Strange reading

B

Beancounter298

Well-Known Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 2
Pronouns
She/Her
So my reading 2 hours after yesterday's evening meal was 7.9
Just tested after not eating yet this morning and it's 9.1

What might be causing this?
 
This maybe due to what we call "Foot on the Floor".
Each day, our liver dumps glucose to give us the energy to start the day. This may happen in the early hours of the morning before we wake (and is usually referred to as "Dawn Phenomenon") or when we put our first foot on the floor as we get up.
Some of us find if we don't eat breakfast, our "helpful" liver thinks we are starving and continues to dump glucose cause our BG to rise. A small snack (e.g a handful of nuts) is usually enough to stop this.

However, there are other things which can affect our BG including stress, illness, exercise, weather, ... and some think the colour of our socks.
 
Beancounter298 said:
So my reading 2 hours after yesterday's evening meal was 7.9
Just tested after not eating yet this morning and it's 9.1

What might be causing this?
Click to expand...
How long had you been up? As @helli has said, in the absence of food your liver will produce the glucose your body needs.
 
helli said:
This maybe due to what we call "Foot on the Floor".
Each day, our liver dumps glucose to give us the energy to start the day. This may happen in the early hours of the morning before we wake (and is usually referred to as "Dawn Phenomenon") or when we put our first foot on the floor as we get up.
Some of us find if we don't eat breakfast, our "helpful" liver thinks we are starving and continues to dump glucose cause our BG to rise. A small snack (e.g a handful of nuts) is usually enough to stop this.

However, there are other things which can affect our BG including stress, illness, exercise, weather, ... and some think the colour of our socks.
Click to expand...
I am firmly convinced my cats make sure my liver dump coincides with the time they want breakfast. If that doesn't work quickly enough for them it is swiftly followed by nosebumps and insistent meowing. BTW I don't get to snack until the furry ninjas have been fed:D
 
I understand you may prefer to think that rather than the fact that you have an iffy pancreas whereas with me I had to accept it was my pancreas and hence needed to correct it with extra insulin. You can't do the latter though cos you only have your own pancreas to try and persuade to assist. However as it's only carb you body can't cope with - a non/exceedingly low carb cold snack laid ready to shove in your mouth on the way to the loo/feed the felines - eg a lump of cheese (I don't suggest a hard boiled egg cos to me that's quite hard to think about eating before my insides have woken up, whereas I could probably manage a lump of cheddar) - because you break your fast, the body usually says that's good enough for me, and learns not to instruct Mr Liver to 'help out'.
 
Last edited:
Dawn phenomenon. Very common in people with T2 diabetes.
It’s a completely normal process linked to hormones and the circadian rhythm - but people with T2D can’t deal very well with the increased production of glucose from the liver triggered by hormones.
 
trophywench said:
I understand you may prefer to think that rather than the fact that you have an iffy pancreas whereas with me I had to accept it was my pancreas and hence needed to correct it with extra insulin. You can't do the latter though cos you only have your own pancreas to try and persuade to assist. However as it's only carb you body can't cope with - a non/exceedingly low carb cold snack laid ready to shove in your mouth on the way to the loo/feed the felines - eg a lump of cheese (I don't suggest a hard boiled egg cos to me that's quite hard to think about eating before my insides have woken up, whereas I could probably manage a lump of cheddar) - because you break your fast, the body usually says that's good enough for me, and learns not to instruct Mr Liver to 'help out'.
Click to expand...
Sounds like a good plan. Would have to be very mild cheddar as I tend to eat very bland food until my stomach has properly woken up. I used to dive into the biscuit tin but it's off limits now. At 5am I am not ready to eat a proper breakfast. Usually eat between 8 and 8.30am.
 
The trigger to stop the liver producing glucose is insulin levels rising. People with T2D have either liver insulin resistance and/or beta cell dysfunction so the action of insulin does not work properly, or there isn't any being released, leading to high levels due to excessive gluconeogenesis, which is a problem in T2D already. I'm not sure eating a lump of cheese will do anything to improve this.
 
harbottle said:
The trigger to stop the liver producing glucose is insulin levels rising.
Click to expand...
That's interesting as it is not he way it works for me.
The only way for my insulin to rise is to inject it (my body destroyed all the insulin producing cells).
As @trophywench suggests, a small lump of (carb free) cheese without injecting insulin is enough to stop the BG rise.
This was covered under my local equivalent of the DAFNE course with the explanation both TW and I provided earlier about stopping starvation messages to the liver to halt the glucose dump.
 
What is this 'starvation message'?

Insulin regulates de novo generation of glucose by inhibiting gluconeogenesis to some degree and stopping glycogenolysis completely.

In people with T2D this signalling is broken and this leads to elevated levels in the morning when hormones kick in.

I've not seen any research that talks about a lump of cheese stopping it through a 'starvation message'. What's the physiological pathway of this signal?
 
I had a total pancreatectomy in Feb 20, making me instantly as if T1 (but without the autoimmune condition). My understanding (I think from Gary Scheiner's book "Think Like a Pancreas") is that our brain has no direct pathway to communicate with the liver. So when our brain detects that our BG is inappropriately low it sends a message to the pancreas, which releases the hormone Glucagon that tells the liver to open its glucose store. But that pathway can't happen for me.

At first I did not get DP or FOTF. Some 2 years in this started and I asked an Endocrinologist (from a Hospital piloting pancreatic Islet transplants) how could DP occur in me? Her comment was they weren't absolutely certain, but our brains find alternative routes and possibly my cortisol or adrenaline glands were being triggered by the brain, instead.

Subsequently I have routinely, for almost 2 years, taken upstairs a mini snack of cheese and ham slices rolled together (now findable in Tesco, Aldi and Lidl as "rollitos"; I make my own). If I wake in the small hours, or before my alarm, I eat a couple of these bites-sized indulgences and do NOT experience DP or FOTF. That small release of protein works for me in convincing my body that I'm not starving, don't need help and the quantity of protein is not big enough to eventually convert into glucose in the absence of eating an equivalent carb snack.

So @harbottle, if you can explain a physiological pathway for this I would genuinely be interested to know.

@Beancounter298, you might fairly conclude much of our metabolic processes are not simple, for T1, T2 or T3c. Also in Gary Scheiners book he states Diabetes is Complicated, Confusing and Contradictory. That is so true.
 
Hope you’ve found this unfolding, lively (and at times slightly bewildering) conversation interesting and engaging @Beancounter298

Mysterious glucose rises (from liver and muscle stores, stress, hormone cycles etc etc) do seem to be part and parcel of our glucose juggling efforts.

Hope you find a method of reducing the Dawn Phenomenon you are experiencing with perhaps some experimental snacking either late at night or first thing in the morning?
 
Proud to be erratic said:
I had a total pancreatectomy in Feb 20, making me instantly as if T1 (but without the autoimmune condition). My understanding (I think from Gary Scheiner's book "Think Like a Pancreas") is that our brain has no direct pathway to communicate with the liver. So when our brain detects that our BG is inappropriately low it sends a message to the pancreas, which releases the hormone Glucagon that tells the liver to open its glucose store. But that pathway can't happen for me.

At first I did not get DP or FOTF. Some 2 years in this started and I asked an Endocrinologist (from a Hospital piloting pancreatic Islet transplants) how could DP occur in me? Her comment was they weren't absolutely certain, but our brains find alternative routes and possibly my cortisol or adrenaline glands were being triggered by the brain, instead.

Subsequently I have routinely, for almost 2 years, taken upstairs a mini snack of cheese and ham slices rolled together (now findable in Tesco, Aldi and Lidl as "rollitos"; I make my own). If I wake in the small hours, or before my alarm, I eat a couple of these bites-sized indulgences and do NOT experience DP or FOTF. That small release of protein works for me in convincing my body that I'm not starving, don't need help and the quantity of protein is not big enough to eventually convert into glucose in the absence of eating an equivalent carb snack.

So @harbottle, if you can explain a physiological pathway for this I would genuinely be interested to know.

@Beancounter298, you might fairly conclude much of our metabolic processes are not simple, for T1, T2 or T3c. Also in Gary Scheiners book he states Diabetes is Complicated, Confusing and Contradictory. That is so true.
Click to expand...

I believe Cortisol/adrenaline can trigger insulin resistance and a glucose release from the liver. So maybe this is what the endocrinologist is talking about. A clever adaptation as there's no alpha cells.

I only really read papers about T2, as that's my situation. People with T2 just struggle to deal with the morning rise for the same reason the struggle to deal with a rise after eating carbs - insulin resistance, excessive glucose production, and/or not enough insulin released to deal with it all. At this time of the day it seems there's the addition of hormones that make the situation worse.

Eating low carb for breakfast is a good idea for T2s suffering from DP as it won't add extra glucose to the mix.

It is confusing and I'm not sure fully understood, especially in T2 where there's a lot of other broken bits of the metabolism!
 
My morning results are always the highest of the day. I started Rybelsus in August and I take it first thing on an empty stomach and do not take take anything else for at least an hour so unfortunately I cannot test the low carb snack proposed solution to the DP
 
Well a whole hour is a bit OTT since the PIL says 30 minutes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top