How to Lower morning Fasting Blood Glucose

[Gillianc23]

Hi, I’ve been on here a couple of weeks now and am slowly getting to grips with how to eat/exercise/test etc. My BG readings (via Libre 2 week free trial) have come down significantly, but but morning fasting BG remains stubbornly at or above 6. What’s the best technique to lower this? Thanks.

 

[nellup03]

Hi, I’ve been on here a couple of weeks now and am slowly getting to grips with how to eat/exercise/test etc. My BG readings (via Libre 2 week free trial) have come down significantly, but but morning fasting BG remains stubbornly at or above 6. What’s the best technique to lower this? Thanks.

Sleeping OK?

 

[JoKalsbeek]

Hi, I’ve been on here a couple of weeks now and am slowly getting to grips with how to eat/exercise/test etc. My BG readings (via Libre 2 week free trial) have come down significantly, but but morning fasting BG remains stubbornly at or above 6. What’s the best technique to lower this? Thanks.

Those are the last numbers to come down. There's quite a bit of glucose stored in your liver, so if you're not adding to it anymore by going low carb, it'll eventually get depleted. Could take months if not longer, through, no idea how much is in there. Keep an eye on your blood sugars around your meals, so you know whether you're not adding more to the liver's storage, and skip testing in the mornings for now. Those numbers'll stay up for a long time to come, so just a waste of expensive strips. Check once a month or so to maybe see a trend, but only after a GOOD night's sleep with no frequent waking or nightmares. Those can trigger a glucose dump too, after all.

 

[Gillianc23]

Sleeping OK?

Yes, sleeping ok. Obviously I’ve still some work to do to get my levels down overall - but i thought my overnight/early morning levels would drop further now I have cut out all the bad things, including late/midnight snacks! Any suggestions appreciated. Perhaps it’s just that I need to lose weight to get to the lower numbers.

 

[Gillianc23]

Those are the last numbers to come down. There's quite a bit of glucose stored in your liver, so if you're not adding to it anymore by going low carb, it'll eventually get depleted. Could take months if not longer, through, no idea how much is in there. Keep an eye on your blood sugars around your meals, so you know whether you're not adding more to the liver's storage, and skip testing in the mornings for now. Those numbers'll stay up for a long time to come, so just a waste of expensive strips. Check once a month or so to maybe see a trend, but only after a GOOD night's sleep with no frequent waking or nightmares. Those can trigger a glucose dump too, after all.

Thank you JoKalsbeek. I didn’t see this earlier. Yes, I think I need to deplete my liver’s storage. Might take some time! See my graphs above/below.

 

[Robbity]

I've never really been bothered about my morning fasting levels, as my liver controls these rather than me. I often skip breakfast so I'm burning up that mroning glucose "dump" anyway. One of the first patterns I saw very early on in my testing regime was that my glucose levels reduce during the day, so it's put to good use.

I've set myself an overall target range with a maximum of 7-7.5 and my fasting levels tend to remain within this range, and never have any adverse effects on my actual HbA1c results which have been within (lower) pre-diabetic figures for over 9 years now.

 

[KennyA]

My morning levels were always the highest and stayed high (top end of six was standard iirc) even after everything else had dropped. It takes a long time for the liver to learn that we don't actually need a lot of glucose in the morning.

I didn't find any single technique that reduced it - just months of low carb and it eventually dropped slowly. I did a week of first thing testing a month or two back and it floats around 5.3-5.5 these days.