Background Insulin

Recently i have been waking up in the morning with high glucose readings from anywhere between 10.5 - 16.0, no matter what reading i go to sleep on. I have been diagnosed for over 2 years now and apart from these last few months, have had no problems or bad reactions to any insulin i have been taking.

At first nurses and doctors thought that i could be experiencing hypos during the night which could result in a high glucose level in the morning, however, i have been monitoring this possibility for over a month now, and i feel that i should now rule that out of the equation.

Has anyone got any ideas what could be causing this ?

Have you been doing blood tests during the night then? Has that shown what your BG is doing during the night, and does it show your BG going up at a particular time?

On our DAFNE course we were told about the 'dawn phenomenon'. Basically I think your body releases hormones before you wake up to get your body ready for the day ahead, and this can make your body release it's own glucose stores...so your BG starts going up.

As Chris mentioned, the 'Dawn Phenomenon' is the most likely culprit and its something that everyone probably experiences, only some, like myself, struggle to tackle it....

What have your readings been at 3am then, if you have monitored them and they look fine, as mine do, then the Dawn Phenomenon is the most likely cause....

My unprofessional advice would be to start increasing your background dose, if split, then the evening dose should be increased, do some 3am test again to see what effect its having, it may help tackle the highs...it might not eliminate them completely but it may help...................

Wow, this sounds familiar to me right now, deanna!

Have you been testing your BGs around the time your QA finishes after your evening meal (I find mine usually runs out about 5 hours after, so often around 1 or 2 am)?
If it is high, it may be time to consider at a ratio change perhaps.... HOWEVER ... I know I'd prefer to tackle my morning highs situation this evening by having a carb free meal tonight.
I shall explain why!

I have been finding that my BGs are around 15 when I test after my evening meal QA has run out (humalog, so 5 hours max working time) and so injecting 3 QA to get it back down with good BGs in the morning.

So there's a 3QA missing somewhere!

What puzzles me though is, my dinner last night came to a total of 17CP (I take 1:1 ratio for all meals at the moment) - BUT if I was taking a higher ratio of 1:1.5, that works out to be at least 25.5QA.

25.5 minus 17 equals 8.5 QA units difference.
8.5QA is not 3QA (even 8.5 divided by 1.5 isn't 3, it's 5.6) so something isn't right here.

It does hint at BI, so carb free for me tonight for (hopefully) some confirmation! Sucks that I need to wait until 7pm for my "work exercise" result... but oh well!

Best of luck with your over-night investigation!

Edit: Just added the eve meal stuff... how disappointing! I'm guessing this was a result of my inconsistent "work exercise". It's really hard to judge considering my "exercise" depends on customer demand! T_T
Not sure what's best to do now though... being that high renders the carb free a bit pointless... unless it rises? :-. Shall see!