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Midnight Low Glucose

Larissima

Larissima

Well-Known Member
Messages
875
Location
London, UK
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
I recently got a couple of Freestyle Libre 2 sensors after not using one for a long time, and I noticed something interesting. Almost every night, between midnight and 4 am, I have 1-3 dips into glucose level of 3 or below. They always come back up almost instantly, and I never wake up with a hypo. (I am LC diet-controlled and have never experienced a hypo that I know of). What does it mean?

Could it be:

1. Just a sensor anomaly (though it is my second one in a row that's showing this)
2. Pancreas pushing out more insulin (I normally finish eating by 7:30, and I don't even eat dinner 3 days a week)
3. Liver issues?
4. Pressing on the sensor when sleeping on the side (so why are the dips short, then?)

Any ideas? Is this something I should be worrying about?
 
Definitely sounds like a compression low to me.
We rarely lie completely still when asleep so it is likely you moved slightly for one or two polls and then moved again ... maybe because you weren't comfortable,
 
Larissima said:
I recently got a couple of Freestyle Libre 2 sensors after not using one for a long time, and I noticed something interesting. Almost every night, between midnight and 4 am, I have 1-3 dips into glucose level of 3 or below. They always come back up almost instantly, and I never wake up with a hypo. (I am LC diet-controlled and have never experienced a hypo that I know of). What does it mean?

Could it be:

1. Just a sensor anomaly (though it is my second one in a row that's showing this)
2. Pancreas pushing out more insulin (I normally finish eating by 7:30, and I don't even eat dinner 3 days a week)
3. Liver issues?
4. Pressing on the sensor when sleeping on the side (so why are the dips short, then?)

Any ideas? Is this something I should be worrying about?
Click to expand...

Hi,

One way to find out. could be using a CGM style set up on your phone with an app like Diabox for instance? ( a little easier than xdrip)
Get it to alarm you when if it goes low, waking you. Then test with your meter to see if it concurs or is just a pressure low??
 
Jaylee said:
One way to find out. could be using a CGM style set up on your phone with an app like Diabox for instance? ( a little easier than xdrip)
Get it to alarm you when if it goes low, waking you. Then test with your meter to see if it concurs or is just a pressure low??
Click to expand...
Why bother with Diabox when LibreLibre Link (or the Libre Reader if @Larissima is using that) alarms when low natively for Libre 2?
 
I wear my sensor on my chest now and do not get compression lows anymore as I always sleep on my side never on my back or belly.
 
Larissima said:
I recently got a couple of Freestyle Libre 2 sensors after not using one for a long time, and I noticed something interesting. Almost every night, between midnight and 4 am, I have 1-3 dips into glucose level of 3 or below. They always come back up almost instantly, and I never wake up with a hypo. (I am LC diet-controlled and have never experienced a hypo that I know of). What does it mean?

Could it be:

1. Just a sensor anomaly (though it is my second one in a row that's showing this)
2. Pancreas pushing out more insulin (I normally finish eating by 7:30, and I don't even eat dinner 3 days a week)
3. Liver issues?
4. Pressing on the sensor when sleeping on the side (so why are the dips short, then?)

Any ideas? Is this something I should be worrying about?
Click to expand...
Interesting. Just about the only symptom I have left that is at all annoying is the early sudden waking, drenched in sweat, plus nightmares. Can be as early as 3am, as late as 6am, but usually around 5am. Trying a Libre in the hope of finding out what was going on - fingerprick didn't say much other than my BG was climbing after these events but obviously I had no idea what it had been. It's early days but like you I appear to experiencing genuine hypos in my sleep.

I had false hypos when my BGs were reducing - they've now been stable for best part of two years but as far as I knew I had never had a real hypo before. My usual fingerprick testing shows fasting readings clustered around 4.7.

However. When these sweats happen, the Libre shows my BG bumping along for hours in the mid to high fours, then plummeting very quickly to mid threes, (where the sweats/nightmares happen) then sharply rising. It will go on rising until top end of fives around noon, and then it comes back to the mid-fours again. It looks like my system (for whatever reason) allows BG to fall and then goes into panic mode to get it back up again. It doesn't happen every night, but I can't find anything in my diet or behaviour that correlates with it.

Libre is fitted on my chest as I sleep on left side or back, and a previous one failed when worn on the left arm. Given the correlation with the sweats, I don't think this is a compression low.

Like you I'm T2, LC, diet controlled.
 
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