Dawn phenomenon and testing

Hi Mrsmac247

There are some people on the forums who are trying to maintain very strict control of their BG's and the DP would take them over their self imposed limits. It will affect people differently and I get similar figures to you most of the time but every now and then there's a blip and it'll be 8.6 or something.

So people without diabetes will get the liver dump as you say, but the pancreas will produce insulin to carry the glucose to where it's needed. With us, the glucose just hangs around in our blood causing damage. (That's my understanding anyway. )

T1's will probably be injecting insulin of some description around breakfast time so I would imagine that overall, T2's would have more worries about DP.

As for the best time, my first test of the day is before breakfast (and hopefully over 5mmol/L) so that I can get in the car and complete my journey to work within 2 hrs and comply with DVLA rules. So I think you have to decide what's best for you really.

Mrsmac247 said:

Please excuse my ignorance but why is the dawn phenomenon important? I ask because I wake several times in the night to feed the baby and then finally rise about 7am. When I first was diagnosed my readings were in the 7 for the first test of the day. Now they are in the low 6 or high 5's.

I would expect peoplle without diabetes to have a liver dump as from what I'm reading as it is that that allows us to get up.

Also how long from waking is best to test? For example I test before my morning tea.

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I don't appear to suffer too much dawn phenomenon, although my bloods do rise a little if I have a lie in.

For consistency, I test as soon as I get up in the morning. I get up, go to the loo, wash my hands, then test. Then I go and put the kettle on. That way, I don't risk getting carried away doing "stuff" and testing later, and it is consistent for me. It's a simple routine for me to observe. It also minimises the dawn phenomenon readings some see when the test later.

I can appreciate if the baby is demanding your immediate attention sometimes, that might be tricky, but it might be achievable?

Mrsmac247 said:

Thank you both for responding. I think I understand it now. So as a y2k trying to control my bg numbers through diet and exercise, I am keeping an eye on my first reading to ensure that I am not doing it eating anything which causes an overnight spike resulting in high numbers which can contribute to complications

Well then in the scale of things, I'm assuming I could do better but am not too bad.

Yes, even though I get up several times in the night, when I wake at 7, I tend to slumber for 10mins, put the kettle on then test but I like the idea of wake, empty then test

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Hi again Mrsmac.
What you eat before bedtime is not too important with understanding DP. It happens after fasting and it's because your liver stores glucose and releases (or dumps it) when you wake up. So you can go to bed with low BG's, and even have low(ish) numbers duriing the night, but still wake up with higher numbers.

Some people are experimentig by eating something (a cheese straw or a nut) immediately on waking and thus trying to fool the body into thinking that you're about to have breakfast and stopping the liver from releasing glucose.

But it looks like you're not having a problem at the moment anyway.