You're right Nancy, only try what you're comfortable with.

It would interest me what you mean by alcohol interfering with your sleep.

The pancreas has a glucose sensing mechanism, if the pancreas feels that levels are too low it will release some hormones and through the bloodstream the liver and muscles gets the stimulation to release glucose.

Here is an explanation on how it works:
http://health.howstuffworks.com/diabetes1.htm

So probably, it may be that get low at a point of your sleep (perhaps having a nightmare or some other kind of dream ) and the alpha cells of your pancreas release the hormones and the liver, kidneys and muscles release glucose.

The problem is that if you're insulin resistant, the released glucose will stay there.

AgimA
Bitter melon works for me.
Berberine(huang lian su) works for me.
About 3 shots of scotch works too well.
Vanadium sulfate did not work for me.
Good luck and keep us posted on your progress.
Lots of good info and good people here.
Cheers
Eddie

Eddie
I'm intrigued by the berberine, there's another vegetal agent, the neem tree. It is used in ayurvedic medicine to treat all sorts of things, including diabetes. Do you know something about it?

How much vanadium sulfate did you take? Did you experience any side effects?

I haven't received my pills yet, ordered them 2 days ago from canada, we'll see 30 mg BMOV+Bitter gourd+Gymnema Sylvestre+Chromium+cinnamon, quite stuffed those pills.

I'm finding very interesting ideas and suggestions in this forum, different from what you usually find on the internet.

Cheers

Nancy, another possibility. When I lose weight while sleeping, usually around 2 pounds, I see according to my logs that I get a higher FBG. The loss can only be explained by loss of water. I suppose that if you lose water, the blood will get thicker as well, so the concentration of BG in the blood will be higher. Could that be an explanation?

Alcohol is kind of stimulating to me. It also interferes with the sleep cycle. http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa41.htm

Unfortunately I've been completely stalled on weight loss for quite some time after losing about 40-45 pounds on low carb.

I'm going to get a fasting insulin test and see if perhaps I'm insulin resistant.

In answer to your previous question I'm prediabetic. Only found out by having routine blood drawn for physical and my fasting was 103. I never went back to the doc and have been trying to deal with it myself.

I tried a glass of wine last night an hour before bedtime.......shiraz....with two slices of mozarella. VOILA this morning FBG was 76!! I'm not going to do this every night though.

Also I don't believe the banaba is working for me. My daytime levels have been between100-120 and thats with very low carb.

Now you have an excuse to drink wine! Like: "are you alcoholic?", "NO, NO, it's just medicine!"

If you see that it works most of the time, when you try it, it would be nice if you would post your results, maybe it helps others, with me it seems to be quite erratic, sometimes it will work extremely well, others, well...

Perhaps it's also the combination mozarella + wine, or the type of wine.

No Im not alcoholic. I used to be a social drinker and I guess you'd call me a whimpy partier in my younger days. When I got into my forties I just quit cause I didn't like how it made me feel. But one glass is perfect.

I'm going to do it again tonight (drink the wine) and post here in the morning again. My husband opened the bottle last night and drank a glass with me (he's a beer drinker) and there is enough left for us to have a glass or two tonight. Like I said I probably won't do this every night.

I swear I saw somewhere in one of these threads that a poster said he/she had good results with coconut oil taken at night. I used coconut oil during the day but never tried it to lower my glucose.

Sorry if you thought that I'm calling you an alcoholic, it wasn't my intention.

Coconut oil? Never heard of that, I'll give it a try

Alcohol is certainly a glucose lowerer for me. I run a 20% lower basal for almost 8 hours when I have 2-3 glasses of wine, and change my carb ratio from 1:4 to 1:8.

V.

New to diabetes,too.Sounds like you're doing great.

20%?! For 8 hours? That's a lot! I'm wondering now, after your experience, if alcohol is also an insulin mimetic, besides keeping the liver busy an preventing glucose dumps by it.

Do you have other experiences with specific foods/herbs/drinks you know predictably will lower your BGL?

Well I suspected you might be kidding about the alcoholism. Anyway I have done some searching and it wasn't this forum I read about coconut oil. It was Dr. Bernsteins forum. One of the guys takes a tspn every night before he goes to bed. I'm going to try that. I use coconut oil a lot but never take it at night.

Is it any kind of alcohol or just wine?

Hi, yeah, for the moment I'm doing really well, I've even gained some weight. Still too thin, but I guess that in 3 months I will have gained my target weight.

My stats must look weird, instead of going down, I go up, but that's what I want.

Wish you the best