Hi! I have been a type 1 diabetic for 18 yrs now(since I was 9) but aside from going to the dr for my diabetes and managing my life with diabetes(primarily on my own) I haven't really been tuned into the "diabetic community"…until now more. I read an interesting post talking about something called the Darn Phenomenon (DP)…have you guys heard about it? What is it? please explain more …
"Dawn Phenomenon" (or "Dawn Effect" as some call it) refers to a spike in blood sugar that can occur early in the morning, or just after awakening. It happens to many people and it's caused by the liver dumping glucose into the bloodstream in anticipation of increased physical activity. The timing and the degree vary from individual to individual, and even from day to day.
Some pump users, for instance, will program a small bolus at 4:00 or 5:00 AM to counteract it. In my case it usually starts around 7:00 or 8:00 AM, so I take 1 unit of rapid acting insulin first thing in the morning, as soon as I get up. Everyone is different.
lots here on the darn dp
https://forum.tudiabetes.org/topic/search?q=dp
thing that bums me out is sometimes I have it and sometimes I don't. If I always had it, I'd adjust my morning basals to compensate.
I agree with Marie that mine is not really consistent. It's very hard to keep track of and, for me, is compounded by a lot of 8:00 or later dinners these days due to various activities. That food seems to linger until after bedtime and then cause challenges or aggravate the DP or add together. I never really fixed it until I had a pump although I did notice that sometimes drinking a lot of hard liquor seemed to slow it down.
To counteract my dawn phenomenon I double the basal rate on my pump for three hours from 4 am to 7 am. Since it takes about two hours for the insulin to peak, my increased basal needs occur around 6 am to 9 am. Mine seems pretty consistent. When I minimize late night snacking, I can often wake up with a BG < 100 and stay flat until I eat breakfast.
Yes, I am a long term sufferer of Darn Phenomenon. Bernstein suggests that the cause of DP is the way that our bodies have out livers and kidneys clear insulin the early morning hours. Then when the normal signals like cortisol arrive to give us that "little bit of energy" to rise happen things go haywire and instead our bodies scream "MORE SUGAR." Many of us find that adjustments of insulin levels to compensate for the clearance can totally suppress the DP. In my case, I am on shots, I can only do so much, so I almost always wake high and do a correction upon awaking. I have gotten to the point where have now attributed my DP to aliens in the night. Below is a picture of how it happens:
Dawn Phenomenon is the process of release of glucose in morning as a result every diabetic tend to wake up with incremental high blood sugar. I five my self shot of 2 units Humalog after wakening up before going for walk as exercise also raises blood sugar for me
Not every diabetic has DP; some of us are lucky not to have that particular brand of diabetic torture, or, if you will, aliens.
Before I started using the insulin pump, I woke up every morning with blood sugar levels above 10 (180 mg/dl). It was impossible to control with Lantus other than to get up at 3:00 AM every morning to do a few units of Humalog. Now that I'm on the pump, I have an increased basal rate from 3:00 - 9:00. This usually controls it, as long as I don't eat anything before bed. Also, if I get up and don't eat within about an hour of getting up, I tend to rise unless I take some insulin, even if I have a normal blood sugar and don't eat.