5 signs in the morning signify your blood sugar levels are too high; here's what to do about it

• We know that TYPE 2 diabetes is a chronic condition characterised by rising blood sugar levels that threaten your body.

• A person suffering may be unaware of how their blood sugar levels can alter throughout the day.

• Doctors say that the dawn phenomenon is a natural rise in blood sugar which occurs in the early morning hours.

Diabetes is a health condition that demands management. It is important to keep your blood sugar levels in your target range as much as possible to help prevent or delay long-term, serious health problems, such as heart disease, vision loss, and kidney disease.

But many a time, sufferers have no clue how their blood sugar levels can alter throughout the day. Type 2 diabetes is the result of dysfunction in the way the body processes the hormone insulin which regulates blood sugar.

In the morning, there is a shift in blood sugar levels due to hormonal changes in the body.

According to Medical News Today, (as cited by Express.co.uk), the five key symptoms to spot warning of the dawn phenomenon include:

1. Faintness
2. Nausea
3. Blurry vision
4. Disorientation
5. Extreme thirst.

The dawn phenomenon can be problematic because the body isn’t able to naturally correct insulin changes during the night. This often creates consistently high blood glucose levels in the morning. Estimates show that the dawn phenomenon occurs in about 50 per cent of people who have type 2 diabetes.

Dr Sarah Brewer who is a GP, a health journalist and a specialist in Nutritional Medicine, is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation, UK.

Dr Brewer told Express.co.uk that “The main reason why everyone experiences a slightly a higher blood sugar level in the morning is known as the dawn phenomenon."

She told Express.co.uk: “The dawn phenomenon is due to our natural biorhythms in which production of insulin hormone (which lowers glucose) is suppressed during sleep, and levels of other hormones that raise glucose (growth hormone, glucagon and cortisol) increase.

“There is also a theory (known as the Somogyi effect) which suggests that, in people with diabetes who are on insulin, the rise in blood sugar in the morning could be a rebound effect of using too much or, conversely, too little insulin the evening before, but this is controversial.”

What are blood sugar targets?

A blood sugar target is a range you try to reach as much as possible. According to the US CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), these are typical targets:

• Before a meal: 80 to 130 mg/dL.
• Two hours after the start of a meal: Less than 180 mg/dL.

CDC also says that your blood sugar targets may be different depending on your age, any additional health problems you have, and other factors. Be sure to talk to your doctor about which targets are best for you.

How to manage morning spike in blood glucose:

1. This is what you could possibly do to control the morning spike in glucose, suggests Express.co.uk. 
2. Ask your doctor if you can take medication or insulin at bedtime instead of at dinnertime.
3. Eat dinner earlier in the evening and take a stroll/light exercise after dinner.
4. Avoid snacks that contain carbohydrates at bedtime or else your sugar levels will spike and make you hungrier soon – a bad idea if you wish to avoid a midnight crawl to the fridge.
5. If your glucose levels are high in the morning talk to your doctor for individual diet and lifestyle advice, and a review of your current medication.
6. Talk to your doctor, she/he may want to change your medicine or dosage.
7. Drink sufficient fluids to maintain hydration.
8. Don’t skip breakfast. Also, make it healthy and not empty calories.

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.   

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A trio of indicators that suggest a higher risk of death COVID-19 patients

In Wuhan, China, research shows 14-19% of infected patients became severely sick. Among those critically ill cases, the death rate was higher than 60%.

To identify commonalities between these severe cases, ther esearchers analysed blood samples taken repeatedly from 485 patients at Tongji Hospital in Wuhan, China, between Januar10 and February 18. They tested for  myriad kidney, heart, and blood-clotting issues, noted whether those patients had survived or died, then used machine-learning algorithms to look for biological patterns.

The results found that the following indicators can predict whether a patient had a higher risk of death than other infected people:

1) High levels of the enzyme lactic dehydrogenase (LDH). This is associated with lung damage and the type of tissue breakdown that happens during pneumonia.

2) Lymphopenia, the terms for low levels of lymphocytes---white blood cells that defend the body against invading pathogens.

3) An increase in high-sensitivity C-reactive proteins, or hs-CRP for short. This indicates inflammation in the lungs.

Using those indicators, the computer model could predict what happened to the hospital patients 10 days  in advance of their clinical outcomes.

The 3 key features, LDH, lymphocytes and hs-CRP, can be easily collected in any hospital, the researchers wrote in the study. In crowded hospitals, and with shortages of medical resources, this simple model can help to quickly prioritize patients, especially during a pandemic when limited healthcare resources have to be allocated.

A coronavirus ' risk score'.

Another study published this week took a similar approach, pinpointing 10 biomarkers that can help doctors assess individual patients' risk levels. That research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Tuesday, suggested using these markers to determine the likelihood that a hospitalised cOVID-19 patient will become critically ill-- admitted to an intensive-care unit or put on a ventilator-- or die.

The researchers retrospectively examined medical records from 1,590 patients who were treated in 575 hospitals across China between November 21, 2019 and January 31.

Two of those biomarkers overlap with those suggested in the Nature study: high levels of LDH and a high neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio ( which is associated with lower levels of lymphocytes).

The other eight risk predictors include a history of cancer, high number of pre-existing medical conditions, older age, shortness of breath, coughing up blood, unconsciousness, abnormal chest x-rays, and high levels of bilirubin ( a substance in the blood that, in elevated amounts, indicates liver damage).

The researchers used those 10 indicators to develop an online coronavirus risk " calculator" that could help predict which hospitalised COVID-19 patients will become critically ill.

That prediction tool could enable doctors and healthcare workers optimise hospital resources, the study authors wrote.

If the patient's estimated risk for critical illness is low, the clinician may choose to monitor, whereas high-risk estimates might support aggressive treatment or admission to the ICU, they said.

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.     

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Air pollution can trigger Alzheimer's in aged women:

Women in their 70s and 80s who were exposed to higher levels of air pollution experienced greater declines in memory and more Alzheimer's-like brain atrophy than their counterparts who breathed cleaner air, new research has revealed.

"This is the first study to really show, in a statistical model, that air pollution was associated with changes in people's brains and that those changes were then connected with declines in memory performance," said the study researcher.

What did previous research find?

Previous research has suggested that fine particle pollution exposure increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease and related dementia.
What scientists haven't known is whether PM2.5 alters brain structure and accelerates memory decline.

How was this study conducted?

For the study, researchers used data from 998 women, aged 73 to 87, who had up to two brain scans five years apart as part of the landmark Women's Health Initiative launched in 1993 by the US National Institutes of Health and enrolled more than 160,000 women to address questions about heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis.
Those brain scans were scored on the basis of their similarity to Alzheimer's disease patterns by a machine learning tool that had been "trained" via brain scans of people with Alzheimer's disease.

The researchers also gathered information about where the 998 women lived, as well as environmental data from those locations to estimate their exposure to fine particle pollution.

When all that information was combined, researchers could see the association between higher pollution exposure, brain changes and memory problems -- even after adjusting to take into account differences in income, education, race, geographic region, cigarette smoking and other factors.

"This study provides another piece of the Alzheimer's disease puzzle by identifying some of the brain changes linking air pollution and memory decline. Each research study gets us one step closer to solving the Alzheimer's disease epidemic," the researcher said.

"Our hope is that by better understanding the underlying brain changes caused by air pollution, researchers will be able to develop interventions to help people with or at risk for cognitive decline," the researcher added.

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High levels of free testosterone in women tied to 44 percent reduced risk of asthma

High levels of free testosterone in women tied to 44 % reduced risk of asthma, revealed a study published recently. This was the first population-based study which assessed the association of sex hormones with asthma risks in males and females.

The study also showed that women with asthma appear more likely to have lower levels of ' free' ( not attached to proteins) testosterone than women who do not have asthma.

In " Sex Hormones and Asthma in a Nationwide Study of U.S. Adults", also report that among obese women, those with asthma are more likely to have lower levels of estradiol, another sex hormone, than those who do not have asthma. In addition, the researchers found that among non-obese men, those with asthma are more likely to have lower levels of estradiol than those who do not have asthma.

Previous studies have reported specific differences between pediatric and adult asthma patients based on sex. Although asthma is more common in boys than in girls, asthma is more common in women than in men.

Given that sex hormones may explain these sex-specific differences, lead author, said they conducted this study to examine whether sex hormones are associated with asthma in adult men and women. 

They also wanted to test whether any association varies between obese and non-obese individuals.
The authors analysed information from 9,238 adults, ages 18-79, who participated in the U.S. 

National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2013-16. Overall, 9% of the participants had asthma. Among women, the asthma rate was double that of men 12.5 % vs 6.1%.

The study found that elevated levels of sex hormones reduced the likelihood of asthma. Specifically-
* in women, levels of free testosterone in the highest quartile compared to the lowest quartile were associated with 44% lower odds of asthma.

* among obese women, levels of free testosterone in the highest quartile compared to the lowest quartile were associated with 41 % lower odds of asthma.

* among obese women, levels of estradiol on the highest quartile compared to the lowest quartile were associated with 57 % lower odds of asthma. Levels of estradiol in the 2nd and 3rd quartiles compared to the lowest quartile were  also associated with reduced odds of asthma in these women.
* among non-obese men, levels of estradiol in the highest  quartile compared to the lowest quartile were associated with 56 % lower odds of asthma.

Because the study was cross-sectional, it cannot determine whether sex hormone levels led to asthma. Study limitations also include lack of information about the current menopausal ststus of participating women, insulin resistance, or environmental exposure to chemicals that may have affected sex hormone levels.

Our study results suggest that the circulating sex hormones estradiol and free testosterone contribute to sex differences in asthma among adults, the Dr. said. Furthermore, obesity appears to modify the effect of such hormones on asthma in women and men.

He added that longitudinal studies are needed to confirm and expand on these findings.

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High-Fructose Diet Damages Liver's Ability to Burn Fat

Foods containing high levels of fructose, such as processed foods and sugar-sweetened beverages, may damage the liver's ability to properly burn fat, warns a new study. 

"The most important takeaway of this study is that high fructose in the diet is bad," said lead study author. 

It's not bad because it's more calories, but because it has effects on liver metabolism to make it worse at burning fat. As a result, adding fructose to the diet makes the liver store more fat, and this is bad for the liver and bad for whole body metabolism,"said one of the researchers.

Interestingly, the researchers found that equally high levels of glucose in the diet actually improved the fat-burning function of the liver. The findings, suggest that high dietary fructose has more negative health impacts than glucose does, even though they have the same caloric content. 

In a series of animal studies, the researchers compared effects on metabolism of six different diets -- regular chow, chow with high fructose, chow with high glucose, a high-fat diet, a high-fat diet with high fructose, and a high-fat diet with high glucose. 

The researchers analysed different known markers of  to determine the effects of each diet. For example, they looked at levels of acylcarnitines in the liver's cells. 

Acylcarnitines are produced when the liver burns fats. A high levels of these are a bad sign, since it means there is a lot of fat in the liver being burned. Acylcarnitines were highest in the animals on the high-fat plus high fructose diet. 

They were lower in the high-fat plus glucose diet than in the plain high-fat diet, which reflected previous observational findings and indicated that glucose performed an assistive fat-burning action in these animals. 

They also monitored the activity of a critical enzyme for fat-burning known as CPT1a. In the case of CPT1a, the higher the levels the better - they indicate that mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell which provides energy for cellular functions, are performing their fat-burning jobs correctly. 

However, in the high-fat plus fructose diet the researchers found that levels of CPT1a are low and their activity was very low, meaning mitochondria cannot function properly. 

These findings, combined with other markers they monitored, proved that both high-fat and high-fat plus fructose diets damage mitochondria and makes it easier for the liver to synthesise and store fat rather than burn it. 

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