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Prediabetes Trying to understand my readings

Steph001

Active Member
Messages
37
Firstly, sorry I’m posting again. I hope I can give back here as much as people have helped me at some point.

I’m prediabetic and for 10 days have been doing LCHF.

This morning at 8.30am in a fasted state I checked my blood sugar it was 5.6 so I was quite happy. It’s now 10.15am same day and I haven’t eaten as I was trying to fast for 16 hours. However I’ve started feeling a bit yucky, sweaty and shaky. So I checked my blood again and it was 6.7 !!!

I don’t understand why it would have gone up? Feeling very worried about that. Should I not fast and should I have eaten sooner? Any other problem you can spot?

Thank you so much.
 
This is probably down to Dawn Phenomena (liver dump). This is a normal response, the body is giving you energy supplied by your liver by way of glucose to get up and start your day. A ~1mmol rise is quite good at this stage.

Other times you may see this is when; you have had a poor night's sleep or the weather has been a tad warm or you are brewing an infection etc.
 
It's normal, it's called Dawn Phenomenon. Your liver starts dumping glucose first thing to keep you going until breakfast, it's "helping". And since you're skipping breakfast it'll go up a bit, until it starts going down again. It's nothing to worry about. Some of us choose to skip lunch rather than breakfast, as for some of us the liver just keeps dumping until we eat, and when it's one or two meals a day that can be a while... If you're concerned, just have a little square of extra dark chocolate or a couple of nuts and water, that'll tell your liver to knock it off, more likely than not.
 
Your liver thinks you need some glucose so is releasing some of it's stored glycogen to give you a boost.

I personally don't fast for extended periods and if I were to I would do intermittent fasting I do think if you are concerned may be a small snack would suffice to steady things up a bit. though this would be technically breaking your fast.
 
Steph001 said:
Thank you all! So pleased it’s normal. I will look more into the dawn phenomenon and may not fast for as long.
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Bear in mind that even normal fasting i.e sleeping for 7-8 hours can still see DP. Fasting levels are the trickiest and often the last to improve. You are doing well, you got this.
 
@Steph001 I just popped in to say please don’t apologise for posting again, that’s what forums are for
 
@Steph001 . Some great advice.
One thing to consider with dawn phenomenon is that it usually occurs during the early hours of the morning 3am to 5am kind of times. Obviously this isn’t a set rule and we are all different.
DP will often elevate blood sugar prior to rising. In your case the rise seems to have occurred after rising.
It may be worth you considering “ feet on floor “ syndrome. It works how @JohnEGreen points out. Your body wants a little something, if you don’t provide it then it does it itself.
 
@Steph001 If you are experiencing Dawn Phenomenon you don't have to eat something to stop it, some coffee with double cream should stop the rise.
 
I did not used to eat breakfast, but now I eat morning and evening, with about 10 gm of carbs in the morning, as that reassured by liver that I did not need extra glucose to use for finding food. I can then happily go all day and eat again in the evening without seeing high numbers.
This is the sort of thing having a meter can tell you, though it can take a little while to try different regimes and see which is best for you.
 

I did eat shortly after and felt much better. So may not fast if I feel like that again. Thank you!
 
Steph001 said:
I was trying to fast for 16 hours.
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And the question you have to ask yourself is why your doing this?
To lower your blood sugar?

Sure that's the end result but it's not how you get there ironically you lower your blood sugar by raising it.

The way it works is by fasting your body has to use up stored glucose /glycogen. The first place that comes from is the liver, so that's a good thing, it goes into your blood stream and should be used up by the muscles basic day to day stuff (and any exercise you can fit in on top of that to.)

Once the liver has used up all its Glycogen (fating or exercise) it releases fat that is stored in the liver.
This is the EndGame you want to drain your liver of fat it will work better and is considered by many to be the "cure" for preventing Type 2 Diabetes.

You want the liver to replenish it's stores of glycogen by breaking down body fat. This is the reason for low carb meals after fasting so you do not flood your body with even more sugar and clog up the liver before it can do this.

Ostensibly this is how it all works.
 
Re fasting : as already mentioned we fast overnight while we're sleeping, and our liver gives us a wake up and get ready boost - which it can do at other times too. But you can also work on the principle of "I'm not hungry this meal time, so I don't need to eat just now! " rather than "I must eat now because it's breakfast/lunch/dinner/supper/snack time"/ or at the other extreme "I must fast now for the next x number of hours" - sometimes it's best to simply let your tum tell you when you need to eat, and I generally find this works best for me.

Robbity
 
Steph001 said:
So I checked my blood again and it was 6.7
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yup that's exactly what happened to me.....
no i don't understand like other folk here but i read around and what works for me (so far) is to have a piece of cheese or some nuts, really small amounts, and my body seems to go "sorted" like it flicks a switch. I think (very early days in understanding terms) that there are two aims:
1. get overall BS down
2. stabilise fluctuations
those weird feelings you get when fasting are the body still being a bit unbalanced, highs and lows which won't occur once everything has had a chance to re-adjust. However, right now these are symptoms of where you are coming from not where you are going to.
I think.......
CoP
 

Thanks
 
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