Most of you must be puzzled or worried about why your blood sugar level is high in the morning. This is a question that has left every diabetic patient in a state of confusion.
You must have been noticing that your blood sugar level are higher in the morning as compared to the night before, even when u had not eaten anything in between.
Shouldn’t the sugar level measured after 2-3 hours of your eating last night, be higher than your morning blood sugar level when you haven’t had anything since like 8 hours.
So where does this extra sugar come from? Why does this happen? Most of you fail to understand it and start putting restrictions on what and how much you eat in your dinner.
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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.
What Is Fasting or Morning Fasting Blood Sugar Level?
This is nothing but the count of your blood sugar level just after you wake up in the morning after eight hours of long sleep.
Normally, in a healthy body fasting blood sugar level goes up to 80-100
Whereas in a prediabetic body it’s around 101-125
and in a diabetic body, it goes above 126
Why Morning Blood Sugar Levels Are High?
The key reason behind this is the “dawn phenomenon”. The other reason is the action of certain hormones in your body.
Dawn Phenomenon
This phenomenon suggests that around 4 a.m., your blood sugar level rises normally and naturally in your body, be it a diabetic or a non-diabetic.
So, why does this happen? Let’s understand this with a simple example:
Every day when you go to the workplace you find it clean, ready, and perfect to work in. So every day before your arrival, housekeeping members go and do the cleaning stuff and all. Why do they do so? Because they know that there is the need to do these arrangements without which proper functioning in the office won’t be possible. This is a regular phenomenon and this does not get missed. Something similar happens in your body as well.
Before you wake up and start your day in the morning, a certain amount of stored glucose in the liver and pancreas gets released as per the energy requirement of the body. Your body calculates and recognizes the need and then releases the sugar. Basically, your body is preparing you for the tiresome day, you are going to face ahead.
Now comes the question, what amount of sugar is released every morning?
So obviously when this sugar is dumped into your blood while you are asleep, your morning sugar level will rise.
Hormones Responsible For Fasting Blood Sugar?
Secondly, certain hormones in the body also play role in pumping up your morning sugar levels:
Most of these hormones oppose the action of insulin. I.e the prevent the movement of sugar from the bloodstream to the cells. So sugar released by the dawn phenomenon stays in your bloodstream, and thus result in higher blood sugar levels. The first hormone is:
- Cortisol: This is a “stress hormone that is at its highest levels in the morning.
- The second hormone that affects the blood sugar level is the “growth hormone”. This hormone plays the role of repair and regeneration in the body. But also promotes the rise of glucose or sugar into the blood
- Glucagon is the third hormone that raises the concentration of glucose and fatty acids in the bloodstream.
- And the last one is “adrenaline” which increases blood flow and enhances the release of glucose into the blood.
Is It Normal To Have Higher Blood Sugar Levels (Hyperglycemia) When You Wake Up?
So by now, you must have understood the reason behind the rise in sugar levels during morning time. And it’s definitely not the dinner you have every night.
Rather the stored glucose of your body and certain hormones are the reasons behind this unexpected increase in sugar level.
It could happen to anyone of us, it is very natural and normal. It even happens in a non-diabetic body.
So stop stressing yourself regarding this- “IT’S NORMAL”
How Can You Control Your Morning Blood Sugar Levels?
Still, if you want to try and control your morning fasting blood sugar level, you should stick to following habits
- Do some moderate-intensity exercise or a brisk walk in the evening
- Have your last meal of the day before 7:30 pm
- Avoid grains in dinner
- Mix 2 tsp of Apple cider vinegar with 20 tsp of water and drink it
- Consume at least 50% greens, including raw and cooked in your dinner
- Climb stairs after dinner
- Avoid tv/mobile/laptop after 9 p.m.
- Go to sleep before 10 p.m. for 7-8 hours.
So these were a few of the changes you might include in your routine.
You don’t need to worry until your count on morning blood sugar level is in excess of 100. But you need to be concerned if it exceeds this number.
A Word From MantraCare
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