Have you ever wondered why you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason? Your blood sugar levels could be the key!

I found a couple of fascinating articles on this topic, and they are linked throughout the post.

Sleep can affect your blood sugar levels, and your blood glucose control can also affect your sleep.

With high levels of blood sugar, your kidneys aim to rid your body of the sugar through urination. Yep you guessed it – this is why you need to get up to pee in the middle of the night! In addition to this, having high blood sugar can also make you uncomfortable (causing difficulty sleeping) due to feelings of warmness, irritability and restlessness.

What if you wake up in the middle of the night – without the urge to pee? That’s a symptom of low blood sugar.

Sleeping through the night represents a long period without food when blood sugar can drop too low. This is bad news for the brain, which depends on glucose for energy. The brain is highly active at night, transforming short-term memory into long-term memory, and carrying out repair and regeneration. In response, the adrenal glands, two walnut-shaped glands that sit atop the kidneys, release stress hormones. These stress hormones raise blood sugar back to a safe level. Unfortunately, stress hormones also raise, well, stress. Hence the anxious awakening during night’s darkest hours.

As you can see, maintaining your blood sugar levels through your diet can play a key role in your sleep quality. In my next post, we’ll go into a bit more detail about how you can keep a steady blood sugar level through food choices.