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Dawn Phenomena

daisyduck

daisyduck

Well-Known Member
Messages
988
Location
Great Yarmouth
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
I'm getting increasingly frustrated with my early morning BG readings. OK, they're not horrendous.. usually mid 7's with maybe an odd 8. I have tried all different ways to lower them, from fasting after dinner to having a late snack ( and variations between ) and nothing seems to alter them. It appears that as soon as I wake my liver says.. yippee you're awake.. do have some energy! Plus I usually wake a few times in the night so I'm guessing it does it then as well.. grr.
My daytime readings are OK in the mid 4 to low 7 range depending on meals.
Have any of you found a way around this liver dump please ?
 
I can't seem to find a way to overcome this either :( As my weight is slowly going down my morning readings are too, but they're still always the highest of the day. It's so disappointing as I feel it's undoing all my good work, and when I get my first 3 month Hba1c next week I know it'll have upped my average.

I've tried drinking lots of water if I wake in the night, I've tried eating a handful of nuts if I wake in the night, and I've tried having a glass of wine before bedtime. And I can't say there's been a definite benefit from any of them.
 
Thanks PurpleArmadillo and chalup. Looks like we're in the same boat. I'll keep trying and let you know if I have a result.
My BG also goes up if I exercise over an hour but I've found that a few nuts or a couple of squares of dark chocolate helps with that.
 
I'm working on this now. Not eating makes it worse. More cortisol or adrenaline. So now testing until bs drops. Or eating and my rise is at 2.5 or 3 hours so bolusing again then for correction. 1/2 unit. I have either half an avocado or a lettuce wrap with a small piece of turkey and mustard and mayo. Neither should drive me up but at 3 hours I spike. Morning bolus only seems to cover waking up hormones not that and food but no food seems worse. So I'll test at 2.5 hours and take half unit and see if that helps. So annoying....
 
For those of us not on insulin though we cannot correct. And you are right kristin, not eating, at least for me, makes it much worse. When I have labs done, by the time I get up and get ready to go, drive the half hour to the hospital, check in, and wait my turn, my FBS is probably at least 2 mmol/l higher than it was when I woke up.
 
chalup said:
For those of us not on insulin though we cannot correct. And you are right kristin, not eating, at least for me, makes it much worse. When I have labs done, by the time I get up and get ready to go, drive the half hour to the hospital, check in, and wait my turn, my FBS is probably at least 2 mmol/l higher than it was when I woke up.
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Correcting isn't as easy as it sounds either. Insulin is a constant juggle. Some days, like today, it does nothing and some days it drops me up to 40 points.
When I was a type 2 a slow to moderate 15 min walk was much better than a brisk walk. Or eating a small fat snack just enough to provoke an insulin response. Of course that won't work for a fasting test but have you tried just a slow walk? Brisk walks could raise me but slow didn't. Just my experience

It's all frustrating...
 
I am having a lot of issues with one of my feet and walking seems to aggravate the problem. I was walking with my daughter in law every night before that and it did seem to help a bit. I am hoping I can get this under control and start walking again. The small non carb snack trick is something I do in the morning as I am not a breakfast person. I could happily skip breakfast and did try intermittent fasting but my BS did not like that. Right now I have too much insulin but I would not be surprised at all if I am headed that way eventually. How long can my pancreas stay in overdrive before burning out?
 
Where is the answer to this?! My bloods are generally much higher first thing in the morning. So annoying, blooming liver should have learnt by now that I don't need this.
 
DumfriesDik said:
Where is the answer to this?! My bloods are generally much higher first thing in the morning. So annoying, blooming liver should have learnt by now that I don't need this.
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You can't stop your Liver doing what it is meant to do, and I can't see why you would want to.

Personally I want as many parts of my body doing what they are meant to do as possible for as long as possible.

If your Liver stopped trying to release Glucose in this way, it might also stop doing its other functions, and then you would be in deep trouble.

What you can do is reduce the store of Glucose in the Liver, so that when it does what it is designed to do, either no or only a small amount is released.
 
How do you reduce the store of glucose in the liver? I already eat less than 20 grams of carb per day. Fasting will not work for me.
 
No worries - that thread is quite old now, but all the ideas still apply.

I am now doing intermittent fasting, which brings another variable into the mix... lol
 
chalup said:
I am having a lot of issues with one of my feet and walking seems to aggravate the problem. I was walking with my daughter in law every night before that and it did seem to help a bit. I am hoping I can get this under control and start walking again. The small non carb snack trick is something I do in the morning as I am not a breakfast person. I could happily skip breakfast and did try intermittent fasting but my BS did not like that. Right now I have too much insulin but I would not be surprised at all if I am headed that way eventually. How long can my pancreas stay in overdrive before burning out?
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Perhaps some light yoga stretching? For maybe 5-10 min. They key for me to lower rather than raise was to keep my heart rate low. Once you raise your heart rate you raise adrenaline and cortisol and bs goes up. Yoga stretching is very good for everything.
You can reduce glycogen through exercise but part of the beauty of VLC and MODERATE protein is there is not a lot of bs to be stored so as we go about our day we are naturally depleting it and sleeping depletes it as well.

As far as fasting, never again in the morning. I inadvertently fasted yesterday. I was testing to see how long it took for my bs to start dropping and then j was going to start eating to see if I could avoid that 3 hour later spike. Well it never dropped and started going up so I took another half unit an hour later. Still no drop and slight rise. This went on for 3 hours and then I decided to eat. Guess what, it dropped. I was testing every 15 min and then some. Never again. I know I can fast through lunch, well with a few nuts in between but I will never skip BF again. Or dinner. All that extra insulin too!
 
Brunneria said:
No worries - that thread is quite old now, but all the ideas still apply.

I am now doing intermittent fasting, which brings another variable into the mix... lol
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I know this isn't the place but I can't figure out how to PM you. My present meter is being discontinued and I wanted to get a new one after I use all my strips. What meter do you use?
 
Kristin251 said:
I know this isn't the place but I can't figure out how to PM you. My present meter is being discontinued and I wanted to get a new one after I use all my strips. What meter do you use?
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The SD Codefree (cheapest strips I have encountered) :) but I am not sure it has found much favour amongst insulin users. And I find that it tests consistently high compared with the Libre and the Freestyle Neo strips I use to check the accuracy of each Libre sensor...
 
Brunneria said:
The SD Codefree (cheapest strips I have encountered) :) but I am not sure it has found much favour amongst insulin users. And I find that it tests consistently high compared with the Libre and the Freestyle Neo strips I use to check the accuracy of each Libre sensor...
Click to expand...
Alrighty then. Not getting that one. I think mine runs a tad low. I thought my A1C would have been around 4.8-9 and it was 5.1 the last two tests. Close enough. My dr gave me an accucheck and not only are strips ridiculous but when I rested yesterday with same blood mine was 102 and the accucheck was 137! Now for me that would require a correction bolus but with mine it would require nothing. I think I might buy out the strips on Amazon and figure it out next year. Lol. I trust mine.
 
The contour next is very good, took me a few meters but I like this one and it seems very accurate to the lab. I think it is expensive for strips though but all strips are expensive here. It has good software and tracks insulin and carbs if you need that function.
 
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