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blood sugar and insomnia

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winglets

Well-Known Member
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For almost 4 months now I've been experiencing on going night time symptoms where I'll wake up anywhere from 130am - 530am.
Around 6am I can fall asleep again for another couple of hours. I've been recording all my waking up times and how I feel. My average waking up time at night is anywhere between 2am and 4am.

Last few nights I've woken up between at like 2am - 3am after just one hour of sleep and can't get back to sleep, this is seriously frustrating. I don't feel hungry or having any cravings as such but I'll wake up feeling like I've just slept 7-8 hours! And then the weird thing is, is that I hardly ever even feel tired throughout the rest of the day. Makes no sense. So during the day time and waking hours I'm fine. Now I did hear that imbalanced blood sugar levels can cause these kind of erratic sleeping patterns and middle of the night insomnia where you'll awake at like 3am due to your BS levels crashing. Is this correct? I checked my blood sugar levels back in Jan after meals during the day and it was normal.

I don't have any other symptoms really (although yesterday I was feeling a bit spaced out on and off).
 
There are many, many causes of insomnia and disturbed sleep. A doctor would be the best person to see but as you say you are functioning well during the day I am not not sure that being frustrated is a serious or threatening symptom.
 
What blood sugar values do you get during the night? I'm usually a pretty good sleeper, but sometimes I will have trouble going back to sleep after hypos, or if my blood sugars have been unstable or erratic. This can also be related to stress/anxiety rather than a consequence of blood sugars - for example, after a low you could feel afraid to go back to sleep in case another one happened. Check more often during the night, especially if you experience hypo unawareness.
 
I agree with @phdiabetic out of range BG may wake me and make it difficult to get back to sleep. For me, high levels are as good at keeping me awake as low readings.
Next time you wake in the night, check your readings.

Alternatively, it may have nothing to do with diabetes but at least the BG tests will be able to confirm this.
 
Why and how would high blood sugar levels keep you awake ? Would you also not get other symptoms like thirst etc?
 
I haven't slept well in consecutive nights in I don't know how many years, I would guess at least 10, so I'm probably not the most qualified to answer but in my experience going to bed with(or it rising while sleeping) high blood sugar levels affects your sleep quality, and the same thing in the other direction. I'm not sure if this is just me or if it affects others but in my case one of many effects of high or low blood sugar that happens from time to time is an accelerated heart rate which makes it harder to fall asleep in the first place, and in rare cases causes me to wake up in the middle of the night needing to either eat something or give myself an injection.
Since getting a Libre back in August, I've been able to for the first time in my life actually analyse how my body is affected during particularly the night when it comes to eating habits and injections and I've noticed how much worse I feel in general but especially when waking up when I'm hypo or hyper during the night. When I received it, my levels were in the target range(set to 5,4-8,2) in the high 30%s to low 40%s for the most part over a 7 day period, and recently after switching from Lantus to Levemir and changing injection patterns and eating habits(or times more specifically) to a high of 63%, where the management of my sleeping sugar levels being the key for improvement.
 

Welcome to the forum.
 
winglets said:
Why and how would high blood sugar levels keep you awake ? Would you also not get other symptoms like thirst etc?
Click to expand...

May I ask if you have been diagnosed with Diabetes of any type? If not, then your sleep disturbance may be due to any number of reasons as I said earlier. Circadian rhythms can be knocked out of whack due to something as simple as stress or even natural light levels. Have you looked into 'Sleep Hygene' methods as a way to aleviate your problems?
 
I've been a Type 1 for almost 15 years(I'm 28 years old) and I honestly can't remember when my sleep problems started, I was once prescribed sleeping pills(don't remember the name of them) but found them to be pretty useless, similarly exhausting my body through exercise has had very little effect on my sleeping patterns. The only thing so far that I've found to be effective in making me fall asleep easily is getting extremely drunk, which for obvious reasons isn't an effective way of managing it. Stress is definitely something that makes it worse, but if that's the reason I basically never sleep well I must be stressed all the time, which I don't think I am, but it certainly makes it much worse on the occasions that I do feel stress.
Looking at Sleep Hygene(never heard of the term before), a lot of it makes sense and it would probably help, I'm almost certain actually following it is an impossibility for me though due to deeply ingrained character traits and interests/soon-to-be career etc as someone that regularly stays up late and feels the most productive late at night. I'm actually working on a project right now involving the Libre sensor that if my theory is correct and I succeed in the implementation of it should solve/improve a lot of the issues relating to diabetes in general, but sleep problems will not be directly addressed in at least the proof of concept, maybe later.
 

I apologise. I was responding to the OP.

I am pushing 60 and have suffered disturbed sleep since my late teens/early twenties. From insomnia to progressively oversleeping and everything in between. Age has definitely caused more problems. I learned recently that there are no drugs that can induce the deeper phases of sleep that is why long term use of sleeping pills prove ineffective and can just be addictive. Over the years I have had multiple tests and two stays in a sleep clinic. Bottom line? the science of sleep is still woefully poor when you think of just how important sleep is to the whole body not just the brain.

It has been my experience that a trick one finds to aid better sleep works for a while but if one uses it exclusively the effects are temporary so I regularly switch between my list of tricks. Sometimes, though, nothing I do works and the resulting fatigue impacts normal functions.
I am teetotal so booze has never really been a choice but I have to say that there have been times that I am so exhausted that had there been a bottle of cognac in the house I could have done some serious damage.
 
No worries.
Quite right in general, once you find a routine that seems to work great, it only works for a while until you find yourself back to square one or worse. In my experience particularly injection schedules and eating habits are forced to change within a year or so after discovering something that works, because all of a sudden your body doesn't behave the way it used to to that particular injection or drink or whatever it happens to be. Thankfully now that we have Libre and similar devices becoming a thing these things are much easier to detect and manage. I went from someone that checked their blood sugar every once in a blue moon to someone that checks it at a minimum like 30 times a day when I got my Libre. Hopefully something similar will appear for other things like sleep in the near future in the shape of a smartwatch or something that detects pulse and whatever other relative data needed.
 
I hear that the dawn effect is the main reason for high blood sugar levels in the middle of the night. I'm worried that this is what is waking me up now at 3am every night. However my PP numbers are all normal, last time I checked back in Jan. I have no other symptoms and totally fine during the day and waking hours, no issues at all.

Wouldn't I be having symptoms throughout the day too rather than just at night time? There must be some reason why I am waking up at this time every morning and feel wide awake.
 
Dawn Phenomena is a natural process and only really becomes problematic for those with Diabetes.
When you have non Diabetic numbers DP should not even wake you so I suggest you put it to one side and concentrate on other possible remedies or causes. Sleep hygene and circadian rhythms can take a while to adjust but it seems you have settled on bg levels as the cause when as a non Diabetic it may not be.
I have never been awakened with high bg/DP even though at Diagnosis my bg must have been off the scale.

I know that a poor sleep pattern can be disruptive but you must explore all avenues to find a remedy that works for you as an individual. We are not doctors and are unable to advise on general medical problems.
 
Me too.
 

Winglets, there is absolutely no point speculating whether blood sugars are impacting your sleep. Maybe they are, maybe not. Surely the thing to do is test every time you wake up for, say, two weeks and at least have an idea where your numbers are, in relation to you day to day averages.
 

Hi Guzzler, So can I ask, how high would your bs levels be if the DP was responsible for waking you up at this time of night? I understand that yes everyone gets DP, whether you're diabetic or not but for the non-diabetic DP should not be an issue as you say.
 
Now I realise there are many reasons why I would have this "middle of the night" insomnia but I think what set me off was when I read that unbalanced blood sugars can cause it. Stress, anxiety is the most common cause, however I am sceptical of this as the things I'm presently worried and troubled about are issues that have always been troubling me for years, so it's nothing new. There haven't been any major, drastic changes in my life that would cause me to wake up like this.

I have been to the doctor recently and he just mentioned to cut out all the caffeine before bed which I'm trying to do. However I read that chamomile tea can help with sleep. Tried it last night, hasn't worked as I'm up, wide awake again at 330am. Occasionally I'll feel the slight need to pee but strangely, it lessens the longer I'm up.

I'll go back to the doctor and see what can be done next but I'm just wary of taking medication I guess. I've never had an issue with sleep before.
 
DP does not wake me. High blood glucose at any time produces no symptoms whatsoever for me even when they must have been sky high before diagnosis.
Because I wake often I have caught readings when DP has happened but I feel perfectly alright. Weird, I know.
 
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