I've never heard of dawn phenomenon before. Is it fairly common?
I'm not sure what blood tests my doctor has done. I think just the regular blood glucose test where you go in anytime and they take your blood and the one where you fast first. he had me on metformin, but he never gave me a diagnoses. I asked him if maybe I am insulin resistant and he said "Maybe" and gave me a RX for metformin. It wasn't helping so I am no longer taking it.
I test my blood sugar at home several times a day. i test it first thing in the morning, about midday before I eat lunch and before supper and bed. I also test it during the day if I am feeling odd. It is usually between 9 and 12 in the morning and it is 7 or 8 for most of the rest of the day.
I avoid carbohydrates in the morning since they seem to keep my blood sugar from coming down at all for the rest of he day. I have yogurt or an egg for breakfast, yogurt or cereal or a sandwich on whole wheat for lunch and soup or meat and vegetables for supper. I have fruit, yogurt or cheese and crackers in between if i get hungry.
Dawn phenomenon is a pain in the backside for many of us...me included! What happens is your body normally will put out glucose in the dawn hours to get your body ready to get up and start your day. Of course, in the diabetic person we either dont have the insulin to cover it or our resistance is high and we cant cover it. So you end up with high AM blood sugars. Most of the time not eating wont help..it will just keep going up. Since you are not on any meds, it is most likely that having a low carb breakfast like you have been doing and just starting to move around finally lowers it.
I cant understand why with fasting blood sugars that high your doctor does not tell you that are diabetic. That is absolutely diabetic. Have you had an A1c done? If not, then you should have one done. It will show your blood glucose average over the last 3 months. A c-peptide test will also show if your pancreas is producing the normal amount of insulin or not. You might have to be very proactive with your doctor and tell them what you think you need and why. Personally...I couldnt keep using a doctor that just blew off my concerns that easily..but thats just me. Especially considering your family history. Based on what little info we have I would say you are diabetic.
Things you can do for now to help lower your blood sugars are start some regular exercise. It doesnt have to be crazy hard, even just walking is a great start. If you have a few pounds to lose that would be good too....even a 10% weight loss can start to lower your resistance. Become a strict label reader...watch your carb intake. When looking at labels dont just consider the sugars...look at the total carb count. Carbohydrates turn into sugar after you eat them. That 20 carb gram slice of bread might as well be a 1/2 cup of ice cream, its the same amount of carbs and will impact your blood sugar the same way. There are a lot of great web sites that will give you carb counts for most foods. I recommend calorieking.com they even have fast foods listed. To start off try not to go over 30-45g carb per meal. Some people can not even tolerate that much without medication, you will need to test around meals to see exactly how it effects you. Test before, then if you can an hour later (it should be coming down) and 2 hours later you should be back down to normal. Avoid white processed foods...like white bread, sugar, white potatoes, white rice, etc. Stick to whole grains as much as possible.
Sorry for the lengthy post and sorry if I am repeating what you already know...but its hard to stop me once I get started
Let us know how you are doing!
