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Morning blood sugars.

G

gillytee31

Well-Known Member
Messages
53
Type of diabetes
Type 2
This morning 7am my blood sugars were 10.9 although last night they were only 7.5. How can they be higher in the morning than the previous night despite no food or drink in between?
 
Ditto - I was 8.0 at 7am this morning having eaten very little at all yesterday and then at 11am pre-brunch, I'm 6.1. Yesterday at 5pm I was 5.1.
 
Not strange at all - the various different sugars and starches eaten are digested - broken down into the simpler sugars., and are then absorbed into the bloodstream, carried around to the liver. If your blood is already carrying enough glucose then the rise in concentration triggers the release of insulin and the liver dutifully stashes away the sugars. You have glycogen, the immediate available and fat, for long term - sort of the RAM and hard disk energy stores. Having rested during sleep - with any luck - you wake and might need to call on stored energy in order to move to where you can get food and water, so the liver reverses the process, releasing glucose into the blood in anticipation of you taking exercise, or possibly needing to evade danger as you go - remember this is the mark one Homo sapiens sapiens we are riding around in, the design is some 200,000 years old.
Disturbed sleep, the start of an illness, even anticipating a stressful day ahead can all trigger even higher concentrations of glucose appearing in order to help to cope with them.
 
Bottom line...it is very very common for the waking reading to be up because the body is preparing you for the energy it thinks you will need that day. Research the term "liver dump" or "dawn phenomenon". That said, the morning reading will come down if you are REGULARLY avoiding foods that are high in carbs.
 
Dr Jason Fung has a blog entry that sums this up nicely...
https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/dawn-phenomenon-t2d-8/
The occurrence of high blood sugars after a period of fasting is often puzzling to those not familiar with the Dawn Phenomenon. Why are blood sugars elevated if you haven’t eaten overnight? This effect is also seen during fasting, even during prolonged fasting. There are two main effects – the Somogyi Effect and the Dawn Phenomenon.
Click to expand...

If you are too tired to read the whole blog...
The conclusion...:D

Think about it this way. The Dawn Phenomenon is simply moving sugar from body stores (liver) into the blood. That’s it. If your body stores are filled to bursting, then you will expel as much of that sugar as possible. By itself it is neither good nor bad. It is simply a marker that your body has too much sugar. Solution? Simple. Either don’t put any sugar in (LCHF) or burn it off (Fasting). Even better? LCHF + IF.
Click to expand...
 
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