My first fasting reading

The fasting BG seems to be the slowest to come under control. Personally, I wouldn't bother with it at the moment. Much more useful to test 2 hours after eating. If your BG then isn't below, say, 7.8 ( a figure some of us here use) by then, it means you had too many carbs in that meal. Do that with various different meals and you'll soon work out what you can and can't eat. If readings are too high at two hours, reduce one main carb constituent in that meal the next time and test again. If you change too much, it gets hard to work out what is causing any improvement.
Early days, don't get discouraged. There'll be loads if ups and downs to come! You can feel fantastic when you get a good reading, and absolutely Sxxx when you get a bad one!

Hi Sandra, and welcome!

There is a thing called the 'Dawn Phenomenon', which happens to all people - our livers give us a bit of extra glucose just as we're waking up in a morning, to get us going first thing. With non-diabetics, this rise in blood glucose is immediately dealt with by the pancreas, so it isn't noticed. With diabetics, we all have some problems with glucose metabolism. Our pancreases aren't so quick off the mark, and our blood glucose continues to rise for a bit, so we notice it on testing.

That's a bit simplistic, but pretty well what happens.

Grazer is right, I think. that the early-morning fasting readings are often the last to lower properly. Mine certainly were, but for a while now I've been in the mid-low 5s, or even the 4s - unless I've been particularly bad (or stupid! :lol: ).

So don't worry about it just now. Stick to controlling your carb intake, and slowly but surely your fasting reading will come lower. Higher fasting readings are quite normal just after diagnosis. Give your pancreas a rest by giving it less carbs to handle, and things should get better soon.

Viv 8)

Yes don't get disheartened. In the early days after diagnosis I'd wake up high as well, took me around 6 weeks to consistently wake up under 7.5 and I would regularly wake up over 10. The main 2 hours after eating tests are the most important. As Grazer says in the end try to get under 7.8 but again early on I would regularly zoom past that either because I just got quantities and carbs wrong or simply I had no chance cos my background count was to high and eating anything would have caused it to rise past 7.8.

At this stage you should be looking at two things imo.

First a gradual fall your average levels. Don't worry if one day they are higher than yesterday just look at the overall trend. If you are not seeing a fall then either you are still eating to many carbs or are not taking enough medication (your choice) and you may want to go and discuss things further with your doctor. If you get to a stage where you are eating hardly any carbs and are still not seeing an improvement then definitely go back to the doctors as that maybe an indicator that you are not producing enough insulin to cope with any carbs and you will need your doctors help and guidance to sort that out.

Second the spikes you get on your main meal. Aim to minimise those even if at this stage you don't end up in safety under 7.8.

As for the first thing fasting level test its a matter of choice. I do one simply because I like numbers. I also found it has been a good indicator on how better my average BG's are getting over time.

At the start its likely always going to be high for a while (many weeks for me) because of the dawn phenomenon as Viv just explained. I found the best way of dealing with it is to ensure you have breakfast as that kind of kick starts things into action (probably not biologically right btw). I found another way of quickly dropping the initial reading is to do a small (or as much as you like) amount of exercise. Do a minimum of a fast 5 to 10 minute walk in the morning after breakfast.

Good luck, like I say in those first few weeks I was waking up in double digits this morning 4.6 so just keep at it, patience is the key.