If you get less than 7 hours of sleep per night regularly, your diabetes will be harder to manage. Too little sleep can: Increase insulin resistance. Make you hungrier the next day and reduce how full you feel after eating.
Multiple studies have shown that repeated awakenings during the night, insufficient sleep, excessive sleep, and irregular sleep all promote glucose intolerance. Furthermore, if a person has prediabetes or diabetes, poor sleep will worsen the condition.
At least 7 hours of sleep: more next-day blood glucose levels in range, less insulin, more energy, better mood, less hunger.
Blood sugar levels surge while you're sleeping, usually around 4 to 8 a.m. for someone with a normal sleep schedule. (It's called the dawn effect.) In a healthy person, insulin can handle the surge by telling muscle, fat, and liver cells to absorb the glucose from the blood, which keeps your levels stable.
As a result, disruption certain stages of the sleep cycle can affect your body's ability to effectively process blood glucose. Furthermore, periods of sleep deprivation are associated with lower glucose tolerance, poorer insulin sensitivity, and dysregulated levels of hormones governing appetite.
The dawn phenomenon is an early-morning rise in blood sugar, also called blood glucose, in people with diabetes. The dawn phenomenon leads to high levels of blood sugar, a condition called hyperglycemia. It usually happens between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m.
Dawn phenomenon—people have a surge in hormones early in the morning whether they have diabetes or not. For people with diabetes, blood sugar can spike. Dehydration—less water in your body means your blood sugar is more concentrated. Nose spray—some have chemicals that trigger your liver to make more blood sugar.
Many people with diabetes will describe themselves as feeling tired, lethargic or fatigued at times. It could be a result of stress, hard work or a lack of a decent night's sleep but it could also be related to having too high or too low blood glucose levels.
The study authors found that sleep duration was linked with other diabetes risk factors, too, aside from hemoglobin A1c. For example, people who slept more than 8 hours a night had higher fasting blood sugar levels, on average.
There are many factors that can cause your blood sugar to increase at night. For example: what food you ate during the day, how much and when you exercised, whether you ate snacks before bed, the timing of your insulin doses, and your stress level. You can experience different patterns of high blood sugar at night.
If you have waning insulin, an after-dinner walk or other workout can help keep your blood glucose down overnight. But use caution when exercising before bedtime. The blood glucose–lowering effects of exercise can last for hours, so if you work out before bed, you risk going low overnight.
While fasting blood glucose could still be in the normal range, it is taking increasing amounts of insulin to keep it there. As insulin resistance develops, and insulin becomes increasingly ineffective to bring blood sugars down, blood sugars will eventually rise too high.
If stress doesn't go away, it can keep your blood sugar levels high and put you at higher risk of diabetes complications. It can also affect your mood and how you look after yourself, which can start to affect your emotional health. But there are things you can do to take the pressure off.
Having an active day or exercising close to bedtime with diabetes can lower glucose and cause hypoglycemic during sleep or overnight. Other factors that can put you at risk for nighttime hypoglycemia are too much basal (background) insulin or consuming alcohol in the evening.
What should your blood sugar be when you wake up? Whenever possible, aim to keep your glucose levels in range between 70 and 130 mg/dL in the morning before you eat breakfast, and between 70 and 180 mg/dL at other times.
These results showed that HbA1c levels were related to sleep disorders.
On the other hand, too much sleep may also pose health dangers for people with type 2 diabetes. In a study published in 2020 in Diabetologia, individuals with diabetes who slept more (or less) than seven hours had an elevated risk of dying early, compared with those who got a full seven hours.
Physical activity can lower your blood glucose up to 24 hours or more after your workout by making your body more sensitive to insulin. Become familiar with how your blood glucose responds to exercise. Checking your blood glucose level more often before and after exercise can help you see the benefits of activity.
feeling or being sick. abdominal (tummy) pain. rapid, deep breathing. signs of dehydration, such as a headache, dry skin and a weak, rapid heartbeat.
Since your body doesn't respond to insulin the same as most, your fasting blood sugar reading can go up, even if you follow a strict diet. The boost in sugar is your body's way of making sure you have enough energy to get up and start the day.
Drinking plenty of water helps your kidneys flush out excess sugar. One study found that people who drink more water lower their risk for developing high blood sugar levels. And remember, water is the best. Sugary drinks elevate blood sugar by raising it even more.
Fasting hyperglycemia is defined as high blood sugar when you haven't eaten for at least eight hours. The recommended blood glucose range after fasting in a person without diabetes is 70 to 130mg/dL. (The standard for measuring blood glucose is "mg/dL" which means milligrams per deciliter.)