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defeated by dp

numan43

Well-Known Member
Messages
262
Location
Glasgow
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
After nearly six months of LCHF my blood glucose levels are where I'm happy with them, well for most of the day.
My only problem is the dreaded "dawn phenomenon" which I cant get a handle on at all.

I am a bit of an irregular sleeper, usually asleep by 11pm and can wake anytime between 3am and 5am then nap on and off during the day.
When I wake between hours mentioned I take a reading with the average being around 5.5 but then no matter what I try it steadily rises throughout the morning to around 7.5 at 11am -noon then it can plummet to around 4 -4.5 by 1pm.

I've tried eating early, eating later, eating no carbs, eating some carbs, eating before bed, not eating before bed, taking metformin before bed and taking it early morning, nothing helps, so after admitting defeat I've decided to give up the stressful task of checking my disappointing morning readings and start my diabetic life at noon where I get great results between then and bedtime.

Anyone think this is a daft idea? My thoughts are why put myself through the misery if I cant correct it and if 16-18 hours out of the day are well within guidelines then thats good enough.
 
I do exactly the same thing ,stress puts up the BGs and dp stresses me !
CAROL
 
Feeling your pain, I am only pre diabetic and low carb, the rest of my readings are non diabetic (when I test) however my fasting bg are in the high 5's normally!
 
I had exactly the same problem and frustration that you are experiencing. Whatever I did / achieved during the day it would get sabotaged at night. The only way I got rid of it was to adopt the Newcastle diet 500-600 cals a day I did it with food, not sachets, eliminating all wheat and grain derivatives, potatoes, rice etc. It took 3 weeks from my morning levels to go from 10.8 on the first morning to levels around 5.6. The night shift has been made redundant - enjoy your retirement ;)
 
I always had the problem of a DP kicking in after breakfast, rising or staying up until just before lunch. I would wake on maybe mid 5's but be up in the 7's and high 6's for much of the morning after that, despite only have no more than 4 or 5g carbs at breakfast. (always full fat yogurt and 4 raspberries or similar fruit) This has been going on since I started testing in April 2014.

2 weeks ago, having had enough of it, I changed my breakfast to a decaf coffee with double cream and a soft boiled egg. Bingo!! Rise after fasting no more than 0.4mmol/l at any time. Conclusion being I cannot eat yogurt and berries (only 4 of them at that) in the mornings. My pancreas just hasn't woken up. The same food makes no material difference now I am eating it as a pudding after lunch or tea.
 
As a Type 1 on insulin my tactic was always to get food in as soon as possible in the morning and therefore releasing the hormones to tell the liver to stop the glucose dump............

I would then of course inject for the food i had eaten which would be at a higher ratio than normal to cope with the higher insulin resistance.....

also taking my evening basal insulin right before bed helped too.......

still never worked every time of course........

all these things are useless though to a type 2 on oral meds..........

can any oral meds be taken before bed?
 
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