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High blood sugar when fasting without eating anything

FuryG

Well-Known Member
Messages
45
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Hello!
Its been 3 days in a row and i have very high blood sugar levels when i wake up for no reason
i eat a snack bar with around 14g of sugar before i sleep that been eating the same every day and never had issue
but lately since 3 days ago i eat this snack bar before i sleep at 4.1 mmol and i go sleep and then wake up at morning and then i find my blood sugar above 14.8 mmol!
Yesterday i ate a small bag of popcorn before i sleep and woke up to same result
today i didnt eat anything and also was 13.8 mmol
all bg levels 3 days when i ate before i slept was from 4.9 to 4.1 mmol
 
I can't explain why this has started happening in the last three days unless you have changed something else such as the time or dose of your basal insulin.

However, it sounds like Dawn Phenomenon to me. This is very very common, regardless whether you have diabetes or not. Our liver releases glucose at the start of the day to give us the energy to get up. Those with a healthy pancreas will release insulin to convert this glucose into energy. Those of us with a broken pancreas may see a rise in BG when we wake up.

Are you taking any bolus insulin when you eat your night time snack?
Have you tried setting an alarm for the middle of the night to see whether your BG has already started to rise?
A CGM or Libre would make this easier to check ... but they usually cost money.
 
i take 2 shots a day one for lunch and small snack after 4 hours and other for dinner and the small snack before bed i always been doing that for very long time and always when i wake up its around 3.9 mmol to 7.7 mmol sometimes i have hypo when fasting
i got new insulin bottles last Friday
im already using Libre , once i checked at 8am and it was 7.7 mmol and then woke up around 11 am and it was 14.3 mmol and i didnt eat anything
 
Sounds as if you are not on a basal-bolus insulin regime. Sorry for assuming.
I am not familiar with your regime.

Regarding your Libre, can you look at your overnight graph to see when your BG started rising?
The value of the Libre is these graphs and trends rather than replacing finger pricks.
 
always seems to start rising at 6am according to the graph
 
FuryG said:
always seems to start rising at 6am according to the graph
Click to expand...
This sounds more likely to be related to Dawn Phenomenon than your evening snacks as your snacks would cause the rise to occur earlier.
If the only thing that has changed recently is your batch of insulin, you could try a new batch.
 
If this has not happened before and everything is the same you could be about to get sick e.g. a cold. You haven't mentioned how long you have had D. If it's a relatively new thing all sorts of strange unexplained things will happen for while, your pancreas may make a comeback, sorry it will be short lived and a one off event, however it may start and stop a few times before it gets really going and the same as its packing it in for the last time. Stress is another influence on bgl, any exams or assignments coming up? Even changes in the weather can impact your bgl. If not any of that I agree with many above that Dawn maybe screwing up your BGL.

Many, I would say most of us go high in the morning, that is due to liver releasing glucose to tell us to wake up and get moving and it follows your body clock, not your alarm clock, so it could start an hour or 2 before you get up, or an hour or so after you get up. Something (some foods, stress illness etc) may make one diabetic go low another no impact and another go high, repeat the same 2 months latter and get different results.

Having said all of that in todays world you have got one of the best things going around, would you prefer paraplegia, or quadriplegia, cancer or plenty of other nasties. You can get some really neat high tech stuff that is becoming more high tech.
 
I've had diabetes for around 17 years now , i got it since i was 14 month old
 
Too me it sounds like glucose dumping + insulin resistance + Dawn Phenomenon.
 

If you are T1 diabetic, change the insulin vial from a different box, could be a solution for your problem.
 
Have you tried eating a protein based snack at bedtime? I often eat a handful of pecans or macadamia nuts before bed and this stops the dawn phenomena issue and overnight hypos. It can even stop it for several days after, when not snacking at bedtime. Like others suggest, the liver can dump glucose between 4-6am. If you have a high protein snack it gives the liver something else to do. Instead of dealing with carbs it has to deal with fats and protein.
 
After 19 hours fasting on two consecutive days (from 10pm until 5pm) blood sugars were 8.1 and 8.7
respectively. I have been off Metformin due to Congestive Heart Failure for eleven months and do
not take Insulin. Makes no sense to me nor to my doctors - I give up.
 
I also think the first suspect here is the Dawn Phenomenon, but have to ask, if your blood sugar goes down to too low levels during the night. If that is the case, you could have something that is called the Somogyi effect, and that usually makes ones blood sugar to rise quite heavily.
 

Insulin resistance maybe.
 
Brendon.Dean said:
Too me it sounds like glucose dumping + insulin resistance + Dawn Phenomenon.
Click to expand...
i changed my sleeping and i stay wake at 6am and around 3 days ago i had a severe hypo of 2.1 mmol at exact same time when i\m awake , weird
 
FuryG said:
i changed my sleeping and i stay wake at 6am and around 3 days ago i had a severe hypo of 2.1 mmol at exact same time when i\m awake , weird
Click to expand...

We try hard to make every day the same to get the same results, and sometimes that just does not happen.
 
 
Not sure why you would want to eat anything with BG levels of 4.0 before bed try just a mouthful not the whole bar, I'm not convinced any type one's should be eating or drinking complete bars/coke's
to bring BGs up as you know it'll shoot up high.
 
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