What is the deal with Diabetes and Sleep? I Slept like a Baby last Night and Would like to see it Happen Again

I thought it was my diabetes that was messing up my slumber every SINGLE night, but then last night, by luck, my pump was completely quiet, and I slept a solid and glorious 6 hours. Now I’m curious… has it been my pump all along? The 670G is particularly inconsiderate and is known to beep the night away, but are there other things that make sleep difficult? How do you all sleep? If it’s not well, then why? If it’s very well, then how???

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Lol, I’d love a good night’s sleep! I realize I wake myself up a lot to check my CGM instead of just trusting in the alarms. Bleah! Plus last night I woke up (yay!) to toss a cat off the bed right before he gacked up a hairball!! And then there’s hubby’s occasional snoring… :zzz:

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If I can stay in range all night, I sleep so well. If I’m elevated, I can tell I’m not as rested from higher bg alone. And then the whole Dexcom alert dynamic adds to the mess…

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First off, a disclaimer: I’m not on basal and rarely ever worried about lows/highs during the night.

I sleep terribly, without a pump or CGM. :laughing: I hardly ever check my Libre during the night. I have Hashimoto’s, and anytime my thyroid is off, my insomnia gets worse. If I’m stressed, it gets worse. If the moon and stars are aligned just so, it gets worse (not really; but there are times it’s worse for no apparent reason). I take melatonin to be able to get to sleep, otherwise I’d be awake until 3-4am. If I wake anytime after 5-6ish, I rarely go back to sleep. It’s been this way since I was about 14 (which is when I was diagnosed with Hashi’s).

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It’s weird I know, but the best sleep I get is when I’m in the 200 range. I wake up to lows and going to the bathroom mostly. I recently turned off high alarms at night because I rarely ever go above 225, and I enjoy my sleep.

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I’m like @T1Allison. I sleep well if I’m in range and have no Dexcom or pump alarms. However, I also have Graves’ disease and severe allergies, so there are times those things keep me awake or wake me up, it’s not always diabetes’ fault. And I also have mild sleep apnea, so that doesn’t help matters. Overall, I’d say I don’t sleep well, and it absolutely negatively affects my daytime energy and productivity.

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I’m reading everyone’s posts, and there’s some very interesting (and conflicting!) stuff in there, but this one made me think of something. It probably really isn’t entirely my diabetes’ fault either, but that’s ALWAYS in the background. My nights are like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and last night my porridge was just right, AND there was a lottery ticket at the bottom of my bowl. :grin:

Between physical pain, when there’s that, musical beds with children, having to use the bathroom, and a busy mind, sleep is disturbed regularly anyway. You mix in highs and lows, CGM alarms, and a rude, chatty pump, and it becomes impossible.

Hairball concerns though… that would take it to another level. :grin:

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The alarms. No one sleeps thanks to The Dexcom. That thing. Gah. Sometimes one of us wakes up to the alarm, other times we don’t fully wake and the dratted thing goes off over and over again. I’ve even seen it happen (while awake to test this theory) that EH is convinced he’s gotten up and eaten something, but he hasn’t actually eaten anything and he’s just going lower (this occurred over 20 minutes and he wasn’t dangerously low, I am not an awful person.)

And the peeing. Hell, I don’t even have diabetes, but between the two of us we get up a minimum of three times a night on a good night.

So sleeping here sucks.

There’s certainly windows of good sleep like @Pianoplayer7008 mentioned, but I never thought to correlate them with BG numbers specifically (like @docslotnick noting that if he’s at 200 and sleeping well).

Often there will be persistent sticky highs which are hard to budge. Pre-Dex I think EH just slept them off (high BG makes him so tired). Now I feel like I lie awake waiting to see if there’s a turnaround or downward trend before I call it a night. I am totally a night owl though (we both are depending on work schedules) so part of this is my own fault for being willing to stay up too late to check what’s trending on the Dex. :relaxed:

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Yes, windows. I had mine last night. It was my triennial. It’s 2:46 am right now. That magic has worn off. And I thought that was interesting, too, what docslotnick had to say. Last night I was right around a 200, but I wasn’t rising or falling. Not that I’d shoot for it, but I wonder if it isn’t a cushy number. I used to do that in my daily life, walk around at a 200+, because it was well-padded. It would make for a nice trip to the playground or to the school, but I never thought about it for sleep.

I think I’ll sit up for a while and look at the ceiling and consider the theory. :roll_eyes::roll_eyes::roll_eyes::roll_eyes::roll_eyes:

Didn’t mean to hit that so many times, but then I realized it’s me staring at the ceiling…

We’re on family vacation right now (oxymoron), and the people here are not used to my pump. They’re not even used to my diabetes. They look like zombies in the morning as they huddle over their coffees and talk about “WHAT was going off all night”… It makes sly smile… I’m sick like that. :smiley:

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I read somewhere that melatonin could cause diabetics blood sugar to increase, because melatonin may work against insulin. Quite some time ago, I took melatonin to adjust my bedtime. The next morning, I had an unusually high fasting BG. Have you found the use of melatonin may lead to higher BG the next day?

Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer to that - I’ve been taking it every night for several years, long before I was testing my BG levels. Considering how precious sleep is right now (single parenting while my husband is on the “front lines” of this virus issue as a nurse), I won’t have an opportunity to see if there’s a noticeable difference anytime soon. That’s an interesting connection, though, and one I’ve never heard of.

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Sleep is important! Even if melatonin were to cause my BG to go high, I think that the benefit from a good night’s rest and sleep is important!

I appreciate all the work of our healthcare providers during this difficult times. Thank you all!

For a little levity- somewhere out there, someone must have stockpiled 1 year supply of toilet paper - Or some ridiculously large quantity! There are no toilet paper at my nearby grocery stores. I’m ok with supplies. I also have paper towels.

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I think unfortunately that many of those shortages are caused by people trying to arbitrage the shortage. Look on Ebay for evidence. 52 idiots purchased a pack of toilet paper for $45 each plus shipping. I will use poison ivy before I pay $50 for a 9 pack of TP. It’s cheaper to get the bidet toilet seat shipped and installed.

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That’s what my nephew said, he’s ok, he has a “bidet”!

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ROTFLOL!! :joy_cat::joy_cat:

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I have very interrupted sleep and I think it is the CGM. For years I used the Animas Ping, a very basic insulin pump with only two kinds of alarms – one that insulin was going to run out and another that insulin delivery had stopped. I never received that latter occlusion alarm because I never had an occlusion. Sleep was also reasonably good the 3 months I had the Tandem x2 and was waiting for the g6 to be released.

Once the CGM came online with the Basal IQ, I never got a good night’s sleep. I turned off all the alarms that can be turned off. I still don’t sleep well. I think it is the on and off action of the Basal IQ that wakes me up even when I am not going low. I did raise my basals at night and it got a little better. But do I want to spend my nights above 140? I think not. A1c has already risen by 2 points from previous percentile in the low 6s.

Do others feel the off and on of basals like I do? I am now going for Control IQ hoping that the Sleep Mode will work better for me.

I just want to let you know - I took melatonin last night, it didn’t negatively affect my BG at all :slight_smile:

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