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Morning Fasting Reading Is Always High

Thank you both.
Someone posted a recipe for granola crunch, but I can't find who it was. Now that is right up my street in the way of a cereal breakfast. I just can't do savoury in the mornings sorry.
 
My mum makes low carb pancakes. I'm not that fussed on them, but you could play with flavourings, spices and stuff. I didn't really try any variations. I'll see if I can find the recipe....
 
Quirkybee said:
Thank you both.
Someone posted a recipe for granola crunch, but I can't find who it was. Now that is right up my street in the way of a cereal breakfast. I just can't do savoury in the mornings sorry.
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Eggs? Boiled, fried, scrambled, poached?
Go to work on an egg?
Cheese, go continental?

Cereals, maybe a little with some fruit and a lot of cream?
 
I can't eat or face anything savoury in the morning. Toast is fine with a smear of jam and I mean a smear, just to have the sweet taste.

Please bear in mind that I am NOT craving a sweet taste, I just look forward to my breakfast more than any other meal and cereal is my choice for this.

I'll try and search for the granola post.

I am going to start this LCHF diet once I've sourced further info and got my 'head' around it all. I'm still stumped as to having cream whether it's double or pouring whole fat cream and how this doesn't increase your weight. Still not convinced until I read further, I just can't gain weight, I've kept it off up till now, but clearly my existing diet hasn't improved my glucose problem.
 
Don't worry about it is my advice. Easier said than done I know but as someone who has been Type 2 since 2006 and who has scoured the world for answers, the truth is for some of us that is just the way it is. My 'liver dump' mechanism will even dump glucose during the day if I go for 4 - 5 hours without eating. People will tell you it cant happen but for a small proportion of us, the Consultant has confirmed, it can happen.

Personally I have discovered that I need a big dollop of rapid acting in the morning to kill the high night time reading. For me that is 24 - 30 units depending on what I eat for breakfast. My breakfast of choice is the same everyday. One large slice of Lo carb toast with lots of almond butter. Its filling enough to get me through the 2 - 3 hours I need to get my BG under control. I just cant eat carbs in the morning as my body does not like it and even with lots of insulin, my after breakfast reading will be well into double digits.

I have friends with the same problem who run for an hour each day and they say it helps their overnights but I have not found any improvement myself through moderate/ mild exercise (not up to running anywhere!!) or even fasting. In fact fasting seems to increase my morning readings. If I eat a moderate carb diet say 100 - 150gms C per day, it can affect my overnight reading by up to 1.5 digits but even on very low carb (say 30 - 40/day) I cant reduce my overnight below a reading of 8.

Through trial and error what I have found is that the closer I get to 6 after a meal, the better my dawn phenomena is. For example, the nurse wanted me to cut down on my insulin use because although I have an HBA1C of 6.1, she said I didn't need to be so strict and rather than aiming for 6 after meals, I should aim for 8 (BS I think but I did it anyway). Well for the first ten days or so, I reduced down to about 65% of my previous insulin intake and lo and behold, there was little difference in my morning reading or surprisingly, my after food readings. So I was thinking huh, I really was doing it wrong. This was all well and good until I woke up one morning at 14 and for several days, my after meal readings were right up as well. Now either I was sick or didn't know it or as I suspect, my body needs that level of insulin. It took me a week to 10 days to drive the levels down again to around 8.5 - 9.2 upon waking and in the 6's after meals. I am just about to embark on a test of that theory by doing the same again to see if the same thing happens. They will tell you that rapid acting can only effect about a 3 hour period but I am quite sure that for me, daytime insulin is impacting my dawn phenomena quite substantially. Still time will tell.

Also with diabetes, you get everything sorted and then it changes so although it took me years to accept it, there is no right way. You may never have the level of control you'd like to have. VLC defi nitely helps but maybe not the dawn issue and normalising weight is a big thing too but do the best you can and accept the rest.
 
Visceral fat. I've been focusing on working out my core. I don't have sugary foods nor do I have anything white. I found that my sugars are coming down fasting (6.5mmol) since working out focusing on my core where this visceral fat is stored. But I would encourage you to research visceral fat since you've lost weight but hasn't helped.
 
RuthDarko,

Thanks i have some light reading to do on the train tonight! quick glance and that could be my problem well a cause. all the weight left on me is around my abdominal area..
 
Somewhere on the web there is a great recipe for a lo carb cereal mainly made from nuts and seeds and you eat it with berries. I had to give up cereal because of the high fasting BGs. It was painful but there was no way around it. Almond butter is expensive but its quite sweet for a savoury thing if you know what I mean. I used to try various lower carb fruit spreads on L/C Toast but still after breakfast reading would be high and I was always hungry because no protein or fat. Your other option could be some kind of coconut flour/ l/c bake mix as a pancake or waffle and use sugar free maple syrup. Maybe a coconut oil based home made chocolate with stevia as a topping for lo carb toast. Google it, its called chocolate bark and is yummy when you are very L/C. Ruth's comment on visceral fat could be correct although I have not heard of it. I am apple shape and am now wondering whether those of us with the big dawn phenomena issue are predominantly apples??

Fasting may work for you, it didn't for me but because I take so much medication (tons of health issues), I only managed it a few times as it made me sick. It didn't have an immediate impact on fasting BG as I had anticipated but as someone else suggested it may well do over time as dawn phenomena does tend to take a couple of weeks to register a change. Like you I sometimes get unexpectedly brilliant morning readings and I cant pinpoint it at all.
 
I hear you. I get the same. I think the problem is that fasting BG is comprised of long term and short term influences and easily measured and unable to be measured influences.. Sleep, hormones blah blah.
 
Is it actually worth taking a reading until your system has warmed up and got going? It seems like a waste of a test strip to test at a time when levels are known to be changing upwards from a low level. Instead of a fasting test, if done on waking, it seems more like a 'post laying down a lot' test. If it is normal for the body to increase blood sugar levels upon waking (and if you have the time in the morning) why not wait say an hour, and do a 'my system is now awake test'.

I'm just getting to know the Libralink and I take a scan as soon as I wake, then do four of five scans over the next hour or so which all increase a lot. So what do I take as the fasting reading, 7.5 on waking or 11.1 a little later?

I don't get the value of this information:confused:
 
knackered said:
Is it actually worth taking a reading until your system has warmed up and got going? It seems like a waste of a test strip to test at a time when levels are known to be changing upwards from a low level. Instead of a fasting test, if done on waking, it seems more like a 'post laying down a lot' test. If it is normal for the body to increase blood sugar levels upon waking (and if you have the time in the morning) why not wait say an hour, and do a 'my system is now awake test'.

I'm just getting to know the Libralink and I take a scan as soon as I wake, then do four of five scans over the next hour or so which all increase a lot. So what do I take as the fasting reading, 7.5 on waking or 11.1 a little later?

I don't get the value of this information:confused:
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I've always looked at it as being my baseline, as my body has not been doing anything, apart from recovering, for hours. I do get much lower readings in the day, often before my evening meal, but this is the one I take as my chief indicator on how well my control is.
I could be wrong though.
 
kokhongw said:
I found Dr Jason Fung's explanation to be helpful. And for me skipping a couple of dinner over a couple of weeks in addition to lchf did the trick.



https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/dawn-phenomenon-t2d-8/
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Thanks man. I bought his course. Went through the thefastingmethod. Started fasting, atm doing two 36 hours fast and planning to extend to three 36 hour fast. Stopped MetFormin.

My morning BS is 7ish and 5.5ish on fasting days.


I’m not fake or Jason Fung paid me to do this.
I wish I knew about this when I was diagnosed with Type2 2.5 years ago. None of the GPS/Endocrinologist told me changing diet. They all are keen to put u on more Meds.


Apparently they don’t want to cure your diabetes, they want you to keep spending money .


I’m still in early days of following Jason Fung’s method. But it seems promising.
Also I have gone on High Fat Low Carb n Moderate Protein diet.



Bottom line is what I came to understand. Most Type2 , if not all, at the early stage are insulin resistant. To make your body become responsive to insulin is ... Minimize the amount of insulin produced by your body over a period of time and insulin response would improve.


Hope this helps few people out there.
 
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girishD said:
Thanks man. I bought his course. Went through the thefastingmethod. Started fasting, atm doing two 36 hours fast and planning to extend to three 36 hour fast. Stopped MetFormin.

My morning BS is 7ish and 5.5ish on fasting days.


I’m not fake or Jason Fung paid me to do this.
I wish I knew about this when I was diagnosed with Type2 2.5 years ago. None of the GPS/Endocrinologist told me changing diet. They all are keen to put u on more Meds.


Apparently they don’t want to cure your diabetes, they want you to keep spending money .


I’m still in early days of following Jason Fung’s method. But it seems promising.
Also I have gone on High Fat Low Carb n Moderate Protein diet.



Bottom line is what I came to understand. Most Type2 , if not all, at the early stage are insulin resistant. To make your body become responsive to insulin is to..force the amount of insulin produced by your body over a period of time insulin response would improve.


Hope this helps few people out there.
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Also couple of more things.

- I got rid of snacking. I eat Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner and get done with it.
-Low GI carbs is bit helpful in controlling BS but eventually you need same amount of insulin for 100g of Carb irrespective of it being Low or High GI.
 
girishD said:
Also couple of more things.

- I got rid of snacking. I eat Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner and get done with it.
-Low GI carbs is bit helpful in controlling BS but eventually you need same amount of insulin for 100g of Carb irrespective of it being Low or High GI.
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Do you regularly check morning fasting Glucose readings? I am interested to have a look if available?

I have done fasting as well similar to you can see i have updating since two years.
 
wylie27 said:
Hi all,

Hoping you might be able to help. I was diagnosed about 3 years ago with type 2. my HBA1C was 17.5 and i was about 145kg. move forward 3 years, i am now as of this morning 91.7kg ( i have been down to 88kg). i am currently on 2 x Janumet 50/100

For the past 3 years my fasting reading has always been between 9.1 - 11.5 and my reading 2 hours after dinner is 6.3 - 7.8.

I have seen several dieticians, endo's, GP's, etc and not one of them can help. Dieticians seem to give me information that google gives me for free. I am seeing my 6th Endo in September however I was hoping you fine folk could give some tips.

I have tried many things,

Eating no carbs at dinner, eating most of my carbs at dinner, excercise before bed, no excercise before bed, eat a snack before bed, not eat before bed. Change my dosage of meds to be the most before bed, Change to XR medication, changed back.

occasionally i will get a reading that is like 7.8 so i study my food log to see what was different. But nothing.

My last endo said it is because i am losing weight and the bulk of my weight is around my stomach and thats where we store sugar in fats.. Sounds a bit suss to me.

Any suggestions would be fantastic.

Jase
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One reason could be the dawn phenomenon. I suggest you change your eating plan: have breakfast at regular times, delay lunch & skip dinner. This is a TMAD (Two Meals A Day) plan as more strict alternative to OMAD (One Meal A Day). They are all forms of restricted feeding as well as IF (Intermittent Fasting). Watch out for medication dosage and timing; consult with your GP. Good luck!
 
I'm relieved to see I'm not the only one with these high morning readings. Whatever strategy I try makes no difference at all!
 
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