Why Is My Sugar So High

Make Physical Activity Part Of Your Daily Routine

Set a goal to be more physically active. Try to work up to 30 minutes or more of physical activity on most days of the week.

Brisk walking and swimming are good ways to move more. If you are not active now, ask your health care team about the types and amounts of physical activity that are right for you. Learn more about being physically active with diabetes.

Following your meal plan and being more active can help you stay at or get to a healthy weight. If you are overweight or obese, work with your health care team to create a weight-loss plan that is right for you.

Build A Clear Picture Of How Your Blood Sugar Works By Using A Cgm

As weve seen, everyones blood sugar control works differently, so it can be helpful to know whether morning spikes are a problem for you.

Unless you have diabetes, it is unlikely that you check your glucose regularly.

Checking your glucose a few times throughout the day or continuously via CGM can help to show how your body is handling changes in glucose levels during fasting or after meals.

Surprising Things That Can Spike Your Blood Sugar

When you first found out you had diabetes, you tested your blood sugar often to understand how food, activity, stress, and illness could affect your blood sugar levels. By now, youve got it figured out for the most part. But thenbam! Something makes your blood sugar zoom up. You try to adjust it with food or activity or insulin, and it dips really low. Youre on a rollercoaster no one with diabetes wants to ride.

Do you know all of these blood sugar triggers?

Knowledge is power! Look out for these surprising triggers that can send your blood sugar soaring:

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What Are Normal And High Morning Blood Sugar Levels

The term morning blood sugar describes your blood sugar level after you wake up but before you eat anything. This fasting measurement shows how well your body controlled your blood sugar overnight.

When you eat, it leads to an increase in blood sugar. Insulin lets the sugar leave your blood and enter the cells in your body, converting it into useful energy.

If you dont regularly monitor your blood sugar to manage a condition like diabetes, you may not be aware of your fasting blood sugar level. But you might want to understand what your levels mean if you get a result back from your regular physicians checkup.

Consistently high blood sugar can cause tiredness and mental fogginess and can lead to serious health problems if untreated, but most mild cases cause no noticeable symptoms at all.

Most people learn they have high blood sugar after seeing a doctor about something else.

Ketoacidosis: When Hyperglycemia Becomes Severe For People With Type 1 Diabetes

If you have type 1 diabetes, it is important to recognize and treat hyperglycemia because if left untreated it can lead to a dangerous condition called . This happens because without glucose, the body’s cells must use ketones as a source of energy. Ketoacidosis develops when ketones build up in the blood. It can become serious and lead to diabetic coma or even death. According to the American Diabetes Association, ketoacidosis affects people with type 1 diabetes, but it rarely affects people with type 2 diabetes.

Many symptoms of ketoacidosis are similar to hyperglycemia. The hallmarks of ketoacidosis are:

• High level of ketones in the urine

• Shortness of breath

• Fruit-smelling breath

• Dry mouth

Additionally, stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, and confusion may accompany ketoacidosis. Immediate medical attention is highly recommended if you have any of these symptoms.

Some people with diabetes are instructed by their doctor to regularly test ketone levels. Ketone testing is performed two ways: using urine or using blood. For a urine test, you dip a special type of test strip into your urine. For testing blood ketones, a special meter and test strips are used. The test is performed exactly like a blood glucose test. If ketone testing is part of your self-monitoring of diabetes, your healthcare professional will provide you with other information including prevention.

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What Are Risk Factors For Hyperglycemia

Major risk factors for hyperglycemia are:

• You have a family history of type 2 diabetes.
• You are African American, Native American, Hispanic or Asian American.
• You are overweight.
• You have high blood pressure or cholesterol.
• You have polycystic ovarian syndrome .
• You have a history of gestational diabetes.

How A Continuous Glucose Monitor Can Help Control Morning Levels

Troubleshooting morning glucose levels can be tricky. As we have discussed, there are a lot of factors that influence overall glucose status in the body. Exercise, stress, circadian rhythm, macronutrient composition, nutrient timing, and more are continually affecting glucose management in your body.

If your morning glucose levels are higher than you would like, always start with the four fundamentals:

Of course, it can be difficult to tease out which specific factor is causing your issue, which is why it is crucial to track the data.

The gold standard for tracking glucose levels is with a continuous glucose monitor . When you use a CGM, you can see your glucose values in real time, 24/7. You donât have to wait for an annual blood test to determine whether the changes you made are working. Instead, you can troubleshoot solutions by trying different things out and seeing how they improve the numbers every single day.

Finding a signal through the noise of online âhealth adviceâ is difficult. But with NutriSenseâs Continuous Glucose Monitoring program, you donât have to guess what works for you. You have continual access to your data plus the support of a world-class team that has analyzed thousands of non-diabetic CGM usersâ data. Weâve done the hard work so you donât have to.

to learn how a NutriSense CGM works and see how it can help unlock your health potential today.

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Best Ways To Lower Blood Sugar Quickly

When treated early, you can bring high blood sugar levels down and prevent complications, including DKA.

Some sources suggest that drinking water or eating a high protein snack can quickly lower your blood sugar levels, though there isnt enough research to support this.

If you have high blood sugar and need to lower it fast, try the following methods:

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How Are High Blood Sugar Levels Treated

Treating high blood sugar levels involves fixing what caused them in the first place. Your diabetes health care team will give you specific advice on how to keep your blood sugar levels in a healthy range. But here are some ways to manage the common causes of high blood sugar levels:

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Treating And Managing Hyperglycaemia

If your blood sugar level is slightly high for a short time, emergency treatment wont be necessary. But if it continues to rise you may need to act fast to avoid developing diabetic ketoacidosis .

If your blood sugar level is 15 mmol/l or more, you should check your blood or urine for ketones. If ketones are present, it is likely that you do not have enough insulin in your body. This means you may need to increase your dose or give yourself an extra dose. Talk to your diabetes team about how to do this if you are unsure.

You should also try to drink plenty of sugar-free fluids to prevent dehydration. And if you are feeling unwell, especially if you are vomiting, you should follow any sick day rules you have been given and contact your diabetes healthcare team for advice.

What Is Hyperglycemia

Hyperglycemia, or high blood glucose, occurs when there is too much sugar in the blood. This happens when your body has too little insulin , or if your body can’t use insulin properly. The condition is most often linked with diabetes.

Hyperglycemia is blood glucose greater than 125 mg/dL while fasting .

• A person has impaired glucose tolerance, or pre-diabetes, with a fasting blood glucose of 100 mg/dL to 125 mg/dL.
• A person has hyperglycemia if their blood glucose is greater than 180 mg/dL one to two hours after eating.

If you have hyperglycemia and its untreated for long periods of time, you can damage your nerves, blood vessels, tissues and organs. Damage to blood vessels can increase your risk of heart attack and stroke, and nerve damage may also lead to eye damage, kidney damage and non-healing wounds.

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Is Sugar Bad For You

If you love sweets, don’t despair. You don’t have to give them up forever. Sugar will raise your blood sugar levels more quickly than other carbs, but diabetes experts now say the total amount of carbs is most important. So keep your serving sizes small and take into account the total carbs and calories.

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Understand Cortisol And Its Impact On Blood Glucose

We all live stressful lives, but some of us have a harder time reducing or releasing our stress. That fact may play out in restlessness, poor sleep, insomnia, or feelings of anxiety or constant tension. Cortisol is the stress hormone that mediates the fight or flight physiologic response. And it has a direct bearing on our glucose levels.

Prolonged cortisol stimulation will raise blood glucose levels, notes Dr. Jason Fung, who wrote an entire chapter on the stress hormone in his 2016 bestseller The Obesity Code.8 In it he describes how cortisol, released from the adrenal glands, sends a message to the body to release glucose to prepare for a perceived threat, spurring gluconeogenesis in the liver. In prehistoric times, that surge of glucose energy was usually used up fighting or fleeing from the threat. But in current days, often that stress goes unreleased, the energy not used, which can lead to prolonged higher glucose levels

I, too, discovered the same stress impact, especially with sleep. Since this spring, I am doing yoga in the early evening, focusing on other stress reduction activities and wearing earplugs and an eye shade to help ensure a better night sleep. Doing so drops my FBG back into the normal range the next morning.

Drinking a glass or two of wine at night can lower readings, too, because the liver metabolizes the alcohol first before turning to gluconeogenesis, but I dont want to drink daily.

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Caution: Birth Control Pills

Types that have estrogen can affect the way your body handles insulin. Still, oral contraceptives are safe for women with diabetes. The American Diabetes Association suggests a combination pill with norgestimate and synthetic estrogen. The group also says birth control shots and implants are safe for women with the condition, though they can affect your blood sugar levels.

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What Causes High Morning Blood Sugars

Two main culprits prompt morning highs: the dawn phenomenon and waning insulin. A third, much rarer cause, known as the Somogyi effect, may also be to blame.

The occasional morning high will have little impact on your A1C, a measure of your average blood sugar levels over time that indicates how well managed your diabetes is. But if those highs become consistent, they could push your A1C up into dangerous territory.

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Roller Coaster: Female Hormones

When a woman’s hormones change, so does their blood sugar. Keep a monthly record of your levels to get a better idea of how your menstrual cycle affects you. Hormone changes during menopause may make blood sugar even harder to control. Talk to your doctor about whether hormone replacement therapy is a good idea.

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Normal Vs Optimal Blood Sugar Ranges

Ive written extensively about the difference between normal and optimal blood markers here, and the same applies to your blood sugar ranges.

From the perspective of conventional medicine, a fasting blood sugar level of 100-125 mg/dL indicates prediabetes.

Two consecutive fasting glucose levels of 126 mg/dL indicates diabetes, as well as a random glucose reading of 200 mg/dL , and a 2-hour post-meal reading of 200 mg/dL .

But much of the data in conventional medicine comes from populations who are not enjoying optimal health.

So what does a healthy daily glucose response look like from the perspective of preventative medicine?

On waking: Research indicates that your optimal glucose after waking in the morning should be between 82-88 mg/dL . This level is associated with optimal aging, the lowest risk of chronic disease, and the lowest mortality risk.

After meals: Blood sugar peaks between 1 and 2 hours after the meal and should be back down to fasting levels by 3 hours post-meal. From the perspective of optimal health, you should avoid regularly eating foods that raise your blood sugar over 100 mg/dl .

One strategy to test the impact of your diet on your long-term health is to measure your blood sugar before and after meals.

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How To Prevent It

If you work to keep your blood sugar under control — follow your meal plan, exercise program, and medicine schedule — you shouldnât have to worry about hyperglycemia. You can also:

• Know your diet — count the total amounts of carbs in each meal and snack.
• Test your blood sugar regularly.
• Tell your doctor if you have repeated abnormal blood sugar readings.
• Wear medical identification to let people know you have diabetes in case of an emergency.

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How Does High Blood Sugar Affect The Body

Monitoring your blood sugar is essential if you have diabetes. Symptoms will get worse if treatment is not provided, and serious health complications can arise as a result. The signs of high blood sugar to look for include fatigue, blurred vision, and headaches along with:

• Frequent urination and thirst: Excess sugar in the blood is passed through the kidneys and into urine. This draws more water into the urine which means more frequent urination. High glucose levels cause thirst even when you are drinking enough fluids.
• Weight loss: Elevated blood sugar levels over time can lead to unexplained weight loss as a result of cells not getting the glucose they need. As a result, they start burning fat instead.
• Numbness: High blood sugar can cause tingling and numbness in the extremities. It is important to note that this is a complication of long-term diabetes and uncontrolled blood sugar levels.

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I Have Fasted For A Say And My Morning Sugar Reading Was

Hello, I’m Dr. Phil and have over 10 years of experience as a licensed medical doctor.I am happy to assist you with this question.I will be responding shortly.

Thank you for this question and for the opportunity to help.

So I assume you are diagnosed with type2 diabetes?

Okay what medicine do you take?

Okay do you have a CGM?

Also what is your A1c?

Okay that is very good. Thank you.

I suspect you are having something called the somogyi effect.

What happens here is the sugar is going low in the middle of the night and the body responds by releasing stress hormones that raise the sugar.

You will be able to tell if you have a CGM that monitors sugar 24/7.

Continuous glucose monitor.

Like a dexcom or libre.

Agreed 🙂

That might be the effect as well.

The stress hormones raising BP as well.

The key thing to do is to stop that low blood sugar in the middle of the night.

Adjusting the insulin will solve this.

You are very welcome 🙂

Please let me know if you have more questions.

I’m so happy to hear that I was able to answer your question and thank you for the opportunity to help you today.If you would like to ask me another question in the future, you can add me as a favorite Expert.You will have the opportunity to do that on your “My Questions” page if you choose to rate our interaction or you can request me by name if you wish.