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Type 1 Morning sugars

E

em0909

Newbie
Messages
4
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Just reaching out to find out whether anyone else suffers from rapidly rising morning sugars?

If I start the day without taking insulin immediately upon rising, my sugars will rise and rise until after lunch, even if I take corrective bolus insulin.

For example I can wake with sugars around 5-6, if I brush my teeth, shower and dress before I take any insulin then my sugars will be so hard to control, within an hour they might rise to 10 (without eating any carbs).

I normally eat breakfast at work as I start very early, but find that if I wait until breakfast to take my insulin then my sugars will have risen into the teens.

I asked my dr for advice and he just told me to take insulin to tide myself over til breakfast.

Has anyone experienced anything similar?
 
This is common and called "dawn phenomenon" (or "liver dump"). It happens to most people: your liver dumps some glucose into your blood to give you the energy get started for the day. If you do not have diabetes, your pancreas reacts with some insulin and you don't notice the rise. You have seen exactly what happens when your pancreas is not able to react.

There are lots of threads about this. Some ideas about managing it are:

- Dawn phenomenon is a common motivation for having a pump which allows you to adjust your basal insulin dose each hour.
- If this is not an option, many people split their basal dose to assist.
- Although it may seem inconvenient, have you tried eating your breakfast (or just a small amount of breakfast) when you get up. Some people find eating a little carbs stops your liver dumping extra glucose into your blood.
 

Hi I think you need to go back to your doctor to adjust the insulin dosages and especially the morning plantings
Especially short-acting insulin
 


Thanks for coming back to me, I’ve done some reading on dawn phenomenon but the above is really concise. I think I do need to go back to the dr and just ask them to take this a bit more seriously.

I had thought about asking for a cgm to try to track this a bit better.

How does splitting basal doses work? Take half in the morning and then half in the evening? I take lantus and it supposedly works for 24 hours, so as I see it i’d Still be on the same overall dose, but that peak activity would be twice a day rather than once?
 
I never did this but know others on the forum do and are better suited to advise you.
It seems to be more common to split Levemir than Lantus. I suspect this is due to the length the insulin acts.
 
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