Middle of the Night Eating

In an attempt to better understand the whole blood sugar thing, I've been doing a lot of reading online. I came across a site that explained that eating in the middle of the night helps some people to have better blood glucose readings in the morning. It seems counterintuitive, but basically the explanation is that the body goes into starvation mode after not eating for several hours during the night and causes the liver to convert its stores into glucose, thereby causing a rise in sugar levels. This bizarre phenomenon is called the Somogyi effect.

By eating in the night in order to avoid the sugar low that triggers this cascade of events, in theory, one can avoid getting high morning glucose readings. Since I've been using myself as a human laboratory since being diagnosed with gestational diabetes, I figured it was worth a try. I set an alarm for 2am and got up to drink a little individual serving-size box of soy milk. Why soy milk? 1) It's a liquid (there was no possible way I could get any solid food down in the night with my pre-unfill lap band constriction issue), 2) It's got a good balance of protein and carbs, 3) It doesn't need to be refrigerated (trekking downstairs in the night was sure to disrupt my sleep even more). Pretty brilliant solution if I do say so myself (other than the fact that it probably gets absorbed into the bloodstream too fast because it's a liquid and could very well cause a sugar spike).

Anyhow, I managed to get up when the alarm went off, took my blood sugar reading, and drank the soy milk. It took 20 minutes to gurgle down. All the while, I was repeating the mantra, "be calm, don't puke it up, be calm, don't puke it up, this is totally insane, be calm, don't puke it up." I didn't puke and I made it back to bed without disrupting GeekBoy who was still fast asleep. However, I was not. I tossed and turned for a good 90 minutes before falling back asleep. Lying in bed and wanting to sleep while failing to do so is pure misery!

My morning sugar reading was lower than it's been since I started testing - so I think it worked! It was still a little higher than it should be, but it was a significant drop in the right direction. I wonder if it's worth trying to do this every night, or if the disrupted sleep schedule makes it simply not worthwhile?