So I wear a CGM and can track my blood glucose through the day and night. Last night around 1am I had a can of Coke and two aspirins, because this cures hangovers EVERY TIME. (I added some popcorn because well, if I’m going to go out of ketosis, might as well. I cheat very rarely.)
You can see below there were two spikes after I had the sugar, but then, weirdly, there’s another massive spike around 7am. I didn’t eat or drink anything through the night. What could have caused this?
That is strange. I’m never up at that time, and haven’t had a sugared beverage in probably several decades (never drank them before keto), so I can’t help with that aspect. Did you also drink alcohol? Perhaps that had an effect.
I don’t think it’s the dawn effect, only because it’s really large – the peak is near 140. I’ve seen maybe 110, but it’s usually a slow rise, no wild fluctuation like that.
Yeah it’s not the dawn effect. My BG goes up to maybe 100- 110 after waking usually. This is def something to do with either the alcohol or the coke+aspirin I took to head off a hangover.
The Coke+aspirin cure is, by the way, doctor-approved. But I digress.
I can’t figure out what would cause BG to spike to near 150 without any external cause!
When I’ve had weird readings like that I usually test a few minutes later to double-check the result.
Your glucose went very low while your liver was busy processing the alcohol - as the alcohol wore off your liver was once again able to dump some sugar to bring it back up but overshot the mark?
It doesn’t matter what time you ‘wake up’
Just before waking around 4am, the body secretes higher levels of growth hormone, cortisol, glucagon, and adrenaline. Together these are called the counterregulatory hormones - they counter the blood sugar lowering effects of insulin, meaning that they raise blood sugar. It’s a hormonal surge to prepare your body for the day ahead. Glucagon tells the liver to start ushing some glucose. Adrenaline gives the body some energy. Growth hormone is involved in cell repair and the synthesis of new protein. Coritsol, the stress hormone, increases as a general activator. All of these hormones peak in the early morning hours and then fall to low levels during the day. Insulin also increases in the morning to make sure the blood glucose does not go too high. The same phenonemum is seen during fasting, insulin levels drop, but the hormones are still causing stored sugar to be released into the bloodstream, raising blood sugar levels.
I appreciate the thoughtful reply, but here’s a graph of a normal day, followed by the graph of yesterday, where you can clearly see three large spikes after midnight, the biggest of which is at around 7am. This is 100% related to my booze-soaked evening which was followed by my patented (doctor-approved!) hangover cure.
Was looking at that red dip on those drinking graphs and found this “…If you drink excessively sometimes, it can bring your blood sugar level to very low, dangerous levels, especially if you have type 1 diabetes. Alcohol and blood sugar can also interact with one another because consuming alcohol can cause an imbalance in hormones that control and moderate blood sugar levels. …” …More
Yep, though the red in this case is a bit arbitrary; it’s just indicating that I’m below the range I’ve set for myself, which itself is arbitrary. Having said that, I definitely have reactive hypoglycemia, which those lows seem to be.
But I’ve never seen a blood glucose reaction following sugar/alcohol intake that has three peaks. I was very surprised to wake up to this. Especially since the third peak is really high, and occurred many many hours after any consumption occurred.
