Wrong. Cortisol and adrenaline do not trigger the liver to release glucose, that’s the hormone glucagon. Cortisol and adrenaline cause insulin resistance
Ah yes, Glucagon! Yet I think they are all intertwined, right?
Nope. Cortisol absolutely causes gluconeogenesis. Look it up.
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Also think logically about it—what makes more sense: that when your body is dealing with an urgent stressful situation, it evolved so that, in a non-diabetic body, a.) the insulin it is producing works less effectively, or b.) it has a sudden influx of available energy to utilize?
I think it’s true that over time elevated cortisol can also affect insulin resistance. But the immediate effect is through glucose release.
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Sure but I thought this about caffeine. Not dawn effect/stress
Ingesting caffeine increases cortisol levels
Regardless, gluconeogensis is no where near a “glucose dump” that would be solely from glucagon. Gluconeogensis takes several hours
What hormones do you think caffeine releases? Activates the same systems.
Such big words. sigh.
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gluconeogenesis takes several hours, so implying a “glucose dump” is incorrect
iPhone Autocorrect. Also flagged as spam lol
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I’ve been an avid coffee drinker for as long as I can remember. Prior to retiring I was drinking coffee all day long. Now it’s 2-3 cups in the AM only. It hasn’t impacted by BGL at all. Maybe I don’t release those hormones for some reason or some other secondary factor unique to some of us.
My wife is T2 on Lantus only. For many years coffee didn’t impact her BGL. But within the last 4 months it has, and she tracked it down to the sweetener she was using - xylitol. She switched to stevia/monk fruit and the problem disappeared.
I don’t use a sweetener so can’t correlate that back to me.
Again, semantics, but that’s going to be the reason caffeine raises blood sugars, if it does for an individual. I agree with folks that there are a number of other possible factors that can be at play with coffee in addition to caffeine that can be easy to overlook, including some supposedly non-blood sugar-raising sweeteners, reactivity to dairy, etc.
Personally, I’ve never used sweetener in my coffee. I found when I drank it intermittently, it affected my blood sugar, but when it became a very regular morning habit, it stopped for the most part—I think my body habituated to it enough so that unless I have way more than usual, it has much less of an effect on my system. People do vary considerably in their responses to and metabolism of caffeine (genetic differences in cytochrome p450 enzyme production being one source of that variance), so all of those individual differences probably play roles as well.
Might be worth reading Riva Greenberg’s blogpost.
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Interesting! For me, a cup of coffee or even caffeinated tea will raise my blood sugar at any time of day.
Yeah, when I was not drinking caffeinated coffee regularly, it would definitely spike me independently from dawn phenomenon (often wasn’t drinking it in the early morning anyway).
Yes indeed. Coffee will quickly raise BSLs. My dietician suggested adding cream to my morning expresso. This works well-slows down the BSL spike.
southerncross, thanks for that reminder. I had gone from half/half to full cream to black thinking that I was reducing carbs. But now I remember that the fat slows down the rise. And I love cream in my coffee so I will go back to that. I really don’t want to add more insulin in the mornings as I don’t always know what my physical activity will be that day and it could lead to a low.
For me, when it was spiking me, I would just take insulin to cover it. It might be something Afrezza would be particularly suited to since then it could be taken as the spike is observed and have short duration. One more reason it would be great if that were more readily accessible as an option for more diabetics.
Coffee makes my stomach very acidic, so I switched to a cuppa tea (PG Tips).
