During the night?

Just wondering if anyone else has ever measured their blood glucose levels during the night if you happen to be awake.

I just took a 5:40am reading now of 5.6 mmol. Is that typical if you are prediabetic? (My last bite of dinner was about 7 hours before this.)

My morning fasting levels (usually taken anytime after 7am are mostly 4.8 to 5.2 mmol. Not normally as high as 5.6 mmol.

Should I count these overnight / middle of the night resdings as my true fasting level if they are higher? (I'm not on insulin.)

Tipetoo said:

That is not the middle of the night for me as I get get out of bed at 4:00 am everyday, I do test at that time for a fbl test.

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I don't go to bed till after midnight half the time so 4 -5 am is my middle of the night.

Do you go to bed before 10pm or only sleep 4 or 5 hours per night?

Brunneria said:

@Cocosilk

Have you ever hypoed (without injected insulin onboard)?

If not, then you have no need to worrit about ‘safe levels’ overnight.
Your own body is going to balance your blood glucose to safe levels without you having to do anything.
Your liver and pancreas have been doing it all your life, and you will get plenty of warning if they start to malfunction.
Believe me, you will notice before you are at any risk!

I hope you accept my next comment as being offered in your best interests:

I am becoming increasingly concerned by your daily postings. Each day a different subject, a different health concern. Almost as if you are actively searching for something to identify with, or be anxious about. The tone of your posts strike me as if you are seeking a condition to identify with, rather than a quest for knowledge to assist with your long term health.

You have a young family, and a new baby. This is a point in your life when i feel you should be enjoying your children, and appreciating every moment with them, rather than scouring the internet looking for new health issues to Identify with, and stressing about minor details that are not within your power to control.

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I wasn't concerned about hypos. More about whether the level is higher than optimal.

I appreciate your observation about my constant seeking out of problems. I probably have hypochondria to some extent, which became very apparent to me after the birth of my 3rd child when I was so badly fearing getting preeclampsia again (after having had it at the end of my first pregnancy) that my blood pressure was up with anxiety in an almost self-fulfilling prophecy. I think I had post-tramatic stress from that experience and the two visits to a psychologist just before finding out I was pregnant again didn't help me much so it the fear haunted me through both my next pregnancies.
I know I have the tendency to focus on little things. My father is the same and I make fun of him for it (he doesn't see it in himself. I can at least admit it.)

As far as spending time with my little ones, I don't really have any other family around to be able to hand them over for any period of time so we are together constantly anyway.
I stopped using Facebook at the beginning of the year so where many other people waste their time, I almost enjoy looking for answers to my little niggling health problems as a way of entertaining myself - believe it or not. I'm obviously fairly isolated in my parenting experience and getting out with all 3 kids is harder than I have the energy for while my smallest one still wakes me in the night. So I'm just here really educating myself about illnesses that any good hypochondriac could see themselves developing by hearing about other people's experiences.
Learning about the illnesses you are fearing is apparently part of the therapy for hypochondria anyway.
So no, I'm not going to die anytime soon I hope and hopefully my presence in this forum isn't too irritating. Besides, threads I've been involved in may help others.
Thanks for trying to keep me in check though. I know I'm not the only one here.

Maybe I'll challenge myself to quit this forum since I'm probably only on the way to prediabetes (if I'm lucky). Let's see if I can do it.

P.S. I'm only a self-diagnosed hypochondriac ironically.

Robbity said:

Yes, occasionally out of curiosity I've checked my levels during the night if I was awake, and have also used a Libre sensor which monitors continuously. I've never seen any issues with overnight figures to give me cause for concern, but I don't expect to actually have what you call "a true fasting level": my figures will vary depending on what I've eaten, when I've eaten it, and how much glucose I've actually burned off as energy at that given point in time, so I expect to see some slight variations, which are quite normal, and these will be what you're seeing.

If you want to check fasting levels, then be consistent and try do them at a regular time, which most people take as when they wake or get up, but the figure's purely a guide and not some absolute to worry over - unless you see suddenly some HUGE and unexplained change in the pattern of you results, which is most definitely not what's happening.

Robbity

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I happened to be awake last night at around 5:40am for an hour. (feeding baby). So I checked and it was 5.6 mmol. Then I was lucky enough to sleep from 6:40am till around 9:30am! (Lucky me when hubby works from home). When I measured again, it was 4.5 mmol. Which is perfectly normal, right? I was probably closer to 5.0 around 7am when I would often be up and taking my fasting reading.

Tipetoo said:

I'm in bed around 10:00 pm, I have been doing this for a great number of years as I found this the best way to maximise my earnings.

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Do you eat low carb or carnivore to get your A1c down that low?

Do you ever need to take supplements for potassium or magnesium or increase your sodium intake (as recommended by Stephen Phinney)?

Brunneria said:

Thank you for taking what I said in the spirit it was meant

No need to leave the forum, but if you do, you know it will always be here if you need it, and us.

I just feel that there are so many other fascinating things that life offers, that maybe you could increase your joy quotient by placing a bit more focus elsewhere. If you are stuck at home with the kids a lot, then maybe think about interests and activities that would enhance things at home?

Not suggesting that this is for you (let's face it we all have very different interests), but I recently found I had some spare energy and got back into something that I had been just coasting with - fishkeeping. It interested me as a child, and I have always kept a single tank, with various occupants and plants, and it has always given me pleasure, but I discovered the vast knowledge base available on the internet (articles, videos, forums, technology) and plunged right back in - and it delights me. I am learning every day, and the aquarium environments I am creating are better than I ever expected to achieve, and I enjoy every minute I spend on them.

you can tell I love it, can't you?
I'm just saying that there is something fascinating out there for everyone, and sometimes it can serve as a welcome distraction, or even a kind of therapy (in my case, hauling buckets of water has turned into an excellent physical therapy!).

Sorry to derail your thread. Will shut up now.

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Brunneria said:

Thank you for taking what I said in the spirit it was meant

No need to leave the forum, but if you do, you know it will always be here if you need it, and us.

I just feel that there are so many other fascinating things that life offers, that maybe you could increase your joy quotient by placing a bit more focus elsewhere. If you are stuck at home with the kids a lot, then maybe think about interests and activities that would enhance things at home?

Not suggesting that this is for you (let's face it we all have very different interests), but I recently found I had some spare energy and got back into something that I had been just coasting with - fishkeeping. It interested me as a child, and I have always kept a single tank, with various occupants and plants, and it has always given me pleasure, but I discovered the vast knowledge base available on the internet (articles, videos, forums, technology) and plunged right back in - and it delights me. I am learning every day, and the aquarium environments I am creating are better than I ever expected to achieve, and I enjoy every minute I spend on them.

you can tell I love it, can't you?
I'm just saying that there is something fascinating out there for everyone, and sometimes it can serve as a welcome distraction, or even a kind of therapy (in my case, hauling buckets of water has turned into an excellent physical therapy!).

Sorry to derail your thread. Will shut up now.

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My problem is not that I don't have any other hobbies. It's that by the time I'm done putting the kids to sleep at night, it's sometimes almost 9pm and I'm so tired by that point that all I have been doing lately is sitting in front of my computer. It's not really the right hour to call friends, although I do occasionally, but my closest friends are in other countries in other time zones so it doesn't always work out. So I'm in front of my computer and want to do what I have been doing for the past few years since having kids - the very thing that got me here in the first place - eating! Nibbling on things that I shouldn't be eating. And watching some rubbish on youtube.

What I would actually do if I didn't have kids (not that I would trade places by the way - having a family is worth every sacrifice) but I would have had more of a social life if I wasn't in the thick of raising 3 small children under 5yo including a 4 month old baby. Let's face it, it takes a lot of energy to deal with kids and I've had them late in life when I just don't have as much energy anymore. So I sit here watching work out videos (have you heard of calisthenics?) and dream of how I will eventually have the chance to do more of those core and pelvic floor strengthening exercises just to bring my stomach muscles back to where they should be after having 3 pregnancies in a short period... I have been dancing around the house with the kids to try to get myself moving more. They love it! But I have a loooonnnngggg way to go to get myself back a bit.

I used to love singing and playing guitar, and even writing silly songs. I haven't even been able to sing to my kids this past few weeks because all 5 of us have this lingering sore throat and cough virus that just won't go away. I lost my voice for about a week. Fun when both mum and dad lose their voices at the same time But writing music doesn't happen in a house full of activity (chaos). It was something I did when I had lots of time to myself.

Gardening is another thing I love to do and have just been waiting for the weather to warm up. But I'm not quite fit enough to garden while wearing the baby, my knees are giving way with the extra weight, and bub didn't like the idea of sitting in the pram to watch me in my garden bed.

It's really because of having a baby that I'm not as imaginative as I would be. Babies are wonderful creatures but they surely sap your energy the way they can keep you up at night or wake back up just when you've snuck away to start on something you've been wanting to do.

And I do still have genuine confusion about whether the spikes I see in my blood glucose after meals are acceptable, or whether I will still end up with T2 if I don't monitor it. I know if I ask a GP about the one hour spikes to 8s, 9s or even 10s after eating some types of carbs, I'm sure they will tell me it's normal as long as the 2 hour is below 7 mmol or something.
But then people on this forum emphasise that cellular damage is occurring any time your blood glucose goes over 7.8 mmol.
If it happens for 2 - 4 hours every day because I have included carbs in my diet again, am I going to end up diabetic in the next 5 years? Or would I have 10 years? Or maybe longer if it's only a small amount of carbs?

I've tried keto and I'm not sure it agrees with me while I'm breastfeeding so I want to have at least some vegetables and the odd fruit again as well as rye flour if I can tolerate it. I even tried a bit of polenta tonight. So I'm thinking maybe I could just eat sensibly, small quantities when I do want carbs, and try to forget about measuring my blood glucose so often (maybe I should try not to at all for a whole week!) and just keep a weekly check on my fasting levels, and then maybe only monthly, and then let it go longer. It's just reminding myself not to fall back into my old eating habits that keeps me here too. Sugar addictions or even just snacking habits can sneak up on you and are hard to break!

And here I feel like I have landed in a nest where everyone takes the newbies under their wings, but now I'm being encouraged to take flight. Come on - fly away birdie! Go and discover the world.

As I said, I quit Facebook at the beginning of this year. I wasn't enjoying it anymore. But it was a virtual community when I didn't have a physical one (again stuck at home with kids.) I guess this past 6 months I've just been coming here for the same reason. People talk to each other here.
That's it. See how complicated this is? It's not just about being slightly hypochondriac. It's about a lack of community in real time. Right now, I can be here, writing this monologue that several people may even respond to, and I can try to help someone else here by contributing to another thread, or I can try to pry my husband away from Facebook or Youtube and argue with him about the differences in our parenting styles.. Oh wait, ahem, I mean we could have a quite glass of wine and rekindle some romance maybe... ha ha But wait... What's that? Ahhh, the baby is awake again...

You get my drift? Ha ha I can't even join a gym and go there at 9pm after the kids are asleep because the baby doesn't reliably stay asleep for long yet. Back to the computer, or house cleaning, or eating... NOOOOO!!!!

One day I'll have some more friends who I can hang out in the evenings when the kids are old enough to stay asleep and my husband is kind enough to stay at home with them. One day.

Until then, forums on the internet are as good as it gets!

Maybe I should look for an "isolated parents with health anxiety" forum instead

Aahh, no time, the baby is crying again...

Tipetoo said:

I have been eating moderate lchf meals, I also eat a fair bit of meat, bacon, cheese etc. daily to get and keep my hba1c levels down. I have also stopped taking Metformin after discussions with my GP.

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Has your insulin sensitivity returned as well?
I'm just wondering if I eat low to moderate carbs and see 1h spikes to 8s, 9s or 10s (as opposed to higher if I were eating large amounts of processed carbs and sweets) and 2h back in the 6s or 7s, will that be enough to prevent the progression to T2, or will it only slow things down if I'm not fully in fat burning mode from a very low carb diet and eventually I would still develop the disease?