After many years of solid morning BGs in the 90s-110s, I've been having a lot more mornings where I'm at least 130 when I wake up, over a month now. I'm thinking that I need to adjust something at this point. I"m thinking that maybe I'm starting to get a bit of dawn phenomenon. But, I've noticed some days, especially if I'm eating a bit lower carb at dinner, I don't wake up as high, but that is not always true. One night dinner of salad, wake up next day 145, the next day, pizza, wake up the next morning with a 115. I also rarely have morning BG above 110 on weekends, which is usually a 9am wake up, instead of my usual 6:45 on weekdays. Should I start with the dreaded overnight basal test, or should I tinker with my dinner and/or correction ratio? Maybe my "overnight basal" needs switching of hours? Like ending a 6am instead of 7am?
If you're trying to figure out whether or not it's dawn phenomenon, check your blood sugar overnight.
It could very well be a combination of factors: what you ate the day before, how much you exercised, basal rate/dp, seasonal change, stress, gremlins... Unfortunately the place to start is overnight basal testing. Remember that you want to change your basal to an hour or so before you want your bg to change. Keeping a log of all the factors would probably be helpful too.
I'm dealing with what I *think* is a seasonal change in basal needs right now, as well as increased exercise (remodeling, ugh).
I've been noticing, informally as I don't keep a log, that after I have a very flat day it often seems as if the DP is exacerbated the day after? I have a basal *bump* programmed into my pump, from 4-7 AM about 25% more than usual that seems to "cover" it but I still see the bumps on the CGM from DP. I have a CGM so I can sort of see what time it "generally" happens and set the timing of the bump accordingly but I think the only way to find out is to get up? The other option would be to try a small adjustment, maybe 10% for a couple of hours, and see how it goes? Adjusting without testing is, of course, ****extremely**** dangerous but I hate getting up in the middle of the night...
Darn Phenomenon (DP) afflicts many of us. Certainly one approach is to set a flat basal overnight and then do overnight testing to adjust it. Another thing you could do is whack the DP right where it hurts, during the hours that you will typically see its onset, in the 2-4 hours before you rise. For me, my DP seems to start in those early morning hours and then continue into the morning, so if you normally rise at 6am, it may be very appropriate to continue your increased overnight basal till 7am or later.
You may or may not find your blood sugar responds proportional to insulin levels. During the early morning hours your body actually clears insulin out of your blood stream, helping to lead to the conditions that give rise to DP. You may find that you increase your basal and nothing changes until you reach a certain point. But if you respond sharply to overnight basal changes, you do need to be careful as AR notes.
I have found that eating the night before, dinner and any snack can have a highly variable effect on my DP. So I have taken to trying to not eat nightly snacks. I will often see rises the night after exercise.
I have had great difficulty achieving consistent 90-110 mg/dl in the morning. I have to say, I am impressed that you were able to achieve that for years.