If being in Babia is like living in paradise, outside the worldly and human concerns, pedaling for Babia has become an effective recipe to improve people's lives with type 1 diabetes mellitus.
Not only because sport is a basic activity to keep glucose that shoots at the cause of this autoimmune disease that affects between 0.8 and 4 people per thousand inhabitants.
The Babia-libadesella challenge, which this year passes for six days equally by the Leonese and Asturian regions, is, in addition to a cyclist tour of more than 300 kilometers, a week of coexistence between 50 people with diabetes, Spanish and Dutch and Dutch'veteran' and newly diagnosed.
"There is no better teacher for a person with diabetes who has just debuted that another who already has the experience," says Babiano Elías Delgado, a native of Riolago and head of the HUCA Diabetes Section (Central University Hospital of Asturias) andProfessor at the University of Oviedo.
The initiative, in which the Head of Endocrinology of the El Bierzo Hospital, Alberto Diez also participates, has the support of the Dutch Foundation Bas Van de Goor, which is dedicated to promoting sport among people with diabetes as a form ofControl glycemic spikes.
It is the sixth edition of this challenge on horseback between didactic coexistence and sports and the third in which Babia is the land chosen to demonstrate that "people with diabetes can do everything," says Elías Delgado.
La Majúa, Torre de Babia, Los Lagos de Saliencia and La Cueta are some of the scenarios through which the cycling crossing will cross in stages of about 40 to 50 kilometers a day with between 800 and 1,000 meters of unevenness.It is a mountain journey for which they have the support of local 'sherpas' such as lawyers Carlos González Antón and Juan López Contreras, who will go in the lead, while doctors will close the march to ensure that all people perform the stagenormally.The manager of the Foundation is caught in Babia, which she has baptized as "the Spanish Switzerland" for her landscape of mountains and pastures.
Participants arrive from all over Spain and the Netherlands and each of the veterans has to attract a person with a recent diagnosis."The day of people with diabetes is lived with many doubts and there is no better teacher than another person who has lived with those challenges," says Elías Delgado.
At the beginning of the day, the participants take the necessary references to calculate the insulin doses depending on the route.Once the sports activity is finished, a training meeting takes place every day where the situations that have arisen during the day under the direction of doctors are presented.
The challenge also has a very strong psychological component."People with diabetes who are usually the" rare "of the gang are surrounded by other people like them for a week," says Elías Delgado.
Babia's participation in this didactic and sports challenge for diabetes has the support of the City of San Emiliano whose mayor, Basilio BarriadChallenge phase.
That diabetes is not an impediment to face challenges such as the one that will have Babia for the third time between June 14 and 16, the editions that have been crowned in the last seven years demonstrate it.First, it was Mont Blanc, then the Pyrenees, Sierra Nevada and in the fourth edition the Bierzo-Laciana challenge, Soria-Navarra welcomed another challenge and also made a mini challenge between Bierzo and Babia on a second time.
The participants aremonitored during the 24 hours by continuous sensors that control their glycemia levels.The data collected contribute to a study on the behavior of real -time diabetes in extreme situations that develops medical specialists in endocrinology and nutrition.
The Bas Van de Goor Foundation (BVDGF) was founded in 2006 and aims to improve the lives of people with diabetes through exercise and sport.To do this, it organizes sports activities with the aim of raising awareness about the importance of sport in the daily life of people with diabetes.
