I suffer badly from a kind of "late dawn " phenomena. i.e. my fasting levels are now usually between 3.9% and abut 5.9% averaging a 5.2%, but when I rise it goes up,into the 6's and sometime up to 8/9 before I've eaten anything. (I have a freestyle monitor)
I've tried all sorts to get it to go down in the morning. Fasting before, eating early, eating late, eating higher late carbs, eating no late carbs,eating cheese, eating nuts, drinking whisky , walking within ten minute of eating, walking within 45 minutes of eating, having a bite to eat immediately on rising and I have got used to the fact that there will be a spike and for an hour or two and my numbers will be quite bad.
My morning 6 hours is the highest
( e.g. my current 7 day averages
12-6.00 am 5.2 %,
6 to 12.00 6.9%, (high 8.4%)
12-18.00 6.0%
18-24.00 5.5%
overall 5.9%. ) . Being 1.5% - 2% higher on average during this period has been consistent ever since I began even with much higher numbers overall.
There are three things about DP I am fairly clear on now
1) when I am in ketosis, ALL of my readings drop, so that even with the DP phenomenon the worst actual figures stay reasonably acceptable ( i.e high 6's).
2) the lower the number I go to bed at, the lower the starting point for the morning rise, with the rise being about the same magnitude.
3) I also know that if have an early low carb (5g) breakfast, it causes the DP high to be more short lived ( i..e 1-2 hours instead of 3-4 hours) .
My Hba1C has been dropping very quickly ( 90, 64, 44 in 5 months) through my HCLF diet and exercise, I am assuming that at some point , when I have reached the theoretical " true" low for my body the rest of the time ( and 5.2% must be reasonably close now) - THEN I might find that this dawn phenomena gradually goes away, if not then maybe I will have to simply assume its not fixable.
It may be that if your numbers are low enough the rest of the time, you could invest in a monitor and figure out how much time you have the higher numbers for and if you are getting close to a theoretical "best case" the rest of the time
I have read research that shows a truly NORMAL blood sugar profile would be that your readings are under 6.6% for 91% (me 82%) of the time, and under 7.8% for 99% (me 90%) of the time, with the balance being up to 1% me 9%) over 7.8% up to 11% maximum. ( I have not gone above 11% on LCHF recently)
My current strategy has been to walk a lot after eating. I have noticed though that my blood sugar consistently falls when I then sit down after the exercise. So that led me to try a different experiment today.
This seems to have had an effect - though I don't know yet if it's repeatable , or indeed how I can use it yet! . Not really an option other than at the weekend though
This morning I woke up with normal overnight average around 5.2% , but by the time I had got ready for breakfast (low carb 5g 300 calories at 7.00 am ) it was already 7.4% , Instead of doing anything after breakfast, I just went back to bed, 90 minutes later my blood sugars had gone DOWN to 6.3.% with NO spike at all in the intervening period, instead of going up .
I thought I had it cracked ! ( assuming a lot of free time).
Unfortunately I then had to get up to answer the door and without food my blood sugars promptly went back to 9.4% again - i.e I had definitely interrupted the rise with food and rest , and when I started to move my body went right back to its normal DP rise , when I laid down again the second time with no more food it was back to the 5.2% within an hour. Once it had I hit that "normal" point I got up and it stayed constant.
The lying down and snoozing is the thing that made the difference and my increased blood sugar readings after my low carb breakfast had the same zero effect on my blood sugars as they do the rest of the time.
This leads me to think that actually my body is possibly no more responsive to food in the morning than it is at any other time. What may be different is that the process of actually getting going in the morning is the thing that causes the stress . I personally do not sleep at all well at night, so maybe that is the driver behind my DP stress .
Next time I have a few hours to spare I will try it again and this time see if just staying in bed for the morning after a lazy Sunday breakfast stops the morning rise altogether , or whether the food is just an interruption on an otherwise inexorable morning rise which will happen when I do get up no matter what time that happens to be,
Apologies for the long post, but your post came at the point I am trying to rationalise this in my own head. I hope something in here might give you some ideas.