The Dawn Phenomenon in Type 1 Diabetes: Why Your Blood Sugar Rises While You Sleep

SHOW NOTES:

You went to bed at a perfect 110. No active insulin. Flat arrow. You did everything right. You wake up at 182. Nothing happened -- no low, no alarm. You just slept. Except something did happen. You just weren't awake for it.

This episode introduces the dawn phenomenon: the pre-dawn hormonal surge (cortisol, growth hormone, glucagon, epinephrine) that causes your liver to manufacture and release glucose into your bloodstream between roughly 3am and 8am, every single night, without your permission. For people without T1D, the pancreas handles this automatically and they never know it happened. For T1D people, the glucose just lands -- and then we stand in the kitchen at 6am holding an insulin vial up to the light, wondering what on earth went wrong.

This is Week 3 of the While You Were Sleeping Challenge. We're getting into actual mechanisms.

In this episode:

What the dawn phenomenon actually is and what triggers it
Hepatic glucose output explained in plain English (and why it sounds like a Jurassic Park sequel)
Why non-T1D people never notice this happening overnight
What 34 years of blaming the insulin vial actually looked like
How to start spotting the dawn phenomenon in your own overnight CGM data

This Week's Challenge: Pull up your overnight CGM graph from last night. Do you see a gradual rise starting around 3 or 4am when your blood sugar was otherwise flat? Just look. Don't change anything yet.

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil: TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912 Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon: Type 1 Diabetes – One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ Type 1 Diabetes – True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

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