Waking at 4:15am with a 7.4 Every Night

[Nexus6]

Background. On the verge of pre-diabetes officially - but my numbers are generally a bit wonky and I think have a lot of other external factors involved - I have sleep apnea (being treated, but not working great), my glucose reacts badly to stress hormones etc...

Later on in the day (once my numbers settle down to 4.8 - 5.1 while fasting) I can eat a dinner (low carb) and get very little rise in glucose - everything sort of behaving as it should be.

That said, anyone have any suggestions/ideas on things to try/research on why it seems that almost every night I wake up at almost exactly the same time (4:15am) and I started testing and found my glucose level is almost always around 7.0 - 7.4 at that time. This is after NO eating after dinner (at which time the glucose never rose above 6.5 - 7.0 two hours after eating). Usually around a 5.0 going to bed.

If I can get back to sleep, I usually wake up around 7:00am and taking a glucose measurement will usually be around 6.0. After that, it does not really want to drop until later in the morning - even fasting etc.

So, really just looking for any suggestions, advice, things to try to try get better control on things or anything to help with nightime control? I'm heading back to the sleep clinic to try get some better sleep control as that seems to be greatly influencing things.

 

[Goonergal]

Hi @Nexus6

Sounds like dawn phenomenon to me. It’s your body preparing for the day ahead. Morning readings are often the last to come down and as you’re finding, can be very much affected by things like poor sleep.

 

[Resurgam]

If your CPAP machine is not adjusted to your needs then you might still be stopping breathing, which is very stressful and puts pressure on the heart, which is waking you.
Has your machine been left unlocked so you can make adjustments yourself?
You might need to make a small increase in the pressure - you should be able to get information over the phone. I have a CPAP machine and when I get a cold I often need to increase the pressure by one click - very rarely two, but I have needed to turn it down after a visit to the clinic - I suspect they gave me the wrong one. Being able to get the pressure just right makes a big difference to quality of sleep for me.

 

[Nexus6]

If your CPAP machine is not adjusted to your needs then you might still be stopping breathing, which is very stressful and puts pressure on the heart, which is waking you.
Has your machine been left unlocked so you can make adjustments yourself?

Yes, I have full control over my CPAP machine and I do change setting myself whenever I find needs change as well. According the "simplified" web app, my number of events is very low. Last night (picture below) the only issue was the shorter number of hours as I actually managed to sleep in a little past the 4:15....

I do have an appointment with the sleep clinic, but they just keep saying from the data looks like it is working...which does not help me when I wake up in a sweat etc.

Also unfortunately...my blood glucose right now is 7.2...have not eaten anything since last night at around 7pm which was very low carb etc. Have had nothing this morning except water.