Morning blood sugar levels

[Natalie123]

Hi all,

I am struggling with my morning levels and to save me from taking over the main thread about this I thought I'd make a separate one.

I have been having high morning readings for ages now. I had a cgm for 3 days, it showed that I am not having night hypos, instead my levels are steady between 4-8 until 5am and they then shoot up to anything from 12-17 by about 8-9am. The nurse told me to up my night time levemir from 34 to 36 units because 2 of the 3 nights my lowest reading over night was 8.0 and only went down to 4 on one night. So I have done as she suggested but am still getting confused readings. I thought you might be able to help! These are the last week's readings:

today 8:15am 3.8
yesterday 8:40am 14.8
tuesday 7:20 8.6 followed by 9:58 13.0 (breakfast time)
monday 3.6 at 4am 9.8 on waking at 9:10am
sunday 9am 16.1
saturday 9am 10.7 rising to 12.9 by breakfast at 10am
friday 5:40 am 6.7 🙂 8:30am 10.2 10:30am 14.9 😡

It just doesn't make any sense, obviously I do suffer from the DP thing as the nurse said, but I still can't make any sense of my readings, for example, today I was 3.8 on waking and went to bed with sugars of 6.9 (had 5g carbs) on sunday was 16.1 on waking and went to bed the night before on 7.3 (would have had 5g snack again). Why oh why? 😡

 

[novorapidboi26]

DP is the pits...........

I use a before bed levemir dose together with a small amount of carbs to tackle my DP, the carbs will stop the liver from continuing to spit out glucose even after you are awake..........but sometimes that doesn't always work.........

the most common pattern I can see is that you are holding steady till about 5am then rising, the 3.8 this morning may just be a one off as a result of something unknown, just need to keep testing.....

Increasing your evening dose to the maximum safe level, getting up as early as you can and having some carbs is a good strategy for me personally.....

 

[AJLang]

Hi Natalie

This is very similar to the problem that I have. If I don't eat anything after, for example 3pm my BGs go up late evening (when I have some extra humalog) but stay good during the night and may even fall. This is because I haven't eaten for several hours so there is no food in my stomach. However if I eat a "normal" meal with carborhydrates in the evening my BG will stay fine during the night until around 3am/4am when there will be a sudden and sustained increase (for me it can go up to the 20s). It took me four years of problems, including a DSN messing around with my nighttime levemir, before it was realised that the problem was caused by delayed gastric emptying. Hence why I set my CGM so that it wakes me when the BG goes above 10 during the night so that I know to have some extra humalog.

 

[Natalie123]

Thanks Novo and Amanda, it's starting to look like I need to become a morning person 😱

 

[novorapidboi26]

I used to do a 12-12 hour split with my levemir, but I then started to give my evening dose 2 hours later, this has helped the DP by leaving more levemir in my system at the offending DP time................in theory you could push the evening levemir does much later as well, well, right up until before bed, this will help further...........

there is always the possibility of your morning dose running out towards the end of the night, so you may need to increase bolus ratios in the evening as a sacrifice for better morning results...........

 

[Natalie123]

Novo - I already take my levemir just before bed Your second point in interesting though. Does this mean I have to eat more for dinner or just take more than I need and have a snack before bed?