Does anyone else have the problem of spiking when you go more than 3 or 4 hours without food. I know it happens at night because of dawn phenomenom. I find that during the day if I don’t eat enough calories at a meal, like a salad - my bg will go down to about 110 and then begin to spike up on its own. It’s almost like my liver is telling me I’m not feeding it enough glucose so it decides to make it’s own. I’m trying to go low carb and do 5 or 6 minimeals to combat this. I know lots of people who swear by fasting but the longer I fast the higher I go. Need some ideas of foods I should be eating to prevent this
Fasting doesn’t work for me and it just made me more likely to crave food. Little and often is the best in my view, I sometimes have spikes that come from where I just don’t know. I used to have terrible bother with ketones because of long intervals between meals and I can relate to the bld spikes when not eating but in my case it was a lack of insulin.
Last Saturday I didn’t eat at all until 7pm because I got busy cleaning house. I noticed my BG stayed in the 200’s all day. It’s best if you eat like 5 small meals a day. Eat a little protein with your bigger meals. This seems to help me.
I agree. I try to eat minimeals. Since I don’t take insulin I can’t control it any other way. Someone on another site gave me a good website that explains how my pancreas functions. I never realised that in a nondiabetic the pancreas releases a little bit of basal insulin to help lower bg during the day. I think in my case this is not happening. So when I eat a get a phase 1 and phase 2 response that eventually brings down my bg.
Look into the Somogyi Effect, . You are correct, the liver will take over if you go low.
I will be watching this discussion to see what other’s suggest for foods that will help prevent this.
I don’t think any foods can help this. There are a couple of other possibilities - and I’ve experienced both.
Oral meds (sulfonylureas) - Can make your system panic and then do a liver dump. Read about it here - http://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes/14045911.php - you have to scroll way down til you get to - Drugs that Force the Pancreas to Produce (or Over-produce) Insulin. Based on what I’ve learned and experienced, I wish I had never taken a sulfonylurea (like glipizide, amaryl, etc.) Also, these meds can make you hungry - even if you’re low-carbing!!! For some, it is an awful, gnawing hunger.
The other possibility is that your system is no longer generating enough basal (long-acting) insulin - this is what keeps our BG from going up both when we’re not eating and overnight. After reading about it and monitoring it for some time, I realized that this was my problem. It came on slowly, but I was on a low carb diet and my after meal #s were great but I began to see my fasting #s were getting higher. If I went 2-3 hours with no food, they would start to steadily climb. If I ate something, they would go down. So I was eating when I wasn’t hungry to keep them low - not what I wanted to be doing. Finally, I began taking Lantus and my numbers were not only under control, but great (again, low carbing)
For myself, I would rather take basal insulin + metformin than a sulfonylurea (like glipizide, amaryl, etc.) + metformin.
Hope this helps.