Hi everyone,
Just came from my doc after getting a pump and using victoza. My A!C was pretty yucky but all my other numbers were fantastic (and I lost 7 lbs), but when my doc look at what was going on - he said, “Wow…your liver is pumping out glucose all night and into the morning.” So, after having type 1 diabetes for over 33 years, they finally discovered that IT’S NOT ME!!! (i.e., I’m not getting up at 3 am and eating a whole cheesecake). So…my question is: do any of you know how (other than victoza) to stop my liver from secreting glucagon???
Thanks!!!
Bunny
Great job on losing 7 lbs too!!
I haven’t had a drink in 12 years but this darn dawn phenomenon may drive me to drink yet. Several people have reported much better morning numbers after moderate alcohol consumption the evening before. Funny you should picture a bottle of Jameson, I was contemplating trying just this brand for my experiment, as I never liked dry red wine which is usually recommended. For now increased exercise on the weekend seems to be doing the trick.
Jameson was the drink of my ancestors and also unfortunately the downfall of more than a few.
I’m not 100% sure there’s a lot my ancestors didn’t drink. Come to think of it, there’s not a lot I won’t drink either? Not nearly as much as I used to. Even OMGyouneedintervention levels of boozing it up, I’d often have really nice BG on the morning. It makes doing the “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”/ “Thin Man”/ Philip Marlowe lifestyle very attractive. Except, of course, for the smoking!!
hahaha the whiskey picture…awesome 
Thanks everyone for your answers. I’m going to do some medical research at the U to see what I can find as well. You guys rock.
Bunny
Bunny:
The way I shut down the dam liver is use metformin standard pills - 500 mg dose. one at 10:00pm and one at 12:00am shuts down the liver from 12:00am thru 5:30 am and then liver starts up trying to add glucose.
i used to be 110 at midnight; 150 at 3:00am and 238 at 6am.
Standard met works, watch out for teva and ER - no sucess. One large dose not work and the timing and dose is what I do.
Booze will override and so will some dam antibiotics - Levaquin and class.
prior to met doses a1c was 13.3 and after met doses - 6.9, eyes healing, kidney healing and balance of body doing better.
While I am type 2; I am on insulin and standard metformin and works well
Thanks Jim!!! Interesting stuff.
Bunny:
On my big body, standard met is 2.5 hours ingest time, up to strength time is 2 hours and exit time about 1/2 hour. You need to know factors on your body. To live time on metformin is 1 to 3 hours max.
Interesting issue is lack of honesty on the drug industry.
Salk institute has identified that there is switch in liver they call CRTC2 switch that controls fasting/make sugar mode. Metformin up to strength in blood will put liver in fasting mode. Apparently liver in type 2’s and other’s have liver stuck in make sugar mode all the time.
My experience on CGMS seems to back this behaviour to hilt. I also take doses 1 hour before meals to ensure met is up to strength before gut ends digestion on current meal. This stops rogue liver dumps as BG falling on Gut emptying and some turbulance in digestion that sees BG try to rise shortly after falling triggering Liver Dump.
This is not make believe land and I have been fighting this crap for 4 years and I have also got rogue liver dumps stopped as well.
My digestion times typically are 1 hour tofirst gut glocose, usually last another hour and 6 hours to see glucose from fats - 6 hours after meal ingestion.
Your numbers may be different based on body size/organ size and liver chemistry.
jim snell
Other studies out there are now suggesting that for some reason Liver is directly signalling on Metformin
instead of insulin and nobody knows why.
I am a 'Skinny type 2 ’ diagnosed last summer 2010 - If I drink my numbers the next day/ morning are great. BUt then for the next few days / week after my liver is weak and pumps out glucose in the night, it keeps bouncing them up, it can’t seem to hold it together and my numbers are difficult to control. I then have to go back to my acupuncturist and get everything rebalanced… which it does - amazingly - don’t ask me how that works, but it does.
So I think drinking alcohol is a short fix, that ultimately messes up your liver more and is sadly quite damaging - cos I love a nice glass of red wine. But the pattern with me is the same every time - my liver just goes haywire I have to detox it again and then it calms down. I was initially put on insulin - lantus and novolog and I weaned myself off those and onto pills as I hated it and had some terrifying lows- now I don’t take anything. I am following Dr Esselstyns advice from the China Study and am on a vegan NO fat diet ( No nuts either) eating lots of green vege and whole grain. The diabetes keeps improving. Clearly its a different story if you re type 1, but I spoke to him on the phone and what he had to say about the causes of diabetes made complete sense to me, considering I have, in the past eaten and cooked with vast VAST amounts of olive oil thinking it was healthy. Eaten piles of nuts - thinking that was healthy, plus eating ( organic) meat and gluten/ wheat free cakes - all I thought in moderation, but it was too much, I overloaded on it all - I was drowning myself in fats. I always considered that I had a very healthy diet - I was never over weight and I did a lot of sport. A little family history of diabetes… but nothing to indicate me getting diabetes in my 30 s - slim and fit. I now realise that I didn’t have such a great diet - together with my vege I was inadvertently consuming a huge amount of fat. Everyone should go and see ‘Forks over knives’. Fat works like glue on a cellular level and the insulin can’t get in. Makes you insulin resistant. Its a big challenge but I am determined to see if this works… starving out the fat. In a normal person muscles have no fat in them… in a diabetic … we have fat in our muscles. It seems to be working at the moment after only 3 weeks. I now eat like I live in 12 th century rural china which may sound boring but it feels AMAZING and my numbers keep going down… with having to do less swimming.
So now my numbers are about the same as they were when I was on metformin and if I don’t drink, my liver can hold its own, it doesn’t throw any glucose out.
Sadly i would say stay off the booze is my advice - Have one glass at christmas !
I have to crank my basal rate in the morning before I wake up to combat the dawn phenomenon. That took care of it for me. Didn’t stop it, just dealt with it.
Tried that - didnt help.
metformin 500 mg at 10:00 pm and 12:00am midnight was only thing that stopped nonsense and massive overloading
of glucose and taking 500 mg met 1 hour before meals stops any spurious liver dumps as gut emptying down and bg is well within correct numbers 140 thru 200. no met on duty in blood; dump will be 278 to 315. in fact watching with finger stick
rapidly (cgms cannot track fastest part of peak) as bg jumps up to 511 hi and then slides back to 278 to 315.
this crap is not funny. Met on duty - up to strength shows disturbance when liver tries to dump but gets stopped in full dump by met.
basil amounts insulin - lantus - does help body run better but Does not stop dawn effect and or excessive full liver dumps.
so far only met seems to stop.
Actually, insulin does suppress the Darn Phenomenon. The action is pretty well undershtood. Some people believe that part of the cause of DP is that your body naturally clears insulin more actively in the early morning hours 3-5am. So for most, simply increasing the overnight basal insulin, particularly in that window can markedly reduce DP.
I tried metformin as a way of suppressing DP, all the way up to 2.5g at night, but it never worked. I think I am just insulin deficient. For literally years, I never saw a morning blood sugar under 100 mg/dl, usually much higher. Once I got my insulin properly adjusted, under normal circumstances, I almost never see a reading over 100 mg/dl in the morning.
But in the end, everyone is different. If metformin works for you, then that is a win.
The 2 things that have worked for me are the maximum dose of metformin 2550 mg and a very low carb/high fat diet. If I eat more than 40 carbs a day the DP comes back with a vengence. I also take my last metformin right before my head hits the pillow and take the next one as early as possible in the morning. I take the third pill around 10:00 am to preven liver spikes in the late morning.
nope. timing is key. single large doses never worked for me. taking 500 mg dose at 10:00pm
and dose at 12:00am always works and is working today. i am tired of arguing with pill jockeys over this.
The key is continuous dosage up to strength in blood over the key interval. One large dose still only covers the same duration as small single charge in blood and useless.
I do not know what dum turkey in pill industry thinks that because you put huge up front charge the body automatically redistributes the larger charge ove rmore time.
How stupid! WHere is that written in the liver-gut specs. Residual metforman has no use shutting down liver glucose overcharge as only up to strength in blood works. The mwtformin effigy charge lasts 1 to 3 hours on standard met. Irregardless of pill dose.
ER versions so far do not work and Teva of both types useless while most generic decent types work.
Been there done that.
Just curious, what is you basal number to combat DP tan that of your 12am basal?
What people do not realize when adding insulin, basil or otherwise is that if liver hammers body so hard, the insulin resistance gets turned on hard and that a large charge of insulin will just sit and circulate in body till muscle cells get off loaded of glucose by exercise.
Once I walked the dam glucose readings at 238 in my body down after walking 2 miles down to 140, I would see the injected insulin take off and do its job. i.e. the body can dynamically upgrade and downgrade the insulin receptors of the skeletal muscles based on level of glucose content in skeletal muscles glucose stores.
Science continues to believe in a infinite glucose storage model that does not exist - nor work.