Thank you, once again, for your timely and informative advice! My doctor gave me a bottle of 120, and said start with one a day, and increase in weekly increments. I was going to try to stay at one, but given what you just said, I will see how my numbers look at the end of two weeks. I’ve also added some supplements, a synthetic thyroid, and a probiotic, and don’t want to overshock my body.
Please check out Dr. Jason Fung’s work on fasting. I had been struggling with high FBS even as my A1c moved down, and I also struggled with weight gain, even though I eat HFLC and moderate protein and exercise a lot (weekly sprints, Zumba, Weight lifting, hiking, walking and etc…). I felt very, very discouraged as I had been doing this for 4 years. Recently, I started fasting–which I had been avoiding because it made me feel dizzy and angry and hungry, as well as it made my blood glucose higher. Bottom line–I started using green tea, coffee, and salty clear bone broth to get through the fasting–which really, truly got rid of my anger and dizziness, and I have started having lower blood glucose and actually losing weight! I did a 4 day fast to start out the whole thing, and on the 4th day my FBS was 86! Before that, I was often running 125–on a very low carb diet for the last 4 years! Now I fast 12 hours every day (from 7pm until 7am) and mix in 15, 18 and 24 hour fasts. In another month or so I’ll do another 3 or 4 day fast. This sounds crazy, but actually by regularly using up the glucose stored in my liver, (through fasting), I think that I am becoming more sensitive to insulin. In mid June I am scheduled to check my fasting insulin to see if all this fasting has really lowered it, and I will report back to TuDiabetes. Last check my fasting insulin was 12. I am very excited as this is the biggest difference I have felt since I start HFLC 4 years ago (which dramatically improved my energy, my mental state and most of my health measures). Hope this info helps!
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Thank you, Mechelle - this is very interesting. I hadn’t considered fasting. I could certainly do the 7pm to 7am fasting, but am not hopeful I could do the longer ones, but I will try.
I have started taking Metformin, just because my readings were making me crazy (also in the 120-125 range), and they seem to be lower, but I would like to try to do this without medication. Do you take metformin?
Also, I’ve seen other references to bone broth. Is this something you can buy in a store?
Just out of curiosity - are you taking your “fasting” blood sugar first thing in the morning before you get out of bed, or are you getting up, using the restroom, puttering around and fixing breakfast and then checking just before eating breakfast?
I always knew I had Dawn Phenomenon. I learned it with 3 am checks. If I checked my BG at 3am, my BG would be lower than it would be when I got up at 3 am.
What I didn’t realize until just this week, when I got a CGM, is just how steep my rise is. Having a few days worth of data now, I can see that for me, I have a gentle rise that starts about around 4-5am. That kind of works out for me because I generally wake up around then to use the restroom, so now I can nip it in the bud by taking a couple of units of insulin and then go back to bed. What I didn’t realize until this week, though, was that once I actually get vertical when the alarm goes off, my BG skyrockets (sharp arrows up!) 20-30 points within about 15 minutes. Several mornings in a row, I watched as the CGM traced a 5 point rise, then a 10+ point rise 5 minutes after that… then another 10+ points 5 minutes after that.
For years, I’d struggled to get my “Fasting” number under 100, when it turns out that my “before I get out of bed” number is actually below 100, but my “by time I get to the breakfast table” number isn’t.
So if you haven’t done any checks in the middle of the night, or checked before your feet actually hit the floor, I might recommend that. If those numbers are lower than what you’re finding, it may bring you some small peace of mind.
Hi Elizabeth,
I don’t take Metformin, and I agree it might be challenging to use when fasting…
Bone broth–you can purchase, but easy to make. Just take any mix of left over bones, cover them with water, put in a bit of vinegar or lemon, some salt, and rest is up to you. You can add some onion, celery and carrot to make classic broth. Also you can add herbs and or tumeric. Or you can use only bones and salt and vinegar, too. Anyway, you can cook it for 6 hours up to 48 hours–depending upon how strong you want the flavor to be–just keep adding water if you cook it longer. Can cook in a crockpot or stovetop. Or use a pressure cooker like an instant pot. After finished, strain and use. Freeze any that you won’t use in a week in ice cube tray so you can pop it in stir fries, soups, or even steam veges in it. You can reuse the bones 3 or 4 times and still get flavor and nutrition from them… It is not very hard to do, but it very nutritious and basically free! If you add chicken feet (which are super cheap–and I even sometimes get them free at Farmer’s Markets because people don’t know how great they are) then you add lots of gelatin to your broth and that is great for your joints and eyes and skin…
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One more thing: Dr. Jason Fung doesn’t worry about higher blood glucose readings while incorporating fasting. Check out some of his talks for more details, but very simply–if you have insulin resistance (i.e. high blood sugars or diabetes), then you have too much glucose stored in your body–primarily in your liver. Simply speaking, when you eat, you can’t use your glucose stores. When you fast, like when you sleep overnight, then your liver dumps some of the extra glucose into your blood stream in the morning. If you eat breakfast, then insulin will sometimes store the extra glucose as fat–if your liver is already stuffed with glucose. Fasting regularly allows your body to keep dumping the glucose from your liver. Ideally, if you keep up the fasting, you will eventually lose all your insulin resistance, as insulin levels will go down when your body doesn’t have an overabundance of glucose. How long this takes depends upon how long you’ve been overstuffing your liver, and how long you’ve been insulin resistant. Again, I don’t know if this is really the answer or not, but it makes sense to me. And I have only been fasting off and on for 7 days, but I am, so far, having some really good luck with this. It is totally good to just do the 12 hour fast! That is a great accomplishment! and, over time, it will work–is my best guess. Way to keep asking questions. I will keep reporting back as I learn more from my experimenting with this…
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