Tea at night is horrible for us.
I hate to say no to anything food related. But it really was just more than I could handle.
I asked if it would be okay if we stopped the nighttime tea.
No. Nothing keeps her up at night. 5 minutes after she lies down - out cold.
And then I have to deal with the BG fallout.
lol
Anyway - not trying to hijack.
My point that I agree with a previous post that caffeine seems to be different for different people. For us, it would appear that caffeine causes an unreasonably large rise in BG that definitely is distinct from the morning rise.
I have a terrible habit of drinking coffee way past the morning hours. I have to bolus for it all day long. There are times I can use it to offset a low. Like today! I accidentally bolused 12 UNITS of insulin and only needed 2 cups of coffee to help me through the first couple of hours. Then a third… for a little extra time. And then at some point I just switched to cookies. So that I wouldn’t suffer a heart blowout.
My 5 year old can stay up ALL NIGHT LONG. Literally. I can put him in bed with me and try to get him to sleep and find him still awake in the morning. I have to drink caffeine at night to try to outlast him…
I have zero memory of ever getting up without coffee and not being able to figure out a high. In all of my experiments, I would decline steadily. I’d be happy to test it out, but I would be floored to see anything different.
And here’s the thing… I’ve been drinking coffee for probably 12 years? I’ve had it a lot of different ways—well, not black—- and i’ve always done approximately the same amount of insulin. I’ve done it with a splash of milk and a Splenda, with regular creamer, with sugar free creamer… so three different ways. The only time I ever had to really change how much I was doing was when I was in auto mode… I went from about 6 or 7 g per cup to 16 g per cup. It turns out it had nothing to do with the coffee— I was getting back some of my missed insulin from over night.
I read a lot of people saying it spikes them. I’ve always said it doesn’t have any effect on me, but I only drink coffee with breakfast, so it’s hard to know for sure. Coincidentally, just this morning I got up early to work. At 4 a.m.I was 4.5 (81). After two mugs of black coffee, no food, two hours later I’m 5.6 (100). [EDIT: 3.5 hours later, I’m still 5.6.] So a minor rise, and probably not one I’d ever bolus for.
The tea spikes. Trying to deal with high BG for any reason at night is extremely difficult. It takes an unreasonable large amount of insulin. And dosing huge amounts of insulin at night is not something that I can reasonably then go to sleep afterwards. So it ends up being a few factors combined.
I have a similar difference in how beer raises my BG late at night (not a huge spike, but enough to be noticed).
In the evening with dinner, it does not really do much. But later at night, well after dinner, it has a much bigger effect. I know that it is a combination of beer and being a few hours after dinner and nighttime - because without all 3 of those things it doesn’t do anything.
Thankfully coffee has little, if any, affect on my BG. I usually have 3-4 good sized mugs of it each morning with cream and with a few drops of liquid Stevia. It’s so interesting how things impact each of us so differently.
That’s awesome. And a little enviable. I can start at a blood sugar of a 40 and still hit the roof half way into my first cup of coffee. I sometimes have to sit and just watch my cup while I wait for my blood sugar to steady out enough to drink it, and SOMETIMES I bolus and wait but never get it.
This could be the universe though… with an intervention of sorts.
I drink hard core coffee…no unleaded for this self-declared coffee fiend (well really, coffee addict)! And my coffee doesn’t look like no stinking tea (no offense to all you tea lovers).
Proof: about 5 years ago, while visiting our daughter in Missoula, Montana, my husband and fell for coffee from a local place called Black Coffee Roasting Co. We still mail order our beans from there.