How to prevent the blood sugar spike
happening early in the morning?
I'm not talking about high fasting blood
sugars, we talked about this in the past.
I am talking about,
you wake up and your blood sugars are
not too bad. It's like 90 to 100 milligram
per deciliter, and then,
suddenly, like an hour later and you're
just doing nothing, just watching the news,
your DexCom or Libre is just
beeping on you: beep beep beep beep beep.
"Your blood sugar is 200, your blood sugar is..."
"What's going on?"
Oh well,
I'll tell you what's going on. And I'll
tell you how to stop this from happening.
Right now. Let's get started!
So, guys this happens to a lot of you, right?
So your blood sugar starts going up,
although you're doing nothing.
Sometimes it goes up with coffee and we
talked about this in another video as well, but
like, sometimes you just do nothing.
What happens is, you know, dawn phenomenon
is something that definitely affects it.
You know, dawn phenomenon happens like
around after 4 or 5 o'clock and
then it pretty much ends around 6:00, 6:30.
But then you wake up at 8 o'clock and
your blood sugar keeps going up until,
like, 10 o'clock.
You're like, "that's not dawn phenomenon"
right? What is it, then? Well, it is your
cortisol. When you get up from the bed
your body says, "Okay, it's ready. It's time
to get up and moving. We need something.
We need something ready to go, that is
readily available." What is it? Sugar. Well,
your liver stores that sugar in the form
of glycogen,
so that if you're not eating right away
that sugar will maintain you. Because,
let's say, you are late, you need to go to
work, you just overslept and you're like
you have to get up and go, you know.
Adrenaline is pumping, cortisol is
pumping. You need that sugar, otherwise
you're going to collapse without eating,
right? So, that's how body is designed.
As a result, that cortisol that's kicking
in, in the morning or right after you wake up;
actually makes the blood sugar creep up
on you. Even if you're not, like, really
stressed out, even if you're just sitting
that waking up is a stress response for
the body to say, "Okay, something's about
to happen. We woke up, we need to get
something going."
That is a natural phenomenon that cortisol
typically goes up at that time. Now, dawn
phenomenon. You have cortisol, growth
hormone, adrenaline; a bunch of stuff
going on while you're sleeping, you know,
to get you ready. But then, the moment you
get out of the bed, there's another
cortisol spike.
When you're insulin resistant, that
cortisol spike really affects you, more
than usual. Like, if I wake up at 80 blood
sugar, and I do nothing, my blood
sugar may go up to 90 you know maybe 95,
but a diabetic can wake up with a blood
sugar of 110 and their blood sugar may
go up to 160-180 without doing anything.
And that's exactly what's happening.
How do you really prevent that?
Since seen, now you know what's
happening. You can do a few things.
If you're taking insulin injections, let's
say, you know, I'm just assuming you're
taking insulin injections, but as an easy
way to deal with it, if you're on insulin
already and you're supposed to take
insulin for your breakfast, and most
people don't eat right away. You're
like, you know, you're going to have a
breakfast in an hour from now,
what you can do if your blood sugar is
pretty much going up every morning? You
can go ahead and take that insulin early.
Because you know you're not going to
drop, because your blood sugars, you know
you're just going to go up unless you do
something. So, you can take that insulin
instead of like 10 minutes before, you
can take that short acting insulin maybe
30 minutes even 45 minutes before and
then see what happens. Then, that's a
trial and error, you can decide how early
to take. Another thing is, again, if you're
on insulin, even a pump or anything like
that, then you can just have your
endocrinologist adjust your pump which I
do that all the time. You know, just to
adjust for that couple hours in the
morning. The third thing, that if you're
not on insulin and you're like "Doc, are
you trying to put me on insulin or what?"
No, I'm not. So, if you're not taking
insulin, you know, of course, one thing you
can do is take a nice walk
go out and do something early in the
morning while it is still
nice and chilly, you know, fresh air, you
know. That's definitely going to help you
burn those calories. But another thing you
have to keep in mind is to
eat something. Because, guess what, when
you eat, actually, the gluconeogenesis
which is the glucose production process
that comes from the liver, stops, right?
And if you're not introducing a bunch of
carbs, if you're not just sitting down
and eating a whole watermelon for
breakfast, if you're eating like some
eggs and some cheese, some yogurt or
something like that, that's really not
gonna actually spike your blood sugar,
and actually will stop your blood sugar
from rising. Because it's going to tell
your body that "Okay, relax. There's food
coming in here." Cortisol goes down,
gluconeogenesis goes down, glucagon goes
down, all these things definitely help
you keep your blood sugar more stable.
In a nutshell, in a summary;
get up, unless you're doing like at least
long stretches of intermittent fasting,
get up, have a breakfast, a heart-healthy,
diabetes-healthy breakfast that is not
loaded with carbs. No french toast and no
pancakes, no nothing like that or cereal.
Oh my god, don't even think about that.
If you can get rid of those bad food but
have some good, hearty food for your
breakfast, that's going to help maintain
your blood sugar better.
Take a walk or do some exercises. If you
cannot walk, do some upper body workouts
or arm workouts in the morning to get
your going started with exercise and
some good food. And I think that will be
very helpful. I hope that video was
helpful. See you next time!
Hey guys, I hope you are enjoying this
channel so far and I hope you subscribed
already. If you didn't do it and if you did
watch this video right there. I think
that will help you too!