Dawn Phenomenon

Hi Everyone,

Since doing DAFNE and going from hardly any BGs to now being a 4 times a day BG tester, I have now seen a patten of high blood sugars in the morning. I have tested at 3am for a few days and my results are coming back "normal".

Has anyone else had dawn phenomenon and had it "fixed" ?

I am currently on 3 x Apidra and 1 x Lantus in the evening (plus 3 x Metformin)

Thanks, Nicky

Hi,

I get the dawn dooda, usually about 15ish first thing, if I try upping my Levemir at night I must go hypo over night as I wake with 20s, not found a solution yet!

Let me know if you do

Phil

H guys,

I suffer from it, and actually everyone experiences it, its just some it is more noticeable........

I do 3 things to give me the best chance of waking in single figures......


These are:

1. Have a split dose background insulin and ensure my evening dose is at its maximum, so no lows at 3 am, just steady as she goes...

2. Instead of a 12 hour split for the BI insulin I take my evening dose closer to bed time, so 15 hours after my morning dose, Levemir last 12-18 hours, so still within limits. This gives me more active units of Levemir in my system at 4-5am, when the DP begins.

3. Have carbs and insulin as early as possible, which means getting up early, which for most is achievable because of work, however if you don't work, you still need to get up. This is because giving yourself fuel and insulin will tell the liver to stop its release of glucose into the blood stream.

So Nicky, a split dose is what is needed if your suffering from DP and plan to fight it, the split allows you to focus separately on the morning levels and on the daytime background requirement. Lantus can be split, but the effects of dose adjustment with Lantus takes time to settle, so in my non professional opinion, its no use for the majority of diabetics.......

Phil, I would expect good results for you if you adopt a similar regime to the one I described above.........

Do you have a 12 hour split on your doses?
When do you normally wake up, and do you have breakfast upon waking......?

Hi novorapidboi26,

Thanks for the info, I have my Levemir split 12 hours apart 11am and 11pm with a bigger dose at night, I may try leaving the night one a bit later until I got to bed.

I do 3 (have carbs early) during the week, I have noticed when I'm on a diet and cutting out or having low carb meals in the evening I don't get DP, its to do with a heavy meal overnight I think.

Thanks

Phil

When do you normally eat? How many carbs is in your low carb meals?

Its quite common for high fat and I suppose high carbs meals [150g +] to have a delayed absorption, but you would still expect it all to be processed by the time the morning comes.....

If you don't get higher readings when you don't have high fat/carb meals then its unlikely its the DP your observing, even though there will be some liver action happening as it does with us all........

My high carb meals are in the evening about 8 or 9, pizza/pasta/potatoes etc... (not all at the same time )

Low carb meal alternatives when being good will be meat/fish with salad and possibly potatoes/bread, but 2CP not 10CP to 20CP as naughty meals.

Pizza and Pasta will almost definitely give you some delay, pizza the most, so this would likely be the culprit fo ryour high morning readings......

Do you have a 80g -90g meal every night? Nothing wrong with this really, but the reality is, we all eat too much carbohydrate and it doesn't always agree with us all.........

I personally find after 90-100g of CPs blood sugars become a bit trickier to manage. I am sure it was from a John Walsh book on insulin that said if you half your weight in pounds, this will be the amount of grams of carbs you can eat and the normal insulin dosing rules will apply...anything above and you need to think about more insulin than you would normally give....so may not apply to you, but paints a picture......

I dropped my carbs for about a week and a half and my BG was amazing.......

you should have pizza again and see what it does to BG and how you managed, you will probably find its quite hard to manage, so should be kept for special occasions......

From what you've said I have found on a low carb diet I also got amazing BG

Thanks for the feedback, I'll have to have Pizza again to test the theory


Phil

I hope your findings come in useful............

i have DP also, i would get up to over 10 every morning and i get up at 5am, no matter what my bg was before i went to bed i would get up high, i recently went on the pump and with a bit of tinkering it seems to have made a big difference on my DP, i know a pump is not readily available to everybody but i thought you would like a bit of extra input. thanks, Paul x