Not so Newbie, more prodigal son seeking a fatted calf...

[LCB]

Foot on the floor or Dawn phenomenon are variations of the same biological function. Your liver will release extra glucose into your bloodstream to give you energy first thing in the morning. Can happen early hours (3am ish) hence dawn. Or as soon as you get out of bed, foot on the floor. This often means your reading of the day will be higher than your usual pre-meal levels.
I think it's an ancestral function from the days when we had to forage and hunt for food so needed the energy boost.

Aaah, that I did know but hadn't come across that term. I called it first light fight or flight, i.e. your liver injecting energy in case you open your eyes to your wife holding a 12 bore.

At the moment it's around 10, sadly climbing to 11 or 12 after food. Before Christmas it was between 6 to 8. At the time I was struggling to get it any lower but my daylight levels were generally very acceptable. When I originally kicked off on the Keto diet, I think the attendant diabetic nurse was proposing me for an award given my previous period's HbA1c report. Then I hit a plateau.

Lewis

 

[LCB]

Welcome back to the forum, yes you should have a reliable way of testing your blood glucose and as you are taking gliclazide your GP should be prescribing one and test strips as you are on a medication (assuming you are still taking it) which could cause low blood glucose.
If you are following a keto dietary approach then that could be a risk as very low carb/keto is not advised if taking gliclazide though the suggested around 130g carbs per day is usually OK for people and some do go lower but they have established that is OK for them by testing.

Thanks for that. I read somewhen that Keto had a target intake <50g per day. Given todays dietary foodstuff availability, pretty much impossible, though I have done so at times.

As for your concern, I was testing 10 or more times a day, graphing the results against food intake. A bit anal perhaps, but this process enabled me to shed 3 out of 4 gliclazide without getting too close to a hypo. Then it it all hit a plateau.

Having just been introduced to the studies by Professor Roy Taylor, methinks I will be developing new tactics.

 

[LCB]

Hi all,

First; thank you all so much for your valued input. The forums are so much more informative than when I started (2005?), but then there have been some incredible advances in understanding. When I started the advice was "oops, too late, you've now got irreversible cumulative sugar crystals in your blood. They will block all of your capillaries and induce gangrene. They cannot be dissipated so the prognosis is limb loss and blindness (they never mentioned loss of cognitive facility). The best hope is to prolong the onset... now contact Diabetes-UK to find out how to do that".

I think I've responded to all respondents, but there's so much support that when you reply to them it seems to rearrange the order of the posts. Confusing to an old fogey like me.

There seem to be many interesting thread topics instigated by your responses so I intend to investigate and perhaps continue them elsewhere in the forums. I hope you don't mind, but if the tag system works here it would be my intention to tag people on that subject matter where I feel the need for continuance. Just in case you're interested and have more input...

Again, thank you every buddy (see what I did there?)... OK... Sorry if the childishness offends but remember you're never too old to have a happy childhood.

Lewis