Sure. If you eat more carbs than your body can utilize in a day, your body stores it. You may see this as DP (Dawn Phenomenon). Essentially your liver will store this excess sugar and release it when it thinks you may need it. Usually overnight/early am when you've gone a longer period without eating. It is a survival thing. However, us T1s don't produce the insulin to counteract it like non-diabetics, so we get a significant blood sugar rise in the am without having eaten anything. Some folks say it was their morning black coffee and such. No, it's DP. I eat very low carb and have depleted my liver "sugar" stores. So I can pinpoint the exact causes. It only happens to me when I eat more than my usual amount of carbs in the previous day, or if I eat too much protein (as your body can only use so much protein too, and will store the rest as glucose). I'll see higher numbers for the hours and day following. And once my liver has depleted the stores, I'm back to normal numbers. A good resource on this is Dr. Bernstein (a T1 diabetic). And really all food spikes within an hour? These doctors have no clue about the effect of fat in a meal on digestion and delayed spikes, and perhaps issues of those suffering from Gastroparesis (which is not uncommon in diabetics, but less common in very well controlled diabetics)which is a delayed emptying of the stomach because of damage to the vagus nerve which will certainly cause a delayed spike. I'm wordy today. I got tired of all of the variables. And decided to go low carb high fat and haven't looked back. Insulin can be a crap shoot sometimes. I reduced the variable; insulin. The less insulin I have to take, the less margin of error I have, and the less likelihood of going high or low. I have my life back :)
Thank you for the information Katkat! When I have a low insulin day,a high insulin day usually follows. I never really understood why. I suspect you just explained it. I will also follow it up with the book.
I'm so glad that you brought up the effects of fat!
Is carb and fat a bad combination generally for Type 1 and 1.5, and 2 diabetics? Is there an extensive discussion about this topic elsewhere? I had a chocolate croissant one day last week. On a different occasion, a slice of my niece's birthday cake with 1 scoop of gelato. Because I'm relatively new and inexperienced about carb counting, I under bolused using only 1 unit insulin, in both situations. What was not clear to me was that my BG stayed elevated for up to 4 hour! 2 hours after the chocolate cake 253. Injected 1 unit for correction at the 2 hour point. 4 hours after the original blood sugar raising birthday cake, BG 152. As for the tasty, but BG raising chocolate croissant. 2 hours post croissant BG 200. 3 hours later 197....hmmmm... Eventually 6 1/2 hours later BG 120.
Yes, I know what you mean about feeing wasteful. :-)
actually, DP is the increase of hormones in the body, cortisol, adrenaline, etc...which naturally occur as we wake up or start to wake up, everyone has it, we as type 1's don't have insulin to counter-attack the rise, thus DP. Depleting liver stores is usually from having too many lows. everything eventually turns to glucose and meals high in protein, with no carbs, will turn that protein into glucose quicker. thus, many bolus for protein.
I will be hopefully getting my omnipod very soon, and looking forward to it. If my current basal rate (using Lantus) of 5 units seems to be fairly stable. If I go to sleep around 130, I wake up around 130, do I still need to do basal testing?