Wondering about late morning spikes

I'm hoping someone might have an idea of why I seem to spike just prior to lunch. I have good fasting numbers, usually 125 or less. I take my basal of Lantus around 7 a.m. I'm not much of a breakfast eater so if my fasting sugar is below 90, I don't take any bolus. If my fasting sugar is around 120, I take a unit or two. I don't want to take too much since I'm not going to eat anything for several more hours. Why, then, is my blood sugar 250 or more when I'm checking it before lunch when I have had absolutely nothing to eat since the night before. I have taken my morning basal shot and it's like it did nothing. My only though is that it's stored sugar being released from my liver. Does anyone know how to stop that from happening?

This doesn't happen every day, but it does happen enough to be aggravating.

It sounds like you have DP, "Dawn Phenomenon". That is when your numbers will rise in the morning until you eat something. You are probably going to have to get into the habit of a small breakfast. I don't have DP myself, so other people may have other suggestions, but another thing I've heard people do is take their Lantus either at night or in split doses to help with DP. If you take it at 7AM it isn't peaking till noon by which time you are rising quite a bit. Another thing that helps with DP, of course is getting a pump!

Welcome aboard to your body and the lack of decent info to help those who track things.

As cgms user, the reality of digestion times is:

( for me:)

a) 30 mintues to 90 minutes to go from meal ingestion to peak.
b) peak will last one to 2 hours.
c) the part not told is that complex proteins/sugars and hard to digest come off at a 5 to 6 hours after ingestion. QUite regularly and size of spike will depend on the amount of these complex items. I am on CGMS and watch this all the time.

The stonehenge crap peddled by the orthodoxy is a disgrace.

In fact 5 to 6 hours after lunch there may be another bump (dinner time) just like lunch. Dinner's will be at 10:30 to 11:30 pm assuming dinner at 5:00 to 6:00pm.

Obviously there will be no bump in am at breakfast as it passed at Midnight.

Good luck and glad you asked.

Test at hourly intervals to see when this actually starts and note how late you ate the night before.
I don't know how much sensitivity you have (how far down does one unit reduce your blood glucose) but if my fasting sugar were around 120 in the a.m. and I did not eat but I bolused 1 or 2 units, my sugar would be <40 and my liver would react. The way to stop the stored sugar being released from your liver is to start eating regularly at breakfast, e.g., 12 grams is enough. Then give the bolus according to the insulin:carb gram ratio you have established for morning. It may be different from evening so you may have to do some trial/tweaking.

Two units would usually bring me down to 100. I usually correct with 1 unit of humalog for every ten points I want my blood sugar to go down. My aim is for blood sugar of 100 if at all possible. Again, this doesn't happen every day, but maybe a couple of times per week. Oddly enough, I don't like to eat breakfast. I never have. I'd rather stay in bed until the last minute and then get up and go out the door to work. I can always eat something when I get to my desk. Maybe that's what I'll have to start doing. Thank you.

Cinderella,
A lot of us change our sensitivity over time as our body gets used to having insulin to rely on and our blood sugars become stable. Test your sensitivity by having your blood sugar up at 180, give 1 unit, and see what it falls to in 4 hours with no eating. That one unit may reduce by far more than what it has been doing. And have fun with changing body.

That seems to happen to me also. I don't like to have big breakfasts either. I usually have to eat atleast something small and take a bit of insulin or I'll go high too. I'll usually just have a banana or a fruit smoothie.

situation normal. 5-6 hour gut output of proteins/complex items/sugars.