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sleep and low-carb

C

Carpetsalesman

Active Member
Messages
41
I am a pre T2 (I believe), with about 6months of low-carb under my belt.

One of the things I've noticed since I started this, is that almost every night I get off to sleep fine, completely sparko. But then I wake up at some point and drift in and out of sleep for the rest of the night. At the beginning, I would wake up at 4am, then 3am, then 2am, and now about 1am. Occasionally I've got bored at about 4 or 5am and done a BG test and it's always pretty normal 5.5-6.0. I think I have a mild dawn effect which comes and goes. Until I started low carb, I always slept like a log.

Is this something that other people have experienced too? I know that poor sleep can affect FBG, so if low-carbing can drive poor sleep it would be a bit of a vicious circle.

Any ideas? If someone can tell me that eating an entire tube of Pringles at 10pm is the solution, I'd take that.
 
It could be a number of things including sleep apneoa
I will tell you that I went through very similar to you, especially before diagnosis.
The reason why, I'm not certain except that my sleeping deprivation was probably caused by fluctuating blood glucose levels.
It wasn't until I found that I slept better when my blood glucose levels were in normal range before I went to bed. That I had any decent sleep.
With my condition it's better for my health to be in normal levels range constantly.

Do you have nightmares or vivid dreams?
 

To Lucy’s point, about 10pm. Very vanilla.

Have tried booze, makes no difference. Strange that you had the opposite to me but it also suggests there might be some connection. Probably not apnoea I don’t snore and I’m at target BMI. I did have a series of wild dreams a few weeks ago, which I put down to Covid lockdown tedium, but it’s not a common element.

Ah well someone will be along with the pringles suggestion soon I’m sure.
 

Are you feeling sleep deprived, or just bemused you don't appear to need so much sleep these days? That's not clear from your post.
 
DCUKMod said:
Are you feeling sleep deprived, or just bemused you don't appear to need so much sleep these days? That's not clear from your post.
Click to expand...

I’m sleep deprived. Three hours of solid sleep isn’t doing it for me. But I’m surviving.

Ah well, I thought it might be a low carb “thing”.
 
Carpetsalesman said:
I’m sleep deprived. Three hours of solid sleep isn’t doing it for me. But I’m surviving.

Ah well, I thought it might be a low carb “thing”.
Click to expand...

Have you tried supplementing Magnesium? Some find that helps with sleep.
 
I know lots of people say there is a correlation between poor sleep and high fbg, but last weekend I had 2 very bad nights sleep where I woke about 4 and then couldn't get off again until 6:30 finally waking groggy and feeling dreadful BUT both days my waking bg were 4.7 and 4.5
Since then I have been sleeping right the way though and my waking bg is back in the 6.5 and 6.7
I have no idea why suddenly so low or has crept again.
As diabetics i think we have more to concentrate on and worry about than adding sleep into the mix!
 
Ok, for me, before diagnosis, I had all the tests necessary to rule out anything that you suggest. I believe as I've already said that my blood glucose levels were all over the place and my brain was telling me that something was wrong with how my body was working, I believe the dreams in rem sleep was also reacting to the roller coaster ride of blood glucose levels that was causing my symptoms.
And it was the carbs recommended by every health care provider, that was the cause, because as our some type two diabetics, I am carb intolerant. In other words, when I eat, I produce too much insulin.

Low carb for me worked really well and after a couple of weeks, all my symptoms receded and my health improved greatly.

You can try every thing if you want to. But I assure you that it's not low carbing.

How can you eat Pringles? The awful texture and smell is repugnant, but everyone has different tastes.
 
Well I tried stuffing myself with carbs anyway to test the theory - about 100g over the course of the evening. Peanuts and dried figs. Went to bed at 8.5, woke up in the middle of the night just the same.

Theory busted. But I suppose it gave me another datapoint on the effect of carbs - 4.9 to 8.5 after two hours and recovered to almost normal FBG (5.7) overnight. Not great, not terrible.

I think MrsA2 is right that quality/quantity of sleep is definitely a significant factor somehow but whether it's cause or correlation I don't know. But it doesn't seem like we can influence it so not worth spending time on.

Thanks for the tip on magnesium I'll give it a try, I would have thought I got enough via diet but it can't hurt as an experiment.

Thanks all.
 
I sleep very badly these days - some weeks I sleep alternate nights and stay up for three nights - maybe dozing a little, but it is not all that important these days for me to be up at any particular time, so I just sleep when I am tired.
 
Stress ruins my sleep, even if my mind starts dwelling over the smallest thing. I started talking ashwagandha and magnesium, I think the ashwagandha really helps reduce stress levels.

I found that every time a random dumb thought enters my mind, I ask myself, “does this thought serve a purpose?” . After about a year of training, it’s automatic. My mind is pretty much empty because 95% of my thoughts serve no purpose lol!
 
annoyingly, I keep getting bits of Christmas songs going round and round in my head between 4 am and 6 am, no stressful thoughts just bl***y happy jolly Christmas songs!!!
 
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