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Permalink Reply by MossDog on February 25, 2011 at 9:27am

The only reason I can think that the snack before bedtime might be "bad" would be the snack making you gain weight. I have seen that this works for lowering fasting glucose for others too. It could be that it blunts your dawn phenomenon (thus the lower fasting) and makes your blood sugar more manageable at/after breakfast. Do you notice any major differences with your 2 hour post breakfast numbers when you do it one way vs the other? If you don't I would probably call it a wash in the end provided the snacking doesn't effect your weight.

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Permalink Reply by tmana on February 26, 2011 at 10:10am

Here's the real annoying question: what happens to our bgs while we are sleeping and not monitoring? If you snack, are you staying high overnight to dip down at fasting and then rise again afterwards (if you skip breakfast)? If you don't snack, are you rising higher while you sleep anyway, or are you curving nicely down until just before waking, and then kicking up as your body transitions into "awake" mode. These are things we Type 2's cannot determine without having CGMs, and they are the things that should determine whether or not we snack before bed (or instead of a snack, have a glass or two of water) and how long we should (or should not) wait after waking before breakfasting.

 

The other thing is, you didn't mention what your bgs were like before choosing whether or not to have a bedtime snack. If they were already low, then you might be dipping low enough overnight to trigger a larger-scale glycogen release than if you were in "normal" range. If you were high, then either you could be re-triggering insulin release or your body might still be trying to digest your snack and you may get lower-than-expected readings as all the nice, high-fuel blood is focused on your GI tract instead of your fingertips.

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Permalink Reply by LiL MaMa on February 27, 2011 at 4:58am

I am very new to insulin, only about 4 weeks in and I too have noticed that if I go to bed under 120 then I just stay level all night long but if I go to bed over 130 I will drop about 20 points overnight...very weird..

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