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Sugars upside down

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MrsJ

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Hello all, this is my first post having just found your forum. Great to see so much support here, and hope answers to my question below might help some other folks too.

Quick background - early 40s, was threshold gestational diabetic in pregnancy. Used to be very active, walking, climbing etc. Have long term health condition (hypermobility) which has drastically reduced ability to walk any distance or take other forms of exercise in recent years, and now have more crutches and braces than anyone should ever need. All older blood relatives on maternal side have diabetes since 50s/60s despite staying healthy body weight and eating sensible diets.

My sugars used to be nice in the mornings (3.5 - 5 on the meter), pop up after meals, then drop down again, and drop faster with some exercise e.g. walking thrown in.

Now I am upside down. I can drop after meals, and am at my highest after fasting. I was 8.2 yesterday morning, having had a seriously naff night with tingling hands and feet etc. (after rissoto, and not for the first time, so that's off the menu now). Sugars went down in response to breakfast.

I did some reading, and figured the hormones regulating sugar are out of whack, maybe I'm releasing too much sugar at night. I know they are back to front compared to what they were when the NHS had me testing throughout the day every day in pregnancy, and compared to the occasional checks I did in the years since. Something has changed. I wish I could kick off excess weight with exercise, but it is a major battle being in constant pain, having a full time job, joints that won't stay put, and an under-resourced healthcare system.

My guess is that I am on the path to T2, and if anyone knows about this sugar inversion and can advise me on whether I'ver understood this right, and how I might turn this around, esp with timing of exercise etc. given the precious little I can do, I would be profoundly grateful.
 
This is just my take on it from personal experience with joint problems and inflammation but I'm convinced the systemic inflammation I have causes higher morning levels because my BG's can drop after breakfast. You're right in saying that the hormones that fight inflammation and infection also push up blood glucose levels. Cytokine activity is also implicated as explained in this link;

http://www.webmd.com/diabetes/type-2-diabetes-guide/inflammation-and-diabetes#2

An anti inflammatory diet and as much exercise as is possible to do is the answer but sometimes it's just impossible to turn round those morning figures and bring them down as low as we'd wish. I find mine are higher after a bad night. Wishing you the best of luck.
 
Thanks Amigo. That's welcome advice, and I'll do some more reading about the inflammation aspect as I'm not very clued in about that yet.
 
Welcome to the forum MrsJ.
For a diagnosis of whatever you do have, whether a form of diabetes mellitus or something else, you need to see your GP, who might need to refer you. If you're already seeing a consultant for your hypermobility syndrome or any other autoimmune or endocrine condition, then it's worth mentioning your blood glucose results to them.
Having had threshold gestational diabetes is a risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes later in life. For a fuller story, it's also worth noting food intake, particularly carbohydrate, as well as readings. Plus any exercise you can do, stress, infection etc, all of which can affect blood glucose levels.
 
Hello MrsJ, and welcome 🙂

Have you tried testing your blood sugar during the night? - ideally at about 3am, when most people find their blood sugar is likely to be lowest? It might be worth doing this a few times to find out whether you are right that your body is releasing too much sugar at night, or whether the upward trend doesn't start until you wake up in the morning, which is quite a common thing to happen. It's also worth seeing the difference between a reading immediately you get up and a reading just before you eat breakfast. My blood sugar is often around 4 when I get up but might be 7 or 8 by breakfast time.

I also have a condition which means I can't do much in the way of exercise. I actually find my blood sugar goes down when I rest though (I go straight back to bed after breakfast in order to make my blood sugar go down instead of up!), so sometimes listening to your body is more important than pushing yourself to exercise when it could be harmful.

I find small amounts of gentle exercise are enough, and diabetes nurse is happy with this. I garden - just sitting down doing something like weeding is enough to lower my blood sugar, it doesn't have to be anything very vigorous. Ironing works for me too! I know someone with HMS who is involved in a dance group - she dances in her wheelchair, wearing a cooling vest - so if you are up to doing anything like that, or swimming, or anything that means you are moving about and not just sitting on the sofa it will help. If you're not up to anything like that, just making sure you get up and do some stretches now and again rather than sitting still would be better than nothing - always stopping before it gets you exhausted or in increased pain.

Drinking lots of water will help keep your blood sugars down, and it sounds like you know about testing to see which foods spike you and making sure you avoid them.

@KookyCat might be able to help you, as she has EDS and diabetes - I don't know how she manages with exercise.
 
Thank you Copepod and Juliet for your replies also - really appreciate you taking the time and giving such sound advice. Drinking water makes a tremendous difference to me, and I make a point of moving around as much as possible, making excuses to take the extra trip upstairs, or to make a work phone call walking around the office or garden if homeworking.

I did understandably get a bemused response from a GP when I raised this a while back, and I will continue to collect some readings at time points around the clock (only occasionally - I am precious about sleep as I know how much disrupting it costs me). More concrete evidence is going to be necessary at this stage, but so far it is pretty consistent.

The original motivation for my post is that I was really surprised at the readings I took when I started to feel more unwell than usual, and I looked for an explanation in the peer reviewed medical literature. I found evidence for a stage where regulation starts to fail, where blood sugar levels invert compared to normal. I.e. an over-reaction to food leading to low sugars, and conversely an over-reaction to the overnight drop in blood sugar leading to over-release of sugar during rest and the resulting sore muscles and high sugars before breakfast (where breakfast reliably brings the sugars back down). I don't know how common this as an early stage disruption in sugar metabolism, I guess most people would never have cause or means to detect it, and the average long term reading they like to use in the clinic of course looks normal because of the drops after meals keeping down the average. I was keen to know if other people had direct experience of this, and whether it was reversible. I'll keep doing everything I sensibly can to stay healthy in the meantime...
 
I think you are right, @MrsJ - the answer is that most people at an early prediabetic stage would just not have the means to test, or enough knowledge of diabetes to realise that testing might be a good idea.

I do know that for a few months before I was diagnosed I was having hypos, but I only knew that because my partner has reactive hypoglycaemia so I recognised the signs - I wasn't testing, and I wasn't recording when they happened, I'm afraid. I thought I might be getting hypoglycaemia, it didn't occur to me I might be getting diabetes! My GP just advised me to treat the hypos by eating something sugary, so it obviously didn't occur to her I might be the early stages of diabetes either.
 
Welcome to the forum. My BG levels are usually upside down as well, they highest is usually first thing in the morning with them getting lower throughout the day. Unfortunately I do not have an explanation why this happens.
 
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