Dawn Phenomenon and more

[Skellei]

I know about the dawn phenomenon (which I can from the freestyle graphs) but another thing that the libre has shown me is simply drinking tea or even the very act of waking up causing as big a spike as anything else. Does anyone else experience this ?

if you look at the graph which I’ll attach the first spike is simply that - getting up and drinking tea - white but with no sugar The second spike is breakfast (30g carb) - the reason why it’s M shaped is that it also includes a mid morning run and I had a small snack prior to doing that (it was an experiment because recently exercising has also caused my BG to spike). The third spike is lunch.

just interested if anyone else has experienced this level of spiking in the morning ?

 

[Skellei]

I know about the dawn phenomenon (which I can from the freestyle graphs) but another thing that the libre has shown me is simply drinking tea or even the very act of waking up causing as big a spike as anything else. Does anyone else experience this ?

if you look at the graph which I’ll attach the first spike is simply that - getting up and drinking tea - white but with no sugar The second spike is breakfast (30g carb) - the reason why it’s M shaped is that it also includes a mid morning run and I had a small snack prior to doing that (it was an experiment because recently exercising has also caused my BG to spike). The third spike is lunch.

just interested if anyone else has experienced this level of spiking in the morning ?

 

[Proud to be erratic]

I know about the dawn phenomenon (which I can from the freestyle graphs) but another thing that the libre has shown me is simply drinking tea or even the very act of waking up causing as big a spike as anything else. Does anyone else experience this ?

if you look at the graph which I’ll attach the first spike is simply that - getting up and drinking tea - white but with no sugar The second spike is breakfast (30g carb) - the reason why it’s M shaped is that it also includes a mid morning run and I had a small snack prior to doing that (it was an experiment because recently exercising has also caused my BG to spike). The third spike is lunch.

just interested if anyone else has experienced this level of spiking in the morning ?

There are 2 early morning phenomena: one that occurs a bit before dawn and starts while I'm still asleep - which I know as the dawn phenomenon. The other which spikes me immediately after I've woken up and is often nick-named "Foot on the Floor".

The 3 things I can't get my mind around and explain to myself are:
Why some mornings but not all mornings?
Why does the spike sometimes go back down if I turn over and take an hour or so lie-in, without taking any corrective insulin?
Thirdly, for me with no pancreas and thus no glucagon hormone which only comes from the pancreas, what hormone is telling my liver to release the glucose that's causing either of these spikes? We simplify explanations and talk about the liver releasing glucose, but the liver must be triggered to do this by something - normally a hormone. I'm too old to have any significant growth hormone activity; I'm not aware of bad dreams stimulating adrenaline rushes. So what else causes this?

 

[Skellei]

what you call ‘food on the floor’ is exactly the same for me. On Sunday, I had a lie in and, as you say, the normal spike just became a bump and nothing else happened until I had breakfast. Normally, it’s straight up and get some things done eg the dog fed etc before I have a drink or anything. Every other day it’s spiked to the same level, albeit from various different levels over night (something else I need to work out). My libre trial is proving very insightful and I am also too old for any growth hormones.

 

[nonethewiser]

Don't get spike when getting out of bed, but do find if don't eat bg goes up & up so need to correct, so normally have breakfast within half hour of waking.

 

[harbottle]

Mine goes up to around six when I started getting ready to go to work, usually a few hours after I get up, but after a few hours of sitting at the office can be down in the fours some days. Stress seems to cause me more rises than food.

I certainly don’t see the increases you are seeing, although I did when in ate oats once and had a Libre. Haven’t touched them since!

 

[Skellei]

interestingly, my BG trend also seems to follow the Cortisol cycle. High in the morning and reaching a naturally low around midnight before rising again. This is something that I do need to understand more because by midnight, I have almost normal BG levels of around 6 or 7. However, what always seems to happen is that my BG levels then rapidly rise from midnight - increasing still further around 3 am and I start the day with levels of around 10. This then makes it difficult to stay in control because, obviously, everything will make it go too high (as you can see in the graph). This is alll before the morning getting up spike. If I can find away of stopping the early morning rise, I would wake up with normal levels.

I don’t have pre bedtime snacks, I have regular bedtime routines (bed around 10 - get up at 6:45) and don’t have caffeine anytime before bed. i might sometimes have a glass of wine though but not everyday

i take half my medication (Metformin and empagiflozin) when I get up and the other Metformin, Trajenta and my statin late afternoon.

 

[harbottle]

I have read that some medication doesn't seem to suppress DP (Metformin, I think.) Have you shown this graph to your DN/GP? They might be able to suggest some new medication that can help bring things down. The Trajenta may be helping bring levels down before midnight. (This is the drug that stimulates the pancreas, isn't it?)

 

[Skellei]

I have read that some medication doesn't seem to suppress DP (Metformin, I think.) Have you shown this graph to your DN/GP? They might be able to suggest some new medication that can help bring things down. The Trajenta may be helping bring levels down before midnight. (This is the drug that stimulates the pancreas, isn't it?)

That’s a good point re Trajenta. It’s also supposed to help to stop the liver reacting. I might try taking that even later to see what happens. My Metformin is the slow releasing one.

 

[Vamppir8]

There are 2 early morning phenomena: one that occurs a bit before dawn and starts while I'm still asleep - which I know as the dawn phenomenon. The other which spikes me immediately after I've woken up and is often nick-named "Foot on the Floor".

The 3 things I can't get my mind around and explain to myself are:
Why some mornings but not all mornings?
Why does the spike sometimes go back down if I turn over and take an hour or so lie-in, without taking any corrective insulin?
Thirdly, for me with no pancreas and thus no glucagon hormone which only comes from the pancreas, what hormone is telling my liver to release the glucose that's causing either of these spikes? We simplify explanations and talk about the liver releasing glucose, but the liver must be triggered to do this by something - normally a hormone. I'm too old to have any significant growth hormone activity; I'm not aware of bad dreams stimulating adrenaline rushes. So what else causes this?

Wow this is interesting, no pancreas, now I'm having a similar thing I'm type 3c I was on creon but stopped ages ago. I was told I dont have digestive enzymes. I used to just jab after meals forget about it, test before next be fine, repeat. Got libra this week and wow, I peak to 15 in between every meal like you saying. I was wondering if there is an even quicker fast insulin ( yet to ask). Wanted to ask you a personal question, you dont have to reply 🙂 Pooing? I can poo between 4 and 6 times a day. The sweetcorn test for tea, its other end in morning so about 18 hrs. So from my graph I'm presuming not digesting fats that the sugars are super quick at digesting and getting in blood stream where as people with functioning pancreas have a slower digestive system and not such a steep curve. What do you think? do you have similar experience? I'd ask nurse, but to be honest they are uncontactable and the NHS is defunct.

 

[Skellei]

Wow this is interesting, no pancreas, now I'm having a similar thing I'm type 3c I was on creon but stopped ages ago. I was told I dont have digestive enzymes. I used to just jab after meals forget about it, test before next be fine, repeat. Got libra this week and wow, I peak to 15 in between every meal like you saying. I was wondering if there is an even quicker fast insulin ( yet to ask). Wanted to ask you a personal question, you dont have to reply 🙂 Pooing? I can poo between 4 and 6 times a day. The sweetcorn test for tea, its other end in morning so about 18 hrs. So from my graph I'm presuming not digesting fats that the sugars are super quick at digesting and getting in blood stream where as people with functioning pancreas have a slower digestive system and not such a steep curve. What do you think? do you have similar experience? I'd ask nurse, but to be honest they are uncontactable and the NHS is defunct.

That is going to be the real challenge re NHS. The Libre gives us lots of information/ detail about what is actually happening which could help us to manage our diabetes better but GPs just don’t have the time to review/ operate t this level

 

[Proud to be erratic]

Wow this is interesting, no pancreas, now I'm having a similar thing I'm type 3c I was on creon but stopped ages ago. I was told I dont have digestive enzymes. I used to just jab after meals forget about it, test before next be fine, repeat. Got libra this week and wow, I peak to 15 in between every meal like you saying. I was wondering if there is an even quicker fast insulin ( yet to ask). Wanted to ask you a personal question, you dont have to reply 🙂 Pooing? I can poo between 4 and 6 times a day. The sweetcorn test for tea, its other end in morning so about 18 hrs. So from my graph I'm presuming not digesting fats that the sugars are super quick at digesting and getting in blood stream where as people with functioning pancreas have a slower digestive system and not such a steep curve. What do you think? do you have similar experience? I'd ask nurse, but to be honest they are uncontactable and the NHS is defunct.

I had dreadful bowel control shortly after my surgery. The initial medical advice was to increase my Creon dosing, but it transpired that I had an unusual bacterial infection and took almost 2 years to get that identified and treated with an antibiotic that needed financial approval before it could be prescribed.

However, if you have no natural digestive enzymes then my instinctive response to you is you must take some Creon. Without an even digestive process your body will discharge (dump) excess whenever it feels like it, hence frequency, and relatively undigested, hence offensiveness.

A secondary, but vital, consequence is that without Creon but with poor or no digestive enzymes, your digestion of carbs can only be erratic; so conversion into blood glucose is erratic and thus management of BG really challenging. There are so many other things that affect BG (42 factors at tha latest count) that one of the few things that you can get some logic to is carb conversion - but only if you are actually digesting the carbs you eat!

We are in danger of highjacking this thread on Dawn Phenomena, so I'll turn to one of your 2 previous posts and thus make our dialogue more specifically for you. I have a couple of questions for you. It doesn't matter too much, anyone can read anything within the forum, but it's not so helpful to highjack!