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Introduction: Diabetic signs at night
There are quite a few nighttime signs of diabetes that you should know about, and it's very important to recognize what your body is trying to tell you, because so many people ignore these signs and they end up having more damage with their organs, especially the kidneys.
Frequent urinating
The first one is getting up frequently at night to urinate. This is called nocturia. You have too much sugar in your blood, and the kidneys filter the blood. The body is naturally trying to get rid of this excess sugar because it's toxic. The other thing to know is that wherever the sugar goes, water goes with it. So as it's getting rid of the sugar, it's also getting rid of your fluids, making you dehydrated.
I remember in practice one guy was getting up, and I'm not kidding, 10 times a night. Talk about a symptom that can destroy your life, because he was so tired all day long. I told him this symptom was completely unnecessary. We told him what to do, which I'm going to tell you what to do. This device corrected the problem within 3 days, and he was able to sleep through the night from there on out.
Excessive thirst
This leads us to the number two symptom, which is excessive thirst. Of course, being a diabetic, you're going to be dehydrated, so you're going to constantly need water to hydrate yourself. But the other thing to realize is that when you're a diabetic or you have high sugar, you're also naturally going to retain sodium. If your body is going to hold this salt, it's also going to need more water. So you have this feedback loop where you're drinking all this water, you're urinating excessively, which then creates dehydration, causing you to drink more, and this keeps going around and round and round. When you're getting rid of the water, you're also getting rid of potassium, magnesium, and calcium. But for some reason, you tend to retain more sodium.
Restless legs syndrome
The next symptom is restless legs syndrome. I had this, and of course I was consuming a pint of Ben & Jerry's every single night for over a year. Little did I know, all that sugar was depleting a key vitamin called B1. When you're deficient in B1, you start building up a lot of what's called lactic acid in your muscles, where your muscles won't get the oxygen, and they become very, very fatigued. You don't want lactic acid buildup in your muscles when you're sleeping, because you're going to feel very restless. You're not going to have the oxygen in your legs, so your legs are just going to feel very energetic.
Another connection with restless legs is a magnesium deficiency, which you nearly always see in people with high blood sugars. Without magnesium, the muscles cannot feel relaxed and calm. It's a B1 and magnesium deficiency because the person is usually consuming too many refined carbs or sugars. They can take a lot of B1 and temporarily feel better, but unless they get rid of the sugars, it just keeps coming back.
Diabetic neuropathy
The next symptom does relate to restless legs syndrome, but it's more about problems in the lower feet. This is called peripheral neuropathy. It could be burning on the bottom of the feet, pain, numbness, or any type of weird sensation at the bottom of your feet. It gets worse at night because you're lying down flat, and you get more pooling of blood, which creates a little more pressure on the damaged nerve endings. The remedy for peripheral neuropathy is really twofold. One is a type of B vitamin called benfotiamine, together with alpha-lipoic acid. It's a really powerful combination.
The next symptom is also related. It's cramps in your lower legs or feet, because someone has too much sugar in the blood, and that creates a magnesium deficiency. When you don't have enough magnesium, calcium starts building up inside the cell. Calcium is all about muscle contraction, not muscle relaxation. Magnesium is more about muscle relaxation. So when you have this imbalance of not enough magnesium and too much calcium in the wrong place, you're going to get cramping in your lower legs or feet. The type of magnesium I would recommend is magnesium glycinate, because it also helps you sleep at the same time.
Excessive sweating
The next symptom I want to talk about is excessive sweating at night, usually in the face, the neck, or the upper part of the body. I'm not going to confuse this with a different condition, night sweats or hot flashes caused by menopause. This is different. This is a situation where a person is just sweating at night for no reason. It's not even necessarily too hot. This is because the blood sugar problem puts that person in a state of fight-or-flight mode. This is called sympathetic dominance. It's the part of the nervous system that is more of an adrenaline-type stress state. Because adrenaline is activated, the person starts activating more sweat as a compensation mechanism. So when you have this blood sugar issue, your body is going to be under more stress. This can also occur with low blood sugar, because adrenaline is activating and trying to raise the blood sugar, but it can also occur from high blood sugar as well.
The next condition is sleep apnea. This is a situation where you don't have enough oxygen because there's some type of obstruction of air in the back of the throat or the sinuses. This is a classic diabetic symptom. It usually occurs because the person has a lot of insulin pumping through their body. Doctors never measure it, but it's related to something called insulin resistance, where the body is trying to protect you from too much toxicity from glucose or sugar. Because insulin controls this whole thing, it creates this resistance to insulin, and so the door is blocked. The problem with this is you're going to gain a lot of weight, because you have this compensating excess amount of insulin, which is a fattening hormone.
Hypoglycemia
The next symptom has to do with hypoglycemia, low blood sugar, because the body wants to get that sugar out of your bloodstream, and it does it with insulin. As I said in the previous symptom, your insulin is going to be high, and the high insulin is going to try to push the blood sugars down. So you may wake up in the middle of the night with low blood sugar. One of the big problems with that is an activation of adrenaline. You just wake up in the middle of the night with this stress hormone activation. You might also have an elevation of another hormone called cortisol, usually between and in the middle of the night. In fact, right in the early morning, when the alarm clock is about to go off, is when you can sleep the best. This release of sugar is also accompanied by the production of sugar by your liver in the early morning. You need to be on a low-carb diet for a period of time, probably longer than you think, to correct it, because sometimes it takes six to eight months. But many times it's not coming from the diet. It's coming from your liver making too much sugar because you ate the wrong foods for many years.
The next symptom is delayed sleep. High levels of sugar delay the release of melatonin. You'll be lying down at night waiting to go to sleep, but you just can't go to sleep easily.
Gastric reflux
The next symptom relates to gastric reflux, or GERD, where you have to sleep on a wedge or prop your pillows up because acid is regurgitating from a valve in your esophagus. The reason is that the blood sugar issue is affecting the autonomic nervous system, which controls the valves of the body, including the valve at the top of the stomach. This leads to a lack of control. A really good solution would be the low-carb ketogenic diet as a necessity, along with consuming two meals: the first in the morning and the second at lunch. This helps because you may be getting the same calories, but they're in the first part of the day rather than the last, since your system is slow. If you eat too late, things just back up.
Heart palpitations
The next symptom is either nightmares or very vivid dreams. These are usually related to a neurotransmitter problem, because you're very deficient in B1. The big things that deplete you of B1 are consuming too many carbs or being diabetic. When my children had nightmares, they'd always want me to give them some B1, which handles that very quickly.
Another thing you might experience is a bit of high blood pressure in the middle of the night. This is called non-dipping. Typically, when a person goes to sleep, things should slow down: pulse rate and blood pressure. That's called nocturnal dipping. With diabetes, you have what's called non-dipping. The blood pressure just starts going up. You might not even feel your blood pressure, but you're just going to feel awake.
The next symptom that occurs while you're sleeping with a blood sugar issue is heart palpitations. This is primarily because of the lack of electrolytes, potassium deficiency, and magnesium deficiency. They would benefit greatly from a good electrolyte powder with a lot of magnesium and potassium.
Teeth grinding
The next symptom is teeth grinding. The activation of the fight-or-flight mechanism, or the sympathetic nervous system, puts a person into a state of stress while they're sleeping. Their jaw muscles are activated, and they grind their teeth.
Headache
The last symptom is a headache when you wake up in the morning. This usually occurs because you are very dehydrated, and the brain needs enough fluid to prevent pain and pressure. It's not just about drinking more water to hydrate; you need these electrolytes with it.
Now that you know the clues, the question is what to do to really correct this once and for all. If you have not seen this video on what to eat to handle that, check it out.