Latest / Common Sense Health / Late-Night Meals? Here's What They Do to Your Morning Blood Sugar
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- Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Hello We've all heard the same golden rule of metabolic health to keep your blood glucose stable and stay in a fat burning state, avoid late night carbs. So you adapt, you skip the evening toast, you avoid the hidden sugars, and instead you opt for the seemingly innocent zero carb snack before bed, such as maybe a few slices of turkey or a cold chicken breast, or even dare I write it and say it. A small steak. But then you wake up the next morning and you prick your finger or you check your continuous glucose monitor and you see a number that makes your heart sink. 105 milligrams per deciliter. Now how does a zero carb mill lead to high fasting glucose eight hours later? Now the answer is a fascinating interplay of circadian biology and pancreatic endocrinology. Your blood sugar isn't high because you ate carbs. It's high because you ate when your master sleep hormone, melatonin, was telling your pancreas to pack up and go to sleep. Now, the pancreas does go to sleep in one respect. As the sun goes down and the darkness begins to creep in, the pineal gland in your brain begins pumping your system full of melatonin. Most people see melatonin as just a sleep aid, the biochemical signal that winds us down for the night. But melatonin is really a Potent metabolic conductor. Clinical data indicates that your pancreatic beta cells, specialized cells that make insulin, are loaded with melatonin receptors, specifically MT1 and MT2. Now, when melatonin attaches to these receptors, it sends a clear and unmistakable message to the pancreas. The day is done, stop releasing insulin. Now that's a Brilliant mechanism from an evolutionary perspective. Our ancestors did not hunt or gather in the dark. The body is meant to be completely fasted overnight so it can focus on deep cellular repair, autophagy and fat utilization. So turning off insulin production prevents blood sugar levels from falling too low during sleep. All makes sense. But when we throw a heavy protein rich meal into our stomachs at the very moment this hormonal shift is happening, We trigger a metabolic traffic jam. So let's look at the protein myth and why meat does require some insulin. Now a misconception that is very common in the wellness space is that protein is a free-for-all for blood sugar. Sure, meat doesn't shoot your glucose through the roof like a bowl of pasta, but protein still demands a an insulin response. Insulin is needed by your body to drive the amino acids from that meat into your muscle cells for use in protein synthesis. Plus your liver quietly takes excess amino acids and converts them into glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis, although it's not a high percentage of what you eat, maybe two or three percent. You can watch my video about the doubly labelled amino acids test study that that showed this, but it's still something. Now at night, when you eat meat, your liver begins to produce glucose and your muscles want amino acids. Both processes need insulin to clear the traffic out of the blood. But since your high melatonin levels have effectively turned down the volume from eleven on your pancreas' beta cells, the insulin response is blunted and possibly inadequate. So we're going to welcome you to the grey zone doo doo doo doo doo doo The 105 milligram per deciliter phenomena. Now as a blood analyst I know that a fasting glucose reading of 105 milligrams per deciliter is in the grey zone of alleged prediabetes. See another of my videos to answer YSA alleged. It is frustrating because it does not cross the renal threshold, which occurs at around 180 milligrams per deciliter, where glucose spills into the urine, and it does not exceed the 127 mg per deciliter, which is about 7 millimoles per litre. The point at which the destructive polyol pathway is heavily activated, converted excess glucose into damaging sorbital and driving oxidative stress. A single reading of 105 milligrams per deciliter doesn't cause immediate cellular damage, but it is a check the engine light. So when you see that morning number climb to 105 or 110 milligrams per deciliter after a late night meat meal, you're you're not seeing a failure of your baseline insulin sensitivity. What you are seeing is a transient, time dependent mismatch. Your liver produces glucose all night long. And it can't be cleared effectively because your insulin release at night was lowered by a beautiful piece of physiological design. The glucose just hangs around for hours longer than it would during the day, waiting for morning cortisol to kick in and your circadian rhythm to reset. So this nice graphic shows late night eating plus high melatonin concentration activation of the MT1 and MT2 receptors on the pancreas and the lowered. insulin secretion and therefore the slova glucose clearance. Result High morning blood sugar one hundred and five to one hundred ten milligrams per deciliter. So let's get to clearing that metabolic traffic jam. Simultaneous food intake and high melatonin concentrations are also associated with a marked fall in glucose tolerance. Leaving food in your system when your body is trying to rest means you stay in a fed city. Fuel storing state all night, actively blocking fat loss and promoting long term insulin management issues. The fix is simple, it's elegant and completely free. Change the clock, not just the menu. So to keep your pancreas working properly and wake up with the optimum fast in blood glucose, try to close your eating window at least three hours before your head hits the pillow. If melatonin peaks before your dinner has had time to digest, you don't give your pancreas a chance to do its job effectively. During sleep, your metabolism can smoothly shift into a genuine fasted state, keeping your morning readings precisely where they should be. And then we come to the morning pivot cortisol, the dawn phenomena, and the circadian rhythm metabolism sort of tracking thing. Now, already in this article we've showed that a late night beef supper dumps an undesired cargo of glucose into your circulation at a very moment melatonin is putting your pancreas to sleep. Well what next? What comes after? Well, the night moves into the early morning hours. A second endocrine wave hits. This is where the tail really thickens for the blood analyst or the metabolic health enthusiast. The glucose left over from the dinner last night doesn't seem doesn't just simply hang around. It collides head on with your body's natural awakening mechanism. And that's when we come to cortisol and the dawn phenomena. Now the dawn phenomena, which is your body's natural wake up call. I mean, all humans have a normal surge in blood glucose levels throughout the early morning hours. Generally between four and eight AM, it's called the dawn phenomena. It's not a defect, it's an evolutionary survival strategy, meant to provide, you know, you with the energy that you need to wake up and go and hunt for breakfast. As morning approaches, your brain tells your adrenal glands to release a burst of counter regulatory hormones, mainly cortisol, growth hormone, as well as epinephrine. or adrenaline in the UK. Now cortisol is like a biological dimmer switch, it instructs the liver to break down stored glycogen and release it into the circulation, which is called glycogenolysis, and to produce more glucose, which is called gluconeogenesis. It causes temporary but physiologically appropriate peripheral insulin resistance. Essentially it tells your skeletal muscles to take up glucose so that fuel can be saved for the brain and also the nervous system. So glucome neogenesis and this transient insulin resistance is the next thing to talk about. The collision is late night eating and morning cortisol. If you went to bed fasted, you'd have low baseline blood glucose. The morning cortisol spike would merely raise your blood sugar from a resting trough, let's say 75 milligrams per deciliter, to a perfectly normal, vibrant waking level of about eighty five to ninety milligrams per deciliter. Now your pancreas, jolted out of its melatonin induced stupor, would release a little extra pulse of insulin to end the surge. But what if you ate beef late at night? It created this sluggish, poorly cleansed pool of glucose circulating in your blood all night because melatonin has lowered insulin, as we said. It is now five AM. Your blood sugar is already slow at ninety five milligrams per deciliter, and then the Cortisol kicks in, big time. Your liver throws extra glucose into an already full environment. Now, meanwhile, cortisol temporarily blinds your muscles to the insulin. Your pancreas is attempting to get going but is swamped by the backlog from the meal last night plus the awakening hormones of today. And what's the outcome? Your fasting blood sugar consistently runs between 105 and 115 milligrams per deciliter. You wake up with it higher. And it stays there for a few hours, locking you into a metabolic dead zone where the fat burning is completely turned off. Now, when we look at circadian lab panel biome biomarkers, we can track the shift. So after a decade working in this private blood testing environment, I know that there are dynamic circadian incompatibilities and they're often missed by routine static lab testing. One fasting glucose test shows you where the car is parked, not how it was driven overnight. So, to map a patient's or your own circadian metabolic health, look at some specific test markers. The first one is fasting insulin versus fasting glucose, which many people call the Homer IR equation. Well, the goal is to have fasting insulin lower than 5 and fasting glucose less than 90 milligrams per deciliter. And the insight we'll get from this is when morning glucose is 105, but fasting insulin is very low. Say three, this is pointing straight to a circadian stroke melatonin-driven muted insulin response or an aggressive dawn phenomena, not a chronic systemic insulin resistance, where both would be higher. And then we can do the four-point salivary cortisol curve or diurnal test. The target is doing a fast, then a high increase in the first 30 to 45 minutes after waking. Which is called the cortisol awakening response or C A R. Then a then a smooth, predictable drop-off through the day, bottoming out at midnight. The takeaway here is that people with a flattened or inverted curve, such as increased cortisol late at night, will have a dramatic overnight glucose spike, as late-night cortisol is actively pushing the liver to make glucose overnight while sleeping. Third test is fructosamine. Now the Total here is 200 to 285 micromoles per litre. The insight there is, well, when we look at HBA1C, that's a three-month average of blood sugar, while fructosamine is a shorter period of two to three weeks. If someone changes their eating schedule, i.e., no meal after six pm, fructosamine will reveal the metabolic success and structural decline of glucose weeks before an HPA one C will change. And four, we got the C reactive protein with high sensitivity or high HSCRP. And the target is normally less than one milligram per liter. The insight we would get from that is chronic late night feeding, alters the microbiota and produces systemic circadian stress. So a high HCCRP without an acute injury, by the way, is frequently a marked marker of low grade systemic inflammation that is a result of the metabolism being forced to function during its prescribed. Rest cycle. The bottom line is that a hundred and five milligrams per deciliter in the morning isn't always a sign of a malfunctioning metabolism. Often it's just a sign of a poorly timed lifestyle. We know that morning cortisol will always enhance whatever glucose is left over from the night before, so we can see why timing is essential. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that. Please consider liking, sharing and subscribing and in the words of Arsenal Arnold Schwarzenegger in kindergarten copy. I'll be back.