High Night Time Readings

[AndreaVonBerl]

Hi all,

Still a newbie so may be another silly question.

I didn't eat after evening meal at 7 last night.

Went to bed with a reading of 9 and woke up to a reading of 18.

I had 16 Tojueu half an hour before bed.

Is this strange?

Same for me ,strange !

 

[Barnsley1978]

I might try going back to porridge for my breakfast now, always enjoyed it.

 

[SimonP]

There are two reasons (aside from weight loss) to reduce carbs (though certainly not to get rid of them completely): Firstly any mistakes you make with bolus timing and quantity (e.g. due to unknown/variable carb ratio) will result in smaller highs or lows if you're trying to cover fewer carbs, which is then easier to fix; secondly fewer carbs means they are digested faster which means you can go to bed without needing to guesstimate how much carbohydrate is still to be digested and how much bolus you require to cover that.

I would suggest that these two reasons are perhaps why you were told to reduce carbs as you're not yet adjusting you dose to what you eat - the other thing to note about your meal is that in the absence of carbs, some protein and fat will be converted to glucose and over quite a long period. This is called gluconeogenesis. Something along the lines of 50% of protein mass can be converted to glucose and 5-6% of fat mass. I'm not sure off hand how many carbs one requires to prevent gluconeogenesis from occurring, some Googling lies ahead of me!

Despite supper being my big meal of the day (just because I'm not that hungry at lunchtime, which otherwise might make more sense) I try to not eat too late and/or minimise my evening carbs (where minimise is have less than 80g if possible, so it's not low carb by any definition.) My carbs ratio changes quite a lot depending on what I've done (exercise-wise), and I always need to split bolus (as otherwise I go low straight after eating as the insulin is absorbed before the carbs are) so this means I can (hopefully) sort everything out before I head for bed. YMMV!

P.S. I eat porridge (for the cholesterol benefits) and pretty much the only thing that will stop me going high afterwards is exercise, or having done lots of exercise the previous day. Everyone's different though.

 

[Barnsley1978]

There are two reasons (aside from weight loss) to reduce carbs (though certainly not to get rid of them completely): Firstly any mistakes you make with bolus timing and quantity (e.g. due to unknown/variable carb ratio) will result in smaller highs or lows if you're trying to cover fewer carbs, which is then easier to fix; secondly fewer carbs means they are digested faster which means you can go to bed without needing to guesstimate how much carbohydrate is still to be digested and how much bolus you require to cover that.

I would suggest that these two reasons are perhaps why you were told to reduce carbs as you're not yet adjusting you dose to what you eat - the other thing to note about your meal is that in the absence of carbs, some protein and fat will be converted to glucose and over quite a long period. This is called gluconeogenesis. Something along the lines of 50% of protein mass can be converted to glucose and 5-6% of fat mass. I'm not sure off hand how many carbs one requires to prevent gluconeogenesis from occurring, some Googling lies ahead of me!

Despite supper being my big meal of the day (just because I'm not that hungry at lunchtime, which otherwise might make more sense) I try to not eat too late and/or minimise my evening carbs (where minimise is have less than 80g if possible, so it's not low carb by any definition.) My carbs ratio changes quite a lot depending on what I've done (exercise-wise), and I always need to split bolus (as otherwise I go low straight after eating as the insulin is absorbed before the carbs are) so this means I can (hopefully) sort everything out before I head for bed. YMMV!

P.S. I eat porridge (for the cholesterol benefits) and pretty much the only thing that will stop me going high afterwards is exercise, or having done lots of exercise the previous day. Everyone's different though.

Thanks ,

I wasn't told to reduce carbs just thought this was the thing to do with high BG.

I'll try something different now.


Thanks all.

 

[Inka]

It’s an easy mistake to make @Barnsley1978 There’s a lot of talk of low carb because many (most?) Type 2s use it to varying extents and they make up the majority of people with diabetes.

I hope you enjoy your porridge. Weigh the oats so you know how many carbs you’re having and see how it goes. You might need to make a few tweaks but that’s the nature of Type 1. Being a pancreas can be hard!

 

[SimonP]

Thanks ,

I wasn't told to reduce carbs just thought this was the thing to do with high BG.

I'll try something different now.


Thanks all.

Well it is the thing to do if you're getting high blood sugar because you're not allowed to change your dosage yet. But if you can change dosage then you should be able to cover the carbs you want to eat (though within reason re how fast they are absorbed vs the insulin)

 

[Bubbleblower]

I might try going back to porridge for my breakfast now, always enjoyed it

The latest magic word is GEM; glucose excursion minimization, which is usefull for all kinds of diabetes and an important part of that is diet. I wish it was different, I love porridge too.

I did some medium intensity exercise with no food and it peaked higher.

It is better to eat first and also to exercise later in the day, then that very same exercise can lower BG.
A lot of studies show results like:

Blood glucose rose during fasting morning exercise (9.5 ± 3.0 to 10.4 ± 3.0 mmol/L), whereas it declined with afternoon exercise (8.2 ± 2.5 to 7.4 ± 2.6 mmol/L; P = 0.031

That graph is weird, I can only imagine that comes from bad dreams, which raise cortisol, which impairs insulin.

 

[Proud to be erratic]

@SimonP, In his book "Thiink Like a Pancreas", the author Gary Scheiner tells his readers that 30 gms of carbs at a main meal should prevent gluconeogenesis. That seems to work for me so it has become my bench mark. Of course if you have 3 main meals each of around only 30gms carbs, then one is naturally into what a T2 might routinely already be attributing to their low carb daily intake (below 130gm daily).