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Over night highs and lows

richtrott

richtrott

Member
Messages
7
Location
Bristol
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Dislikes
The bad control day's
I am looking for some help in controlling my overnight blood sugars. I am having trouble keeping my blood sugar low enough overnight but am still waking with really bad sweats. I have tried splitting my lantus and upping my novorapid with no success. Hoping someone might be able to point me in the right direction.
 
Have you been testing your bg throughout the night to see what levels your getting, if your basal insulin is set right bg shouldn't move much more than 1.5mmol.
 
Are you suffering from 'dawn phenomenon', a lot of insulin dependant diabetics do. It's where your sugars lower around dawn and then go high after, so on waking your sugars are high making you think you need to raise long acting/ overnight insulin when in fact you need to lower it to prevent the hypo.
 
I thinking testing in the night to make sure the sweats aren't caused by hypos - have a chat with the hospital about your symptoms too and what you sugars are. Are you going to bed ok and then waking up high, having woken with sweats in the middle? Do you test when you wake up sweating? I'm sure hypos aren't the only thing that can cause sweating at night hence talking to the Drs, but through testing in the night hopefully you can work out what is happening and whether it is a hypo.

Also you know the dawn phenomenon thing…I always thought that it was a natural rise in blood sugars that some people have pre getting up - so my sugar can be all nice at 6 all night then once I start to move it starts rising - no hypo in sight during the night. If I have had a hypo in the night or day for that matter and if I have dropped particularly low or it's been a persistent low then I do notice a 'liver dump' type thing where my sugar level can zoom up fairly rapidly and not just the little rise that I normally get from have 10g of quick stuff to get me out of a hypo, really high into the teens - so I class that as going hypo in the night with a rebound (liver dump) and not a 'dawn phenomenon' or have I got that wrong and hypos and dawn phenomenon are actually the same thing?
 
Best time to test is 2am at night as this is when you're at your lowest point before dawn, set your alarm and test then and you should know for sure what's going on.
 
I've had a couple of issues of the years with this and often happens when I change my diet. Even though its simple advice I would suggest trying to keep to the same bedtime ritual. E.g. eating and injecting at roughly the same time. Another tip is to keep your evening meal to 1 carbohydrate source, whatever the GI of that source it's easier to predict, having foods with different rates of glucose absorption can often give us unexpected peaks and troughs.
Jay

richtrott said:
I am looking for some help in controlling my overnight blood sugars. I am having trouble keeping my blood sugar low enough overnight but am still waking with really bad sweats. I have tried splitting my lantus and upping my novorapid with no success. Hoping someone might be able to point me in the right direction.
Click to expand...
 
Night sweats may not be due to hypo's. You really ought to try a couple nights of testing bloods ...nobody can really advise unless this is done..


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I read and read all these comments over and over, I'm never going to get this, it's doing my head in, I just can't work it out.:0(


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1) make sure you do some 2-3am tests to check if your bloods are going low whilst sleeping

2) adjust doses correctly and do afew re test nights.

3) many people have hypos at night, a great many of them will sweat when hyp at night. However, a lot of people have other reasons for nightsweats.

4) if in doubt do night tests, as a matter of course regular night testing should be done for anybody on insulin.... At least twice a year and preferably after the clocks change....


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I get sweaty as such when I'm having a bad shaky hypo.. Are you sure it's a hyper?
 
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