It can be serious. According to the American Diabetes Association, “Some people with dawn phenomenon find that their glucose continues to rise until they eat in the morning. For others, levels will settle down a few hours after waking, regardless of whether or not they eat.”
Either way, that can be a long time to spend with elevated blood glucose levels. For some people, like Mishelle, the highs aren’t that dangerous. Others go much higher.
According to columnist Wil Dubois, the higher your A1C, the more likely you are to have a significant dawn phenomenon. It could be that spending a number of hours each morning out of control is having a significant effect on your overall control.
So it’s worth trying to get dawn phenomenon under control. How can you do that? You have to figure out what is triggering it and then try some possible solutions.
Some people have high glucose levels in the morning because their medicines wear off overnight. This could be true of medicines like insulin, sulfonylureas, and metformin. If you are taking any long-acting medicine, consider asking your doctor about changing meds, doses, or times. Our reader Mishelle might benefit from taking her metformin later in the evening, for example. Metformin is good at keeping a lid on the liver.