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What is normal blood sugar, and how does it vary during a 24-hour cycle?

By Tim Lundeen  Beginning Noozer
Published: 19 January 2008 01:31 pm

- There is a good talk on normal blood sugar available online, given by Prof JS Christiansen at the Annual Meeting of the EASD, Copenhagen, Sep 2006.

I'm sure that some of his "normal" subjects already had some metabolic damage, because their H1Ac's were at 5.4% and hit peak blood sugar of 160, both much higher than you will see in young normal-weight subjects. So I think this study has higher averages than true undamaged normal, but is still a good indication of normal profiles.

Here is a typical day's glucose levels with three meals, no snacks:



(Tissue levels tend to be slightly less than blood levels when glucose is flat or on the way up, and higher than blood levels on the way down.) You can see that the typical tissue levels start at 80, rise to 125 after breakfast, drop down to 80 again by lunch, climb to 115, drop back down to 80, and repeat one more time for dinner.

For normal subjects, peak blood sugar occurs 45 minutes after eating.

During the night, blood glucose is quite flat:



The first slide above shows the typical "dawn effect", where insulin is reduced and blood sugar elevated in the morning, with a higher peak after breakfast than for later meals.

Based on this observation, Dr Christiansen did a "quick study" on the effects of skipping breakfast for people with diabetes:



As you can see, if you have a damaged glucose-insulin metabolism, the dawn effect is quite significant, and you will be much better off either skipping breakfast or eating a very low-carbohydrate breakfast.

My conclusions from this:

• Eat small amounts of carbohydrates early in the day, or skip eating altogether until late morning.
  
• Measure for peak blood sugar starting 45 minutes after eating, then every 15 minutes till your blood sugar is the same or drops
  
• Keep your peak blood sugar under 120 ideally, under 140 for sure.
  
• Make sure your blood sugar drops to 83 before you eat again
  
• Don't snack
  
• Make sure your blood sugar is at 83 before you go to sleep, because it will not drop significantly during the night. So reduce carbs at dinner, don't snack on carbohydrates after dinner.

You can listen to the full presentation, recommended.

I also have articles with more information on managing your blood sugar, and on the benefits of keeping your blood sugar in a normal range.

Hat tip to Jenny, who has a great site if you have diabetes, or if you don't and want to learn more about healthy diets.