Dawn Effect??

In short, as a T2 on diet only there's nothing you can do about dawn phenomenon (DP). This is a normal biological occurrence whereby up to an hour or more before waking the body KNOWS its gonna wake so injects some glycogen from the liver (becomes glucose in the blood) to give us the energy we need to start the day. After brekky (or your tea and banana) some say our BG comes down again because we have kick started the pancreas. Personally, I believe it's because our normal energy expenditure in simply getting up, getting ready for the day and just being alive is enough to utilise the glucose that has been introduced to the blood. That's why I don't bother checking fasting BGs - it's a general progress test, but nothing you can do about it. I save my precious strips to check 2 hours post prandial so I can identify what I can and can't eat.

I totally agree with Grazer. I must admit I'm surprised by the number of people on the forum who do rely on testing at the start of day rather than 2 hours after a reasonable meal as it doesn't help you with food choice.

What ever causes it its irritating but nothing you can do.

I found it a good measure when I started as it gave a good indication of how well things were progressing overall but after a few weeks it seems to get stuck in a range and then only very gradually gets better. As you've found you can usually knock it down by having brekky so that's the more important thing as if you don't do brekky I found my level would not then come down significantly from the DP level until I ate lunch so I believe its more of a kick start your metabolism thing.

I do still do it as it also gives me an indication of if I should exercise that morning. A wake up level above 6 then I'm out for just a 10 min brisk walk come rain or shine, below 6 its optional! That 10 min walk will near enough guarantee me a drop so I end up with my +2 hour post brekky reading at roughly the same each day despite whatever the DP induced wake up level was.

DP can be really irritating!

It is caused by two things.. firstly as Grazer suggests before you wake in the morning and for a while after you wake your liver dumps glucose into your blood to help fuel your day... secondly during the night your body has also rather helpfully been repairing its self and this process is triggered by the release of other hormones.. a lot of these hormones inter-fear with insulin which it'self is a hormone and this can reduce its effectiveness.. so you get a nice double whammy! DP varies by individual.. some people see a limited effect and some people can see a massive change..