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BG levels today
- Thread starter BioHaZarD
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I am currently running at BG 6.8 :0) just making roast chicken, boiled couliflour and roasted courgettes, a few roasted pepper pieces with crushed garlic.
Obviously still early days for me, it's always high in morning but lower in afternoon and evenings. This is metformin I assume.
Obviously still early days for me, it's always high in morning but lower in afternoon and evenings. This is metformin I assume.
xyzzy
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BioHaZarD said:
No it's something called the Dawn Phenomenon (DP). It is very irritating. In the early hours everyone's liver (including non diabetics) get an instruction to dump glucose into the bloodstream in preparation for the new day based on what your body thinks its anticipated energy requirements will be. So the liver dumps its glucose and glucose ends up sloshing around. Now in a non diabetic their insulin response quickly mops up any excess but in a diabetic the mopping up process takes some time. In T2's like you and me the slow down is not necessarily because we don't produce insulin as many T2's are producing shed loads of insulin rather it is our insulin resistance that causes the delay in mopping things up. This resistance is a large part of why we see our BG's rise after eating as well. In a T1 then their lack of insulin production causes the same BG rise effect so they need to inject insulin to get rid of both DP and obviously also to maintain their levels after they eat.
Depending on how long high blood sugar levels were doing damage to your insulin production Beta cells you may have also compromised your insulin production capability to some extent or other so for a T2 the problems are quite likely a combination of a lack of insulin production capability and insulin resistance. If you were caught very early (pre diabetic) it is likely the majority of the problems are insulin resistance so if you lose a load of weight you might start to see some improvement in how much carbohydrate you can process. Of course if you lose a load of weight and lose all your resistance then start eating loads of carbs again pretty soon you will be back where you are now!
As you lose weight and get your BG's back under control your insulin resistance will drop and therefore the DP effect will lessen. I also think if you moderate your carbs your liver learns to dump less anyway as it will end up having less of a glucose store to dump. This can all take many weeks if not months for it to settle down. To give you an idea it took me around 8 weeks of 50g / day low carbing before I consistently woke up with a level less then 8 so don't get disheartened! Even now my wake up reading is pretty random and varies anywhere between low 4's to high 5's.
Obviously you want that DP level to fall as quickly as possible and my experienced adult T1 son told me his trick which is to force a small spike with breakfast as that seems to kick start things into action. My breakfast consists of 50g of plain Greek yoghurt with around 25g of "berries". I get the packets of frozen strawberries, raspberries etc defrost a few in the microwave and then mix with the plain yoghurt. The theory is the sugar in the fruit will cause a small spike. When DP was a problem I found this would get my BG's down to a reasonable level within a couple of hours. Obviously my breakfast is very minimalist so you might want to have something extra as well. Another really quick way of dropping levels by at least 1 is just to go for a brisk walk around the block just for 5 or 10 minutes. I use to have a rule if I woke up over 6 I would walk whatever the weather and below 6 it was optional.
Hi, thanks that was very helpfull. I have had 50g carbs (43g net carbs) today, 566 calories. I want to loose at least 4 stone. Need to get my butt in gear and do some sort of exercise that's the one ing that I need a push for as I as never very good at getting motivated for. But saying that, this has made my mind change a lot, so I will be from tomorrow. Walking seems the first step, we have lots of redways next to our house so will be easy and jus tonna get my bike serviced.
After dinner 1.5 hours later I am BG 9.0, I have not gone above 12.7 since diagnosed last Thursday when it was 16.
After dinner 1.5 hours later I am BG 9.0, I have not gone above 12.7 since diagnosed last Thursday when it was 16.
