How High Blood Sugar Impacts Sleep
The symptoms you may experience with high blood sugar at night could make it difficult for you to sleep, including falling and staying asleep. Depending on when you eat prior to bedtime, your digestive system may wake you up at odd hours.
A related issue is known as the dawn phenomenon, which is when you wake up with high blood sugar in the morning. This can also be caused by overeating foods in the evening that cause high blood sugar.
How Is It Treated
If you have diabetes and notice any of the early signs of high blood sugar, test your blood sugar and call the doctor. They may ask you for the results of several readings. They could recommend the following changes:
Drink more water. Water helps remove excess sugar from your blood through urine, and it helps you avoid dehydration.
Exercise more. Working out can help lower your blood sugar. But under certain conditions, it can make blood sugar go even higher. Ask your doctor what kind of exercise is right for you.
Caution: If you have type 1 diabetes and your blood sugar is high, you need to check your urine for ketones. When you have ketones, do NOT exercise. If you have type 2 diabetes and your blood sugar is high, you must also be sure that you have no ketones in your urine and that you are well-hydrated. Then your doctor might give you the OK to exercise with caution as long as you feel up to it.
Change your eating habits. You may need to meet with a dietitian to change the amount and types of foods you eat.
If you have type 1 diabetes and your blood sugar is more than 250 mg/dL, your doctor may want you to test your urine or blood for ketones.
What Is The Dawn Phenomenon
Your body uses glucose for energy and it is important to have enough extra energy to be able to wake up in the morning. So for a period of time in the early morning hours, usually between 3 a.m. and 8 a.m., your body starts churning out stored glucose to prepare for the upcoming day.
At the same time, your body releases hormones that reduce your sensitivity to insulin. In addition, these events may be happening while your diabetes medication doses taken the day before are wearing off.
These events cause your body’s blood sugar levels to rise in the morning .
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Surprising Things That Can Spike Your Blood Sugar
When you first found out you had diabetes, you tested your blood sugar often to understand how food, activity, stress, and illness could affect your blood sugar levels. By now, youve got it figured out for the most part. But thenbam! Something makes your blood sugar zoom up. You try to adjust it with food or activity or insulin, and it dips really low. Youre on a rollercoaster no one with diabetes wants to ride.
Do you know all of these blood sugar triggers?
Knowledge is power! Look out for these surprising triggers that can send your blood sugar soaring:
Know Your Blood Sugar
Blood sugar is the amount of sugar in your blood at a given time. It’s important to check your blood sugar level, because it will:
- determine if you have a high or low blood sugar level at a given time
- show you how your lifestyle and medication affect your blood sugar levels
- help you and your diabetes health-care team make lifestyle and medication changes to improve your blood sugar levels
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Stick To Your Medication And Insulin Regimen
Skipping a dose of medication or insulin can be harmful to your body and increase your blood sugar levels.
Its important to stick to your treatment plan and follow your doctors instructions for taking your medication.
Healthful lifestyle habits can help people manage their blood sugar levels over the long term, such as eating a balanced diet, getting regular exercise, staying hydrated, and getting good sleep.
Battle Your Morning Blood Sugar And You Can Tackle The Rest Of The Day Easier
Youll find that your blood sugar levels during the day are much easier to handle when you tackle the morning levels. This is when you will find your levels are at their highest and most dangerous. Its completely normal, but that doesnt mean you should have to put up with the side effects.
Its important to follow a routine. Once youve got your morning schedule in order, it will all fall into place no matter what youre doing or where youre going.
Your diet is the most important thing to change. You want to focus more on protein, fiber, and healthy fats. Get rid of the carbs, especially on a morning. They will only send your blood sugar levels soaring.
Focus on eliminating stress on a morning, and you will find your glucose levels will even out better. Meditation and exercise are both extremely beneficial for this. If you want to work both together, consider taking up yoga on a morning.
With more protein on a night and a better nights sleep, you will find your morning glucose levels arent as high as they once were. From there, they will be easier to manage.
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Stabilizing Blood Sugar With Food
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Have Foods With Low Glycemic Index:
This index was all developed to assess the bodys blood sugar response to foods that contain a definite proportion of the carbs. It will also determine how the food will be showing effects on your body. Foods with a low glycemic index add with the seafood, meat, eggs, oats, barley, beans, lentils, legumes, sweet potatoes, corn, yams, most fruits and non-starchy vegetables are really healthy for your body and metabolic system as well.
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How Can I Treat High Blood Sugar
Talk to your doctor about how to keep your blood sugar levels within your target range. Your doctor may suggest the following:
- Be more active. Regular exercise can help keep your blood sugar levels on track. Important: dont exercise if ketones are present in your urine. This can make your blood sugar go even higher.
- Take medicine as instructed. If your blood sugar is often high, your doctor may change how much medicine you take or when you take it.
- Follow your diabetes meal plan. Ask your doctor or dietitian for help if youre having trouble sticking to it.
- Check your blood sugar as directed by your doctor. Check more often if youre sick or if youre concerned about high or low blood sugar.
- Talk to your doctor about adjusting how much insulin you take and what types of insulin to use.
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Blood Sugar Spike Causes
Blood sugar levels fluctuate all day long. When you eat food, particularly those foods that are high in carbohydrates like bread, potatoes, or pasta, your blood sugar will immediately begin to rise.
If your blood sugar is consistently high, you need to talk to your doctor about improving your diabetes management. Blood sugar rises when:
- youre not taking enough insulin
- your insulin isnt lasting as long as you think it is
- youre not taking your oral diabetes medication
- your medication dosage needs adjusting
- youre using expired insulin
- youre not following your nutritional plan
- you have an illness or infection
- youre using certain medications, like steroids
- youre under physical stress, such as an injury or surgery
- youre under emotional stress, such as trouble at work or home or with money problems
If your blood sugar is usually well-controlled, but youre experiencing unexplained blood sugar spikes, there might be a more acute cause.
Try keeping a record of all the food and drinks you consume. Check your blood sugar levels according to your doctors recommendations.
Its common to record your blood sugar reading first thing in the morning, before youve eaten, and then again two hours after eating. Even a few days of recorded information can help you and your doctor discover whats causing your blood sugar spikes.
Common culprits include:
Avoid Eating Past 8pm To Prevent Blood Sugar Spikes At Night
When you dont eat the night before, you avoid the chance of misjudging the insulin you need. By avoiding taking a bolus of insulin at night, you remove the chance of making a mistake and spending the whole night outside of the target zone without even realizing it. Also, if you wake up with a high or low blood sugar level it can really affect your quality of sleep since you will be up in the middle of the night trying to get the situation out of control.
If you need low carb diabetes recipes and food ideas, I have this Diabetes Cookbook on my kitchen counter and always browse through to inspiration on new, healthy low carb meals
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Reasons Why Blood Sugar Can Be High In The Morning
1. Your BACKGROUND INSULIN is set too low.
A perfectly set basal rate, or long-acting insulin dose, should keep your blood sugar normal throughout the night. However many people do not have a properly set dose. I help my patients do this via planning a specific type of dinner at a particular time, and then doing multiple testing throughout the night over two three nights. It takes working with a knowledgeable provider, plus time and patience to get it set right.
If we know the long-acting/basal insulin is set right and youre still waking up high, then it is likely one of the next three scenarios:
2. DINNER took longer to digest than expected. Just because you go to bed with a great blood sugar level does not mean its going to stay that way. Depending on what you had for dinner, especially if it was large, and/or contained a mix of high carb and fat and/or protein, digestion can take 4-8 or even more hours.
So when you go to bed, if your dinner hasnt completely digested, your blood sugar level will continue to go up for many more hourseven beyond the time your fast-acting insulin finishes working.
Insulin adjustment will need to be fine-tuned to aid with this and evaluation of the effect of typical dinner meals will be a key to managing the flux in BG over the night.
3. Your HORMONES spiked in the early morning hours..
The hormone cortisol peaks between 4am and 8am and has the effect of raising blood sugar.
4. Youre REBOUNDING from a low.
To your health!
No More High Blood Sugar In The Morning
Its important to recognise that morning hyperglycemia is fairly normal: its usually your body trying to get you ready for the day .But you can help your body help itself by trying out some changes in your routine or medication. And Hedia wants to help you to help your body to help itself! Give yourself a good morning by visiting the App Store and
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Ensure A Good Nights Sleep
Never underestimate the power of a good nights sleep. A single night of inadequate sleep makes our body react in a manner similar to insulin resistance. It can lead to raised blood sugar levels. A good nights sleep can improve glucose metabolism. It will also keep you motivated to follow through with your diet and exercise routine.
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Why Are My Blood Sugars High In The Morning
Heres a simple plan for diagnosing the source of high blood sugars in the morning.
It takes a little bit of effort, but you probably only need to do it a few times to diagnose the issue.
The Somogyi Effect is less common than dawn phenomenon. To diagnose either of these phenomena, scientists recommend checking blood sugar levels for several nights, specifically between 3 a.m and 5 a.m.
Compare these three glucose values and find the pattern:
- If your blood sugar stayed steady overnight, but rose in the morning, you are likely experiencing dawn phenomenon.
- If your blood sugar rose steadily throughout the night, your morning glucose highs may be the result of your diet or exercise choices , or a sign that you may want to adjust your insulin and glucose-lowering medication regimen.
- If your blood sugar dipped low in the middle of the night, you may be experiencing Somogyi effect.
The best option is to use a continuous glucose monitoring system . This will give you an entire nights worth of blood sugar values, making it easy to identify what direction your blood sugar moved while you slept.
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Why Is My Blood Sugar High In The Morning
High blood sugar in the morning is mysterious to the extent that it may be a phenomenon. Specifically: the dawn phenomenon.
This is where hormones are released in the early hours of the morning. In turn, the hormones make the liver release its store of glycogen , thus raising blood sugar levels.
Its not exactly known why this happens, but these hormones are usually released to give extra energy. So, the theory is that the body releases extra glucose in order to give you extra energy to wake up and start the day.
Obviously, this extra glucose doesnt help those with diabetes, but at least the bodys trying. Its the thought that counts, right?
There may also be another potential reason for high blood sugar in the morning: the Somogyi phenomenon . This can occur as a result of insulin use.
Its theorised that taking insulin before bed can cause the body to have a rebound effect whilst sleeping. If insulin continues to lower blood sugar during sleep, and its not being treated, then the body responds in stress mode: it releases hormones to trigger a rise in blood sugar levels.
But for those with diabetes, this doesnt stabilise the blood sugar. That extra glucose cant be used without diabetes medication, and so, the blood sugar gets too high instead.
There could be other reasons for high blood sugar in the morning, such as too many carbs before bed or requiring a different level of insulin. We can look at what to do about that in a moment.
What Is Blood Sugar Level
Whenever you eat something, your body breaks down that food into glucose and the count of that glucose in the blood is called blood sugar levels. The breakdown happens in order to provide you with energy. Energy generation is possible only when that glucose or sugar gets transferred into your body cells and does not remain in the bloodstream. If they remain there, your blood sugar level increases, and you get prone to diabetes.
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Preparations For Postprandial Glucose Test
Your doctor often asks you for the fasting test before the postprandial glucose test. For a fasting glucose test, you need to fast for at least 8 hours before giving the sample for the test. After this, you need to eat a meal containing around 75 grams of carbohydrates. The healthcare provider takes your next sample for the PP blood sugar test 2 hours after the meal. Make sure you dont anything else before the test. You just need to rest for 2 hours. Physical activities especially workouts can alter your blood sugar levels.
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