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Low night-time blood sugar

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velofan

Active Member
Messages
35
Type of diabetes
Prediabetes
Treatment type
Diet only
I've just started 2 weeks monitoring with a CGM. One thing that has hit me straightaway is that both overnight readings I've had so far have shown levels dropping below 3.9 mmol/l round about 1-2am, slowly rising to 5.9 on getting up. I'm sleeping really well! I'm not sure how to interpret that - certainly taken me by surprise. Any help please?
 
3.9 is lowish but nothing to worry about. However were you lying on the side with the Libre on, as they are well known for compression lows, a false low when being squashed.

Edit for typo.
 
Last edited:
Rachox said:
3.9 is lowish but nothing to worry about. However we’re you lying on the side with the Libre on, as they are well known for compression lows, a false low when being squashed
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I am a side-on sleeper, so that might be it, although I always go to sleep on the opposite (left) side. Maybe I roll over in my sleep at that time?! I wasn't aware of compression lows, so thanks for that!
I'm still getting to grips with what's 'normal', what isn't etc. Going from the occasional snap shots of strips to continuous data is already proving both illuminating and question provoking!
 
velofan said:
I've just started 2 weeks monitoring with a CGM. One thing that has hit me straightaway is that both overnight readings I've had so far have shown levels dropping below 3.9 mmol/l round about 1-2am, slowly rising to 5.9 on getting up. I'm sleeping really well! I'm not sure how to interpret that - certainly taken me by surprise. Any help please?
Click to expand...
Yes, happens to me, but my turnaround time is 4-5am. There are a good number of CGM graphs floating about on the internet from non-diabetic people. IIRC most show the same sort of decline overnight, so it seems to be a normal thing and not diabetes-related. It has struck me recently about how little appears to be understood generally about what "normal" looks like in blood glucose terms.
 
Thank you all - really helpful. I've spent some time trawling internet trying to learn how to interpret, and I agree KennyA, there seems to be a lot of vagueness and thus implied lack of knowledge about what normal (and thus abnormal) really looks like.
 
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