Thank you all for your inputs! I wonder if there is a relationship between not eating breakfast and having a coffee spike? I don't eat breakfast, I just have my coffee in the morning. I have played around with skipping coffee- I don't spike, black coffee and coffee with full fat milk -both of which spike me. This suggests that it is the coffee and not dawn phenomenon. Cutting out the caffeine isn't ideal too, as I pretty much need it to function! I also don't have a strict morning routine (I work in a very chill place) so can't include it in my basal rate. I wonder though- I do use a pod machine. I suppose it is possible they could be adding something else to the pods.
Erm,........... If you need caffeine to function, it might be time to give it up?
Many moons ago, I saw a naturopath, looking ways to manage pain due to a very nasty post-viral polyarthritis. One of the things she did was identify foods she considered I was intolerant too. What shocked me most was those foods were some of the foods I liked most!
Her theory was that we often get hooked on foods we can't handle, because our bodies rush to chuck out lots of hormones, enzymes and the like, to deal with them. When the impact of those hormones/enzymes begin to abait, we have almost withdrawal symptoms.
The elimination diet, at that time, was quite brutal, but I was eventually able to reintroduce everything to my day to day diet. The acute polyarthritis also abated, but I have zero way to properly assess if the diet helped or whether it would have abated anyway as the time post virus (in this case Rubella).
I'd be curious to find out what would happen with decaf.