Can anyone explain how this works?


I took my reading before bed and it was at 5.9. Nice level, nice and normal-ish. I woke up at 6.9. I didn't have an evening snack. So how could my level be higher in the morning than before? Is this the liver dumping glucose into my system over night to make up for it? I know I woke up a little hungry at 2am but I wasn't about to get up out of bed to eat. :yawn: LOL

Marie

This is a perfect example of why it is so important to try to stabilize your overall metabolism, not just focus on controlling specific meals. unfortunately there are many things that cause your glucose levels to rise other than food. Stress, hormones, toxins, etc. And when you sleep, you are burning much less than when you are awake, so its not surprising that it may increase slightly. Many diabetics experience quite high fasting glucose levels, and its NOT because they are eating in the middle of the night... it's because their metabolic function is impaired. The only way to overcome this is to focus on strengthening and healing the metabolism.

Some important factors include eating every 3 hours, eating the correct amount of calories (disbursed evenly throughout the day), eat a balanced diet (no extremes like no-carb or no-fat!) improve the quality of your food, excercise, etc... For more info on this, read the thread "Explain Tight Control."

Can anyone explain how this works?



Marie:

Jdimassimo gave you some great advice. I will try to explain, to the best of my understanding why, and try to make it simple.

Assuming you are a type II like me, then what has happened during this progression is that your body has become less capable of handling glucose loads--so your rise after a bloodmeal is to higher plasma glucose concentration, and this is coupled with less cell sensitivity such that forcing that glucose into the muscle cells takes more insulin, because your body is less efficient, this occurs over a longer time interval.

In a fasting state (normally >3 hr plus after a meal), the secretion of insulin by the pancreas will drop. When I am at 155 lbs and exercising daily, then the response is similar to a normal person, where my body will want to equilibrate around 80 mg/dL plasma glucose. When I was at 227 lbs, this equlibration wanted to occur in the low 300 mg/dL range without an oral med and 105 mg/dL with 2 mg Amaryl.

What happens is that at a given stage in type II, our bodies believe "normal" to be at a higher plasma glucose concentration than what a non-diabetic person would level at. If your body thinks 180 mg/dL is the proper fasting level, then the hormones you secrete will function such that the you arrive at that level. If you went to bed at 90 mg/dL and ate nothing, then throughout the night your liver will be converting glycogen to glucose and releasing it into your bloodstream such that your concentration rises to what it thinks is normal (180 mg/dL in this example). If you eat before bedtime, then during digestion, you will keep your insulin secretion at a higher level than fasting, and this will help to keep the plasma glucose down.

Some factors that help to bring this "baseline" fasting level down are exercise, weight loss, oral meds and careful diet. Of course, there are some unlucky ones that can't lose any more weight, nor do any additional exercise on top of the high activity exercise they do. Fortunately, that is not the case for many type II's and it certainly was not so in my case. :dizzy:

Marie,

Increased blood sugar levels in the morning over what they were the previous evening is very common. The two effects that can cause this are the Dawn Phenomenon and the Somogyi Effect. The DP is most usual cause and it happens as follows :

"Overnight, usually between 4am and 11am, your body releases some hormones. These are Growth Hormone (GH) from the anterior pituitary gland, cortisol from the adrenal cortex, glucagon from your pancreatic alpha-cells, and epinephrine (adrenalin). These hormones cause an increase in insulin resistance, raising your BG. In addition, these hormones trigger glycogenolysis and gluconeogenesis, adding stored or new glucose to your bloodstream. Dawn Phenomenon, and its associated increase in insulin resistance, is the reason most diabetics are far more sensitive to carbs in the morning." - http://www.diabetic-talk.org/dp.htm

You may have noticed that you need more insulin at breakfast time that you need at lunch time for a gine amount of carbohydrate. It is because of the Dawn Phenomenon.

A similar effect can is caused when blood sugar drops during the night. Obviously, if it drops low enough, you will wake up. But even a moderate drop can cause a liver dump and the correspoinding increase in blood sugar (the Somogyi Effect).

Cheers,

Mark ;)

Thank you SO much for your responses! Mark, I actually printed off your response and stuck it to my fridge. Thank you!

It sure helps to know there are others out here who don't mind what may seem like elementary questions to you all. Hugs all around!

marie