Not sure

Lost in France said:

Thank you very much for the reply, I haven't eaten breakfast for 40 years (unless it's already been paid for in a hotel) .

I have had other highish readings either first thing in the morning or before lunch, could this be because of the time since I last had anything to eat?, typically I have dinner at 19:00.

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Basically, the answer is yes. Morning fasting readings are the most difficult to control because the very nature of them means you are in a fast (starving). Our livers can kick in (Google Dawn Phenomenon) This is natural, but the amount of the rise in levels varies from person to person. If I were you I would break the 40 year habit and eat breakfast. A Greek plain yogurt with a few berries, seeds or nuts thrown in is a good quick breakfast, or eggs cooked any which way. When we are in a fast our glucose levels would all get used up as we move about, exercise, go to work, whatever, and without energy in our bodies we would very quickly become ill. This is why our livers help us out. Trouble is, we never know how much glucose they will dump! Best to have breakfast!

Or work up to breakfast, by adding good helping of cream to your black coffee first. Then maybe a piece of hard cheese and then . . .

I find that regular timing of meals helps my blood sugars and I don't feel the need to snack.

Lost in France said:

Thanks all, that makes sense Bluetit, I'll start having something to eat when I get up.

It does raise the question as to why I have been told to have the prescribed blood test in the morning before I have eaten anything.

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Do you mean your nurse told you to do this? Morning fasting glucose tests are notoriously unreliable for many reasons, and one we can't always control ourselves. For this reason the NHS very rarely use them for diagnosis of diabetes unless there are 2 very high ones close together. That's why we have the HbA1c and/or the OGT for diagnosis. My own surgery never does them on already diagnosed diabetics. We just have an HbA1c for review purposes.

Having said that, many of us on here do test our morning fasting levels, just to keep an eye on them, but we also test before and after meals.

If you have insulin resistance your liver will make and release a lot of glucose when you are fasting. That's why you will have rising levels overnight.
Apparently some people with T2 can produce 3 times as much as they should. Your fasting glucose is an indicator of how efficiently your glucose metabolism is working page 2 and 3 here help explain
.http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/diabetes/diabetes1.htm
In well controlled or early diabetes, it is after meal levels that have most effect on overall HbA1c so controlling those is important but what is happening with your fasting readings is an indicator as to what's happening overall.
A reduction in fasting readings would be an indicator of reduction in insulin resistance (ie your own insulin acts better to stop this glucose production) As HbA1c rises above 7% then this is because the basal glucose levels have risen and become a bigger contributor to the overall glucose pool. It is again an indicator of control.

There are a lot of very bad and misleading recipes around, which claim to be low carb, but which, in my book, are nothing of the sort. If the side of the box says 74g per 100g, you will be consuming a lot of carbs, if you eat it in any quantity. By "any quantity", I mean more than about 10 or 20 grams of it.
For any foodstuff, think how much of it you will actually be eating at one meal. If a label says, 100g carbs per 100g, but you are only going to sprinkle 1gram of the item over your dinner, it is neither here nor there. But if a label says 1gram carbs per 100grams and you go and eat a kilo (1000grams) of it, you will have ingested 10grams of carb, which could be more than you want, taken together with other things on your plate.
Some carbs are reported to act differently to others and different people have different experiences. I recommend that you try and keep it simple, at least until you have got your sugars well down. Just avoid most carbs. You can experiment a bit later on.
Go back to the Diet Doctor - links were given above - for guidance on the really good foods to concentrate on.
sally

Yes there is a lot of contradictory evidence around.

I love this book. It explains things really clearly and has lots of useful information.

http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/now-the-x-pert-advice-is-low-carb-high-fat.70271/