - joined forces with the University of Udine to create a web-based programme that helps a person with type 1 diabetes to exercise safely.

The project, called ECRES-CREID (ECRES stands for “Exercise Carbohydrate Requirement Estimating Software” and CREID for “Carbohydrate Requirement Estimating Instrument for People with Diabetes”) gives people with type 1 diabetes a precise estimate of how much carbohydrates they need to eat before exercising to avoid hyper or hypoglycaemia during or after playing sports.

The estimating software is based on an algorithm that takes into account various parameters including: the person’s treatment (type of insulin, usual doses and times of injections combined with dietary habits), their level of physical fitness as well as how long, how hard and at what time of the day they plan to do sports. This data is inserted in the software to create the user’s profile and give them tailored information about their needs when exercising.

The advantage of the programme is that the person does not have to adapt their insulin intake. Research in people who have used the system shows that ECRES-CREID estimates are highly reliable and allow people with type 1 diabetes to worry less when playing sports.  

ECRES-CREID is available to people with diabetes and their healthcare professionals through various platforms: a web interface, an SMS service giving immediate feedback for unplanned sports activities, as well as an application on Android that alerts the person of signs of hypoglycaemia thanks to sensors.
The system is now being used in 12 European countries and approval is pending for the United Stated.

For more information about ECRES-CREID, click here.