Ep. 146 - High Blood Sugar in the morning, Why are they high? What to do about it? | The Dawn Phenomenon | Free Intermittent Fasting Plan for OMAD

***JOIN THE FASTING LIFESTYLE CHALLENGE THAT STARTS OCTOBER 26, 2022!

- Want to set yourself up for the BEST holiday season yet? Yup, it's almost here! 

- Want to get the SCALE moving in the right direction and end the year strong?

- New to fasting or want to get back on track? Need to break that plateau?

- Ready to finally stop obsessing about your diet?

We'll teach you how to LOSE weight for good, and use 'fast cycling' to achieve uncommon results! Join us October 26th for the Fasting Lifestyle Challenge!  REGISTER HERE! Click the Link for DATES, DETAILS, and FAQ’s!

https://challenge.thefastingforlife.com/registration

In this episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss the dawn phenomenon, early morning blood sugar levels, how and why to test your blood sugar, and what you can do to get those numbers down!

Let’s continue the conversation. Click the link below to JOIN the Fasting For Life Community, a group of likeminded, new and experienced fasters! The first two rules of fasting need not apply!

Fasting For Life Community - Join HERE

This week in the community…

New to the podcast and wondering where to start? Head to the website and download our FREE Fast Start Guide, 6 simple steps to put One Meal a Day Fasting (OMAD) into practice!

Maybe you are experienced as a faster and wondering about your results and IF they could be linked to INSULIN resistance? Head over to the website and download our FREE Insulin Resistance Assessment!

Or get both here at our website: 

www.thefastingforlife.com/resources

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please tap on the stars below and consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it helps bring you the best original content each week. We also enjoy reading them!

Sign up for the Fasting For Life newsletter at www.thefastingforlife.com

Follow Fasting For Life: www.facebook.com/thefastingforlife

www.instagram.com/thefastingforlife

Join the Community on Facebook!

Fasting For Life Ep. 146 Transcript

 
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hello. I'm Dr. Scott Dr. Watier.

[Tommy Welling]
Tommy Welling. And you're listening to the Fasting for Life podcast.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
This podcast is about using fasting as a tool to regain your health, achieve ultimate wellness, and live the life you truly deserve.

[Tommy Welling]
Each episode is a short conversation on a single topic with immediate, actionable steps. We cover everything from fat loss and health and wellness to the science of lifestyle design.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We started fasting for life because of how fasting has transformed our lives, and we hope to share the tools that we have learned along the way. Everyone want to hop on real quick before we get into today's episode and let everyone know that the next seven day fasting lifestyle challenge registration link is live. You can go to the show notes.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Click the link for more details or you can go to WW the fasting for life. Dot com forward slash live. Wanted to speak directly to you if you've been listening to the podcast, maybe you're new and just getting started or maybe you've been fasting for a while and really trying to adopt that lifestyle and the scale just won't move beyond that to to for 3 to £5 each week.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Or maybe you feel like you've hit that dreaded weight loss plateau or maybe the hunger. Or as my wife likes to say, the hangry ness has snuck up and bit you on the backside and you just can't seem to get away from those cravings or the consistency of your fasting schedule just isn't allowing you to get back on track if you've fallen by the wayside.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
This seven day lifestyle challenge is exactly for you. It's coming up in the near future. Please don't miss out on this opportunity. We are super excited to be leveling up this experience and leaving that diet baggage behind, giving you the confidence and the habits to build that long term weight loss and fasting lifestyle success. Go to the show notes.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You can click the link for WW the fasting for life dot com forward slash live. We will hope to see you on the inside. And now to today's episode. Hey, everyone, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. My name is Dr. Scott. What are your. And I'm here as always. I'm a good friend and colleague, Tommy Welling. Good afternoon to you, sir.

[Tommy Welling]
Hey, Scott, how are you doing?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Fantastic, my friend. Good to be here today. Looking forward to today's conversation. We're going to talk about blood sugar numbers in the morning. Why are they high? What could it be? What do you have to do about it? The dawn phenomenon and everything in between. We're also going to talk, of course, about fasting and how fasting is such a powerful tool to specifically today undo some of those high morning blood sugar numbers.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And help y'all get the weight off. Keep the weight off and regain your health and live the quality of life that you deserve. So if you are new to the Fasting for Life podcast, welcome in. If you want to know more about us, you can go back and listen to the first couple of episodes, learn more about our stories, how fasting has transformed our lives, and then all the way now up to I don't know what episode we're in, but in 140 or 150, somewhere in that range, something like that.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Why we do this weekly, why we've developed some programs around it, why we do our challenges, which we have coming up in three weeks, three weeks from tomorrow. And one of the main things that we want to do each episode is to make sure that we're giving you actionable things that you can take out of this 20 or 30 minute conversation and put into your fasting weight loss health journey.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So yeah, if we do our job correctly, I think we're going to do that today because this topic is incredibly common in our ecosystem and in the conversations we have and during the challenges and during, you know, when people are new to fasting or new to a potential diagnosis of a blood sugar related issue like pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome, type two, diabetes, etc. Knowing what your numbers are is important.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So we're going to walk you through that. If you're a long term listener, we want to welcome you in as well. We appreciate you continuing to be on this journey with us. Drop a subscribe or follow whatever it is now that you do on Apple Podcasts. Wherever it is that you get your podcast, give us a review if you would.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We prefer the five star kind of course that tells the podcasting world that we are delivering value to you each and every week. So Tom Dawn phenomenon. What is the one thing that we hear when people start looking at their numbers or they start fasting or they start a new air quotes diet or a lifestyle overhaul, right? Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
What is the one thing that we hear when they look at their numbers in the morning?

[Tommy Welling]
Is it normal that my numbers are higher in the morning? My numbers are higher? Is this normal?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And there's some nuance to that. Right. And if you're not tracking your blood sugar, one of the easiest ways to know where you fall on the blood sugar spectrum on healthy versus unhealthy is to simply track your morning blood sugar numbers. And it's the same thing that happens when you are scheduled for your yearly physical or blood work, or if you are already in the category of pre-diabetic or diabetic, then you would be doing this at 3 to 6 months intervals where you're checking your blood sugar as your one sees your fasting blood sugar, etc. Typically there's a cholesterol panel in other labs that go along with that, but they they have you fast

[Dr. Scott Watier]
minimum 8 hours or as close to 8 hours as possible for a fasting blood glucose test. And then if you're doing a cholesterol panel, what, that would be 12 hours, but nothing but water. Right. So we want to get an idea of where your numbers are. So if you wake up and you test your numbers or if you wake up and you have signs of insulin resistance, which is you're always fatigued, never really felt well rested, brain fog, craving that morning, coffee that morning, caffeine hit or you wake up just incredibly hungry or the opposite.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You're not really ever hungry at all in the mornings and that's just become normal to you. That's some of the indicators that you may be having higher blood sugar numbers or higher cravings or higher things that we just mentioned in AM. Yeah. So what is dawn phenomenon, how it relates to the baseline blood work numbers that you have can be an important differentiation on how you go about getting the weight off, reversing the blood sugar numbers.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Problem is, is that the blood sugar is the downstream effect, which is where fasting comes into play because it can be so powerful in reducing the cause of those blood sugar numbers, which is the insulin's effectiveness or that insulin resistance piece.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, it's interesting too, because there's definitely different levels of how much of a dawn phenomenon is going on here. And like so just that one question, my blood sugar is higher in the morning. Is this normal? It's almost like a loaded question because then it starts to become, well, how much higher is it? Right. Like there's.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Two boys. Yeah, yeah. Or the toddler. Answer No. But why? Yeah, no, it's not normal. But why? Yeah, right. And it just you could give them any answer in the world. But why? We want to know why that number is higher. Yeah, so let's define it. Dawn phenomenon. It's referred to as the dawn effect. It's earned it name from the reoccurrence of elevated blood sugars around the hours of three and 8 a.m..

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So one of the other scenarios that used to happen with my dad before he reversed his diabetes that he had for decades and was on 120 units of insulin a day, plus 17 other medications before he lost the £60 and has completely reversed all of that and gotten his life back. He would wake up between two and 4 a.m., which is the time of your circadian rhythm where your liver that's the liver hours in between that time where your body will dump glucose into the bloodstream.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And what will happen is it will give you an elevated blood sugar number. And it doesn't always happen that early in the morning. But some people will wake up and they will have these blood sugar spikes and be like, whoa, I didn't eat anything. What happened? So the dawn phenomenon is very common among those with insulin resistance, which is the upstream effect of that blood sugar, that downstream blood sugar number that pops up and puts you in a category of pre-diabetes or diabetes.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And there's a few main causes of it before we get into those causes. It's like, okay, what are the things that promote, right? This is the framework. You haven't eaten anything. Why is my blood sugar high? Well, you've got epinephrine or adrenaline, which is the fight or flight hormone.

[Tommy Welling]
Mm.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. You've got cortisol, which is the quote, stress hormone, you've got glucagon which tells the liver to release glucose into the blood and you've got growth hormone. Those are really the four main hormones that cause glucose to be released into the blood. So what's happening in the morning? Well, cortisol is raising because it's your wake up hormone, it's your body's natural alarm clock.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Like the crazy part is like some of that physiology is. So it's normal. It's really good. Like, right. Like we need to be to have a natural process that happens within our brain and in our body to naturally wake us up. So it's it's really good that that these things are happening. However, some of the things that put the weight on, keep the extra fat on, build up insulin resistance, make that blood sugar spike that much worse in the morning.

[Tommy Welling]
And some of our lifestyle choices only compound that to like eating late into the night, not getting really good sleep, increased cortisol levels all of these things dramatically increase the actual the degree to which we see this dawn phenomenon too.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And so the question that we get sometimes too is, okay, can dawn phenomenon happen outside of people that have diabetes or pre-diabetes? Right. So and the answer is yes, this is a normal phase. Again, normal physiological process that is happening. So in the middle of the night, your liver is going to say, okay, again, remember those hours, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So this process starts around 3 a.m., anywhere between 3 a.m. to 8 a.m.. And if you work, shift, work or nights or you might have a shifted rhythm or an imbalance, circadian rhythm and your liver has two processes that will say, all right, let's get some energy into the body and start this wake up process. Right? Yeah. But if it's dysfunction and your insulin isn't working as effectively as it should, that's where you're going to see this bigger Delta guy.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So when you wake up in the morning, normal blood sugar, if you look depending on what reference you're referencing, anywhere from 80 to 100, 100 to 125 is pre-diabetes 125 or greater is diabetes. So if we're waking up in the morning and our numbers are high, but then they go higher without food, then you were just talking about one of the causes, which is that late night carbohydrate laden influx.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, right. When your cortisol and your insulin should be at its lowest point of the day, you're whacking it, right? Yeah. With this with this intake. The other part is, is that it's a normal physiological process. But if your baseline is higher when you wake up in the morning, it's also going to be higher. And what we want with control in reversing diabetes and pre-diabetes and never getting it in the first place and being able to get the weight off and not have that insulin resistant weight loss resistant type cycle of lose 20 gain 20 lose 20 gain 20 or 25, 25, 30, 40.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And then all of a sudden you just stuck and you can't get it off is to shrink that delta between those peaks, those peaks and valleys, if you just imagine like a sine wave on a graph, right? Yeah. I just the, the line drawing of a wave. We want to reduce the valley. Yeah, we want to reduce those spikes.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So in a healthy individual without blood sugar imbalance or insulin resistance, they secrete enough insulin or the insulin is effective enough.

[Tommy Welling]
Insulin sensitivity right there.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. Right to to keep those numbers normal. But it can be further compounded because our body is more insulin resistant compared to the rest of the day. So we want to make sure that, you know, we are not doing anything in the evening hours to make it worse and that we truly are experiencing a dawn type phenomenon, which is an indicator that you are on the path or could possibly be one of those millions of Americans that has undiagnosed blood sugar issues or pre-diabetes.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. And I noticed you you've said cortisol multiple times during this conversation, too. And that's such a big one, because you and I have both warned that I don't need as much sleep. You know that. That badge of honor.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right? Right.

[Tommy Welling]
Well, we've talked about it in the past that just a couple hours less than optimal sleep, just one night increases cortisol levels, it increases insulin resistance and cortisol levels. As soon as we increase the cortisol levels, because it is a stress to the body to have insufficient sleep, it doesn't have to be pulling an all nighter. It could just be five and a half, 6 hours of sleep, one night's bad, and then it keeps going from there.

[Tommy Welling]
That's going to increase the effect of this dawn phenomenon. That's going to increase cortisol. The body looks at cortisol. It looks like a stressor, like, hey, you know what would help in a stressful situation? Like if Tiger was.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Coming after me?

[Tommy Welling]
So let's let's dump out some energy, right? And so it takes it the same way. So cut down on sleep a little bit. All of a sudden, blood sugar is higher than what's happening might be one C is going up because every night and every morning I have higher blood sugars and the cycle continues.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
That's a good point about the HBO and see so you know is Dawn phenomena really something you need to worry about and or need to fix? Right. If you're having elevated blood sugar numbers in the morning, we're going to give you some things here. Fasting is one of them to track this. The bottom line is you need a baseline, so you need a blood work test like we've already mentioned.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And then you need to learn how to test your numbers throughout the day. So first of all, is this something you need to fix? And, you know, how do you know? Right. So, yeah, it's important that even though your fasting glucose might be elevated, you may have lower or normal glucose values throughout the rest of the day. So one of the key things that happens with fasting because A1 C is looking at the course of 90 days, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So that's going to be the average of one glucose reading compared to you just, you know, you have a bad night's sleep, eat a bunch of stuff later in the evening than you normally eat. And you've got one number that's really high. Well, okay, that's an outlier, right? So you've got to know what what you're looking at in terms of what your baseline is compared to what your 90 day averages.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And we like to look at the upstream, which is why fasting is so powerful because we're controlling that that stimulation of insulin, we're giving the body time without it to actually increase that sensitivity or the effectiveness of it and allow you to tap into long term fat stores, which is part of and we've done a podcast episode on this, the effectiveness of the keto diet, not just the keto diet, but getting into nutritional ketosis with fasting is going to dramatically decrease these numbers over time because we've had people that have worked with us and communicated with us and been part of the programs, have done challenges and one of our original clients that we worked

[Dr. Scott Watier]
with, she lost a incredible amount of weight, but she was still having higher numbers a couple of points throughout the day, which was indicating that there was still a broken pathway underneath. So what what eventually started to fix that was that consistency with those fasting windows, which then allowed those those peaks and valleys to get closer together. So it was more like rolling hills rather than like Mt. Everest and like a giant death, like the.

[Tommy Welling]
Mariana Trench or.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Something. Yeah, like a trench. Right. Exactly where I was going with that.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, super high and super low. So like literally compress those gaps. There is what you're looking to do and what we tap into the fasting and we actually give the body a chance to lower those insulin levels down. Then what happens is they're coming down on average because you're not going be able to control every spike.

[Tommy Welling]
Like you're always going to need to break that fast. Right. Bring in some more nutrition. Okay. It's time for lunch. It's time for dinner or whatever the case may be. But as I start to set those boundaries around intentional fasting, I start to naturally control like, let's say some of the late night snacking, which can be so detrimental for those morning numbers, which are literally the the indicator or the measuring stick for prediabetes and for diabetes.

[Tommy Welling]
So even if I was just putting some boundaries like that, setting an intentional 12 hour fast, let's say, let alone a like a 16 or 18 or even longer potentially, then I'm starting to allow insulin to come down because I haven't had the need for additional insulin and additional blood sugar spikes throughout the day. And all of a sudden I might, you know, check my fasting blood sugar and it's a few points lower.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, so that's a good point right there. So some of you might be brand new to fasting, going blood sugar. What? I'm just trying to get breakfast. Okay. So we're going to talk to you in just a second. But to truly understand if it's dawn phenomenon or if it's dietary things, right. Just to be clear, you need to know your baseline and then you need to test your glucose throughout the day.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And you can simply just do a in AB test where you eat a meal and you track your morning numbers and then the next night you don't eat that meal and you track your morning numbers like you can do like a simple AB test here to see if it is the stuff you're putting on your plate or the nutrition that you're choosing during your eating window or if it's that underlying physiology, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So for the beginners, that consistency with the fasting window is really the best place to start. Now, if you're dabbling with intermittent fasting, then you're probably not going to see the result that you expect, or you might see it initially, but then it's going to slow down, right?

[Tommy Welling]
So many random data points sometimes if you're not being consistent with it, like you don't have to be at 16 or 18 or 20 hours. But if you're consistently doing, let's say, a 12 hour fast, that's going to give you good data because the consistency right there.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And there's one more subset of individual here that we want to mention is if you are managing diabetes already and if you're a day farther down the path of blood sugar disorders and you have type two diabetes and you're managing it with medication, especially insulin, specifically insulin, excuse me. Then there's also another effect called the smog effect, which can cause your numbers in the morning to be increased dramatically.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And that is a different situation. So if you're not managing your diabetes with insulin and this is not what's happening to you, but it is something that we want to mention. This is what happens when you skip a meal or a snack or you take too much or too little short or long acting insulin for the nighttime. Then your blood sugar crashes overnight and then it rebounds in the morning.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So if you are having that, obviously speak to your provider and be like, Hey, this is what's happening. I don't feel like it's managing it right. I don't feel right. I feel different. This is what I'm trying to do with fasting and the dietary changes I'm making. Yeah, because one of the things here is if you feel that insulin is a solution to your long term blood sugar or metabolic health and weight issues, then you're going to have to have a come to Jesus moment at some point and realize that the insulin itself, the medication itself is proliferating the disease.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And this is where the big Aha came for me personally with Dr. Fong, knowing my dad's history, etc., I was like, Oh, wait a minute, that's the end point. How do I never end up there? Right? So yeah, if you have type two diabetes and you're taking things like metformin, you know, Trulicity and things like that, and by the way, not medical advice.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Just just throwing this out here, though, because it is a point of clarification. This is not the summary effect. This emoji effect is when you are treating with insulin. So yeah, small subset of individuals, but I just want to make that really, really clear. So back to the Dawn phenomenon and elevated fasting blood sugar numbers or elevated blood sugar numbers in the morning.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
What else can we do? You already mentioned sleep, Tommie. Right. And we also touched a little bit of on carbohydrate intake, right? Those are 2/1 things, but there's a few others that we can do pretty easily that you can then continue to test over the days, two weeks to months. And you should see that steady decline.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. A couple of them that that I really like one big one is taking a look at what you're actually eating for breakfast because like if you are eating breakfast.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Oh yeah. Or, or the recommendation of don't wait too long to eat breakfast if your blood sugar numbers are high in the morning.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, we see that a lot too. And that, that one is. Yeah. So let's come back to that one. Yeah. So, so if you are already skipping breakfast then that's a really good thing for, for your insulin levels, for blood sugar, things like that. But if, if breakfast is a normal part of your everyday but you are finding your morning numbers are higher if you're eating a lower carbohydrate breakfast, focusing on good fats and good proteins rather than carbohydrates in the morning, that's probably going to help a little bit.

[Tommy Welling]
Right. Same thing with with bookending your dinner with some sort of activity, like a walk to kind of blunt the insulin, blunt the blood sugar spike, things like that. So taking a look at what's happening first thing in the morning and right before bed or in the evening can be can be really, really helpful. Right.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So the breakfast point is a good one. So if you're fasting and say your window is 8 a.m. to like 4 p.m., right? You're doing a68 window. You're new to fasting, you're having that window because you take medication in the morning or you wake up starving or you just hate being hungry, or maybe you get headaches or maybe you dehydrated or whatever, whatever the reason is, that's your window, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
That is a huge point to eat. Breakfast lowering carbohydrates, especially if you're in the morning number is already high because all you're going to do is make that peak even higher.

[Tommy Welling]
Right.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So 100.

[Tommy Welling]
Percent for Asian cream. Yeah. In your calling. Sugary creamy.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Coffee. Yeah. Where it's like is it coffee or is it sugar and cream with a splash or is it a milkshake? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tommy Welling]
I saw somebody with one of those earlier today. I was like, That's not coffee right now.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Get out of here. Right. So, yeah, it's been a long time. It's a learning curve with coffee for me, right? Never used to drink it then. I used to only drink it back then I got into some of the boozy stuff and then I was like, Get out of here, boogie. Let's get back to the basics. Straight black diesel.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, good sourced coffee too. If you're not enjoying your black coffee, it's probably because it's not the right coffee for you.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, that's a huge point.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
That's another episode. So yeah, huge, huge point about eating breakfast, lowering carbohydrates. If you are having food earlier in the day and I love the after dinner, what the research on this is so powerful or after meal walk. Really? Yeah. The blood sugar spike is so much less so as we come up with this so.

[Tommy Welling]
Little effort.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Roselyn offered you 30 minute walk if you don't have to get out your workout clothes and put on your sneakers. And that's why the dogs right now drive to the gym. No, you can literally have a huge impact on morning blood sugar numbers by simply walking after dinner. So I absolutely love that. So yeah.

[Tommy Welling]
That sets up your next day for success. You talk about, you know, the next day, you know, morning glucose. It's incredible. But so getting back to that, that previous recommendation.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Do more things about dinner then. Okay, you brought me here. So yeah, I told me to wait. So I want to wait because this one makes my brain hurt. The last one we're going to go over right. Moving your dinner earlier in the in the day can also have a huge effect on your morning blood sugar number. And then if you are going to have good natural sources of carbohydrates.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. Not the refined, processed stuff you buy. Now, you should know how we feel about that, limiting that as much as possible, right? Sure. Yeah. Then if you're going to do that, put those earlier in the day and move that dinner earlier. And that could be a simple task where one day you have the same meal at 6 p.m. and one day you have the same meal at 4 p.m., and then you'll see what happens with those morning blood sugar numbers.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So a couple more things you can do in regards to dinner or the last meal or moving that meal earlier. Okay. Last one. The recommendation of don't wait too long to eat breakfast. If you are experiencing dawn phenomenon in your morning, blood sugars are high.

[Tommy Welling]
Oh my whole face like melts.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I just saw a real about this recently right so on our on our fasting for life page anyhow if you go to the page it and we're not great at that the Instagram version right not not great at it so definitely not my thing but if you go there and then you you're on it and then it's like it shows you like, like pages.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And there was a dietician speaking about, you know, breakfast being super important if you have morning blood sugar numbers, because what it's going to do is an elicit an insulin response, which then can lower your blood glucose. Yeah, but you're in a catch 22. The cat's got its tail and it's spinning in circles.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Have you ever had thought that? Hey, it's kind of warm in my kitchen. Maybe I should, like, open up the fridge doors, you know, and, like, let some of the cold air out to cool off my kitchen. It's kind of like that.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Like I never thought. I know. That's ridiculous.

[Tommy Welling]
All right, well, it's it's ridiculous to the same degree that causing an insulin spike to lower your higher morning blood glucose is a good idea because it's just not thermodynamically, you know, sound. It's not good biochemistry.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, it's just. Why not just skip breakfast? Why not just let your insulin like your blood sugar numbers come down? Because as the day goes on, you're going to have different things that cause your blood sugars to spike and rise and lower and rise and lower stress. Again, cortisol is a big one. Adrenaline. Remember those things we mentioned in the beginning, the hormones, epinephrine, adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol, glucagon, growth hormone.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. Exercise traffic. Right. Yeah. I was getting in a little fender bender. The boss is calling you. He's on vacation, right? Husband or wife's having a bad day. Something can cause these ups and downs. But typically, as you go throughout the day, your cortisol and your insulin are going to be at its lowest in the evening. So let's not mess that up.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
They're also going to be the highest in the morning. That is why fasting blood sugar tests are done typically in the morning. We want to see what that peak is right for a baseline. Yep. So why would we throw fuel on the fire or try to cool down our kitchen by opening up the freezer? Right. It doesn't make much sense.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So couple of things you can do if you are one of those people that I mentioned earlier that wakes up ravenous. Right. Or that that empty gut feeling, that's an imbalance. Okay, so what we're going to do to help you get through that is you want to stay hydrated and use some form of Himalayan or sea salt into your water.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Drop a teaspoon in there, chug that thing down, give it 15 minutes. You should feel a tremendous amount better.

[Tommy Welling]
Wow. Yeah, that's. That's huge. Actionable and in a whole lot better than, you know, grabbing some juice or like a quick bite in the morning to try to try to drop that bottle.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right, right, right. You know, it's crazy. Man is growing up in New England and I'll keep this really brief. But it was an old house, right? Like colonial time, not like 200 plus years old. This house drop a marble in the kitchen. It rolls all the way through into the bedroom line. Right. It was very drafty. My sister and I bedrooms are upstairs in the actual attic, like the old peak, like slanted ceilings.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And we had one gas stove in the kitchen between the kitchen and the living room downstairs that heated the whole house. Right. So there are some mornings that that would be on the pilot when they kicked Tonya and my mom would literally open the oven to take the chill out of the house. Yeah. And the oven was literally a chimney with the way from the gas stove that had a pot of water on it to keep moisture in the air.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And I'm like, can't we just turn the thing that's designed to do this on while now we want to conserve? So I'm going to open the oven. So, right. Mom, if you're listening, love you. Thank you for taking the chill out of the cold. Frigid right now. New England house didn't make much sense to me anyway. So just to recap here, as we talk about the dawn phenomenon, is it a normal physiological process?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yes, it is. Is is dawn phenomenon something you have to overly worry about or concern yourself with or fix? Not necessarily. But if it is something that you're experiencing, you want to be aware of what it is, what's causing it, and then most importantly, what we can do to lower that, which is, you know, focus on the sleep, reduce the late night carbs, eat dinner earlier, move your meal, or if you're going to eat healthy forms of carbs, eat them earlier in the day, walk after dinner.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You know, if you are eating breakfast, lower that carbohydrate contents are not spiking that blood sugar. And this is one of the coolest things that we see is during our challenges. We've got one coming up on October 26, Tomi. That's correct, right? Yes. Last two of the year, I'll just mention this real quick is we see even in just that seven days, we see people's blood sugar numbers drop 20, 30, 40, 50 points for the people that are tracking it.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You do not need to charitable, but these are some people that have been listening for a while and they jumped in and they they've hit a plateau or they they need a reset. They come in and like, I cannot believe it, but my morning blood sugars dropped 20 points. It's only been three days like. Yes, and guess what, the scales next and then a couple of days later.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So yeah, super pumped about this challenge coming up. We've only got two left for the year. This one is strategically right around Halloween, which is the start of the holiday season. Holiday season. But if you go to any of the major big box stores right now or Lowe's or Home Depot or Costco, you're going to notice that the Christmas decorations are up.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So, yeah, dare I say that they are upon us, but we're super pumped about that. So tummy action, step forward today. We've had a lot of them, but we've got a couple of things on the website and then also the community group that people can get plugged in now.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, absolutely. So you want to take some action on some of the things that you've heard. So do a couple of things. Go to the fasting for life dot com and download the Fast Start Guide so you can actually get started. We're going to show you how to do one meal a day, which is a really cool place to get some consistency with your fasting and then also tap into the Facebook community group where you can join in on the conversation.

[Tommy Welling]
So kind of work through some of the things because sometimes it's just the little small things that we're really not sure about or we have a question or or a little bit of doubt or something like that. We can get some some encouragement, some feedback, some guidance. So definitely do both of those things and get started today and register for the challenge if now is the right time for you.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, I love the community group. It's growing organically, right? Yeah, it's just a group of like minded individuals that are all figuring it out right now. So come on in. The water's warm. We'll see. Inside the group fast. Our guide, one meal a day fasting challenge coming up on the 26th. Tommy, awesome conversation today, sir. Thank you all for listening and we'll talk soon.

[Tommy Welling]
Cool. Thank you. Bye. So you've heard today's episode and you may be wondering, where do I start? Head on over to V Fasting for Life Icon and sign up for our newsletter where you'll receive.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Fasting.

[Tommy Welling]
Tips and strategies to maximize results and fit fasting into your day to day life.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
While you're there, download your free fast start guide to get started today. Don't forget to subscribe on iTunes Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to leave us a five star review and we'll be back next week with another episode of Fasting for Life and.