My body has gotten into the bad habit of raising my BG starting at 3am. It has been going on for years. BG can be lowered with insulin, obviously. What are the other ways y’all have found to reduce the BG rise? I’ve found heavy exercise or activity during the previous day helps.
If anyone has found a resource that talks about the biological processes that cause the rise backed by research I’d love to read it. Everything I’ve found boils down to “Yup, sure happens. Look at the liver go.” I’m interested in why it happens.
@spdif My understanding of the dawn phenomenon is that it is a natural part of the flight or fight syndrome that does not cause hyperglycemia in those without diabetes mellitus. The paper I’m going to link to suggests what I think is the cause.
As we near our waking time there is an elevation of human growth hormone and cortisol causing an increase of insulin resistance and stimulating the Alpha cells to secrete glucagon which stimulates the liver to convert stored glycogen into glucose.
In normals the rise of blood glucose is not allowed to rise above 99mg/dl. For us with impaired glucose regulation this is not the case. Dawn phenomenal can be controlled with a correction bolus of insulin, but is a real problem for T2DMs that don’t use insulin. Metformin is helpful because it inhibits the liver glucose dump somewhat and increases insulin sensitivity a bit.
Feet on the floor syndrome may have the same mechanism as the Dawn Phenomena. This is a rise of BG that begins when your feet hit the floor, continuing to rise.
The Somogyi Effect Is different it occurs when BG drops around 2-3 AM and there is an over reaction by the Alpha cells.
When I am on a LCHF diet, I do not get any dawn phenomen, ever. As soon as I add even a little protein to gain muscle mass, dawn phenomen kicks in almost instantly. I do generally eat OMAD (one meal a day) at lunch.
@Luis3 I’m really glad you posted and I’m hoping people with T2D stumble on this like you did. Metformin is absolutely an option if I can’t find a diet/exercise/lifestyle change solution.
@CJ114 When you eat LCHF how many grams of carbs per day is “low”? I’m curious how you sustain a diet with 0 protein. I know I eat more, maybe double, the average daily recommended protein as a way to fill up on anything but carbs. I’ll have to look into if anyone has explored proteins role in DP and experiment with some different foods.
@spdif 20g carbs is daily target. - OMAD consists primarily of avocado or cream cheese lemon cheesecake. I don’t do 0 protein, just do not add any. In other words when I have avocado on some lettuce, I do not add a few slices of ham, or turkey, or shrimp as that would give me DP.
