AM BLOOD SUGAR LEVELS

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Simi_Papa replied on Mon, Oct 19 2009 9:59 PM

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I think I would get another doctor with advice like that.  Below 7 is the accepted "standard", but below 6 should be your true goal (the closer to "normal" the less likely to have diabetes complications, in my opinion.)  You may have a condition called "the Dawn Effect", in which your body dumps glucose into your system to help you wake up in the morning.  The only way to tell for sure is to do a 72 hr. continuous glucose monitoring.  This gives the doctor a reading for your bg over several 24 hr. periods to show how your body is working.  I take my glimepiride (Amaryl) before I go to bed and eat a 10 to 15 carb snack with some fat (peanut butter crackers or something like that).  The fat helps delay the release of bg from the carbs.  That combination brought my fasting bg levels from the same 140-160 range to the 90-110 range.

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Ron AKA replied on Tue, Oct 20 2009 10:54 AM

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I had similar issues, and it is most likely the dawn effect. It is very common especially in those who have insulin resistance. I found that exercise late at night helps, and a small but high glycemic snack (10-15 grams of carbs) at bedtime helped too. But, in the end I asked my doctor to prescribe insulin. So now I take a shot of Levemir insulin at bedtime, and most days I am under 100 in the am.

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JoyceL replied on Tue, Oct 20 2009 4:25 PM

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What was your last A1c?  What other times of the day do you test? 

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beachgirl replied on Thu, Feb 4 2010 7:47 PM

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Ron....as I venture in to this world....prediabetic (so far) test later this month....my am sugars are starting to creep up.  When you first started out did oral meds take care of this ie Metformin Er at night or did you need insulin right away to cover the am spikes.  Also, whats your advice on how long between bedtime and Fasting?

Thanks

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Ron AKA replied on Thu, Feb 4 2010 8:37 PM

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Beachgirl, I was diagnosed 9 years ago. My fasting BG was in the 330 range, and A1C was 17? Long time ago, but I was far from pre-diabetic. I was suffering symptoms, but was not doing the regular doctor checks, so didn't know what they were. When a fellow player on my son's hockey team needed to go to the hospital, I took him, and while I waited I picked up a pamphlet on diabetes. Sure enough the symptoms fit exactly. So I went from that to getting a test with the results above.

My first medication was Prandin, and it brought down BG very quickly. Later I tried metformin and later still Actos. Neither one worked as well as Prandin, so I went back to it and have been on it ever since. It has probably been a couple of years now that I've been on insulin. My doctor did not suggest it. I asked for it, to bring BG in the AM fasting down. If I had kept up the extremely vigorous exercise program I was on, earlier, I likely would not need it, but here I am.

If you are talking about using snacks at bedtime to try and avoid high AM fasting, then the shorter the better between the snack, and when you get up. I find eating as soon as possible after you get up the best. You can then exercise later while the food is digesting.