High BG levels during the night.

Scarlett91 said:

Good morning
I wonder if anyone could shed some light.
I am on my third week of the freestyle libre which is great, it's so helpful with understanding which way your Bg levels are going etc. It has also explained alot of me since using it.
Prior to using I would often wake with bg level of say 13 sometimes lower sometimes higher, my consultant back in January said I could be hypoing a to do 2am finger pricks test to check - I did that for a good few weeks and I wasn't hypoing. Now with the libre, I can see the same, no hypos but my bg can go up to 16! But yet I go to bed on a good number with a straight arrow. Anyone experience this? Its really frustrating and sometimes super disheartening.
Thank you.

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Yep, I get it a lot and I also found out when I started using the Libre. It was worse during the winter months than it is now, not sure why as I haven't changed much except starting home working.

Do you eat late? What type of foods are you eating for your evening meals?

When do you take your basal and which insulin do you use? You can play around with when you take your basal, (depending on which one you're using) because Lantus and Levemir don't usually last a full 24hrs in the body as the manufacturers claim.

I also got really good results with a zero, or very low carb evening meal. So that's perhaps something worth trying even if only to see what happens.

Best wishes
Urb'

If you take your lantus at 10pm then it should be working fine by 3am. I asked because I used to take my basal in the morning and so with around 18hrs activity it was wearing off at around 3am. I switched to evening injections but would then start to see an afternoon rise starting around 3pm. It did help the overnight rise but not hugely.

If you're eating at 6pm, are your glucose levels good at bedtime? My missus finishes her nursing shift at 8pm and so we eat late. I usually turn in around 11:30pm and sometimes take a couple of units of rapid if I'm much above 9.0mmol at that point. This seems to be helping to reduce the overnight rises.

The one thing I'd say about the Libre is, the further away you get from the 4 to 8mmol range, the bigger it's errors seem to be. So if it's telling you that you were 16mmol at 3am then it's probably more likely that you were 13. So it's always worth cross checking with a finger prick test. At the low end, I've had it reading LO when a finger prick test revealed I was above 4mmol.

Another possible avenue to explore is asking your doc' or endo' if you can switch to Levemir (basal) - it keeps my glucose levels a lot flatter than Lantus ever did. I think that people who make the change generally report similar findings.

I switched to Levemir and found it better than Lantus. However, I still seem to need 1.5 to 2.5 units of Fiasp at about 23.00 when bloods rise. If I up the basal then less Fiasp’s needed but I get morning lows.
I think we all have individual quirks to accommodate, and I’d love to have a self-adjusting set of Beta cells again.
It seems that the sensor may be showing you your own quirks @Scarlett91, and you’re discovering how to adjust to them.

Hi, your diabetes team can see your libre data remotely via libre view, so you could also contact them for a phone consultation for example with the libre specialist DSN who might be able to advise. It might be faster feedback than waiting for your next consultant appointment eg if you ask about whether you're on the best basal for you. They should be able to let you know if the libre DSN is free if you email them requesting advice