A sure way to find pre-diabetes.

I have some good friends that love to pontificate about how little sleep they need. They wear their “four hours a night”, like a badge of honor. I don’t know how they do it. My body and brain need at least eight hours of sleep every night and nine hours of sleep some nights. I know this, and yet I still did a stupid thing. I spent 13 months doing an interesting assignment which meant had to neglect my sleep to the point that I averaged 5.5 hours a night over that 13 month period. Being sleep deprived is not healthy and it can easily and quickly drive blood sugar up. That I knew. What I failed to appreciate was, how fast it happens and how much it can increase blood sugar.  During this 13-month period, I was totally surprised at how hard it was to control!

Here is what happened. From July of 2020 to September of 2021, I was driving about four hours a day driving, and on top of that, working 100 miles away for 10 hours a day. The opportunity was very interesting, but it left no time for any kind of reasonable sleep schedule. Although my sleep quality was good during that time, the quantity was severely lacking. It was impossible to be sleeping by 6:15 in the evening in order to get eight hours of sleep before my 2:15 am alarm sounded.

I watched my blood sugar climb. My post prandial blood sugars, (blood sugar measured one hour after eating a meal) were regularly hitting 145 or 150mg/dL and later, my fasting blood sugars began to climb to 110 and then to 115mg/dL. I have always tried to keep my post prandial blood sugars to 130 mg/dL and my fasting blood sugar below 100mg/dL., as they are the accepted and respected numbers stated by experts far more expert than me.

‘No worries”, I thought. After all, I am a professional health coach that specializes in using nutrition, exercise and yes, sleep to control blood sugar. “I will just take a little bit of my own medicine”, I thought.

I increased my exercise as much as I could, given my schedule, and started reducing my carbohydrate intake. Normally, I can handle about 175 grams a day of carbohydrates, at my usual exercise level of 4 hours per week, but without adequate sleep, I could not handle anywhere near 175 grams of carbs.

My lack of sleep forced me to up my exercise to six hours per week and eventually, drop my carbs to 80 grams per day! In fact, I was doing time restricted eating, (18/6), a 24-hour fast every 2 weeks every 3 months, a 2-day, water only fast. This approach was all aimed at maintaining, as best I could, my insulin sensitivity. The longer I was sleep deprived, the more I had to adjust both my carb intake, exercise, and fasting to keep my numbers from getting out of control. By the time I finished having endured 13 months of sleep deprivation, I still could not keep my fasting blood sugar levels under 110mg/dL, or get my A1C lower than 5.7%, which are both in the pre-diabetic range.

My lesson is, I will try to never go for even one night without sufficient, high quality sleep. I am just like people that must make sleep a top priority. There are likely a lot more of you out there, that have been toughing it out, and really, in my opinion, it is not worth it. Here is a very good, brief article from 2020 which does a great job of discussing the sleep and blood sugar relationship. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/physical-health/sleep-and-blood-glucose-levels  (Dec. 4, 2020)

My numbers are back in line now and I plan to keep them that way. If you suspect your blood sugar is starting to climb at all, and you are unsure where to start to fix it, drop me an email. I will be happy to help. How did I fix my problem? I quit the opportunity that was exciting as heck and pursued other ones that were a lot closer to home!

“Good health….sleep on it”        

Thomas-