Tired

Waking Up With My Sleep Cycle

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The one problem that I have been trying to solve for the better part of last year is why I often find myself feeling so tired.

Despite getting a solid 7-9 hours of sleep each night, I was waking up most mornings feeling like I had gotten a lot less.

Part of me wondered whether it was just the relentless nature of managing diabetes, on top of everything else going on in life, that was taking its toll on me. This culminated a few months ago when I lost my appetite, and just sank onto the couch after work one afternoon feeling run down.

Of course, my subconscious jumped to all sorts of conclusions. Is it anaemia? Another autoimmune condition? I’m overdoing it. Or maybe it’s just the relentless nature of diabetes management on top of life. Stop being stupid – you’ve been managing your diabetes quite well and besides – you haven’t even had it for that long!

I did pay a visit to my doctor expressing my symptoms in a bid to put my mind at ease. He organised some bloodwork, which all came back fine.

After turning to Dr. Google, the words how to wake up feeling refreshed eventually led me to an app called Sleep Cycle.

No sooner than I had started using it, it truly changed my life.

The concept is pretty simple. During the night, the body goes through several cycles of roughly 90 minutes where it transitions from light sleep to deep sleep and vice versa. Case in point below.

While I’m in bed and the app is running, Sleep Cycle analyses my sleeping patterns using the microphone on my device. Sleep Cycle wakes me up within a 30-60 minute window set by me, when I’m in the lightest phase of my sleep.

I have used this app almost every morning for the past two months, and it has been a true game changer. Waking up is much, much, much easier than it once was. Sleep cycle is waking me up earlier than my alarm clock once did, and I’m feeling far more refreshed with less sleep than before.

One of the more surprising things I noticed almost instantly was an improvement in my mood. I don’t think I realised just how snappy I was getting until I wasn’t anymore. I also found I had far more concentration and focus during the day.

I’ve been running Sleep Cycle on my iPad so that I don’t drain my phone battery come morning. I’ve also been trying to get to bed at the same time each night, and trying not to sleep in longer than an hour on the weekends.

After two months, I feel that Sleep Cycle has definitely helped me to ‘re-calibrate’ my sleep. I often find myself waking up more naturally, anticipating Sleep Cycle’s gentle alarm. I’ve recently stopped using the app on weekends and I still find myself waking up fairly easily. Once I settle into a bit more of a consistent bedtime routine, I think I could make do without it for good.

It’s definitely easy to overlook sleep when my diabetes management feels far more important. I know that sometimes, my blood sugar levels have other ideas come bedtime. But when I’m managing a condition that demands a great deal from me, I need to be able to function at my best.

Combined with more substantial eating to match my energy expenditure and ongoing self care efforts, this is where my focus has been over much of the past year.

I can honestly say that I physically feel the best that I have in some time.

Feeling Tired With Type 1 Diabetes

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The final stretch of last year was a pretty challenging time for me, physically.

I felt tired. All. The. Damn. Time.

I would often find myself crawling into bed at the end of the day, feeling utterly exhausted. I was no longer waking up to my 1am alarms, and my blood sugars definitely suffered for it. I would wake up after a solid eight hours of sleep feeling bleary eyed, wanting nothing more than to close my eyes and go back to sleep again.

I honestly could not find an explanation for the way that I was feeling. Although the management of my blood sugar levels had slipped a little since achieving a personal best hba1c in July, my ability to manage them was still far better than they had ever been in my pre-pumping era. My bloodwork from July was also really good, and I had seen my endo in August.

I probably should have made an appointment with my GP, but I honestly didn’t feel that he would have been very helpful to me.

I felt more burdened than I had felt in a long time. in fact, I’d go as far as to say I felt equally or more burdened than I did during my start on insulin pump therapy. These feelings affected my work, my attitude around others and my overall quality of life. Part of me was ready to accept that these symptoms were simply a tradeoff of living with a demanding chronic condition like diabetes.

Living with type 1 diabetes creates somewhat of a complex relationship with food. We need food to fuel our bodies, but at the same time food spikes our blood sugar levels – and we want to avoid out of range glucose levels at all costs.

What’s the best nutrition advice for a person with diabetes? From my experience, It depends on what you’re reading and who you’re talking to. While I absolutely love my diabetes community, the overwhelming messages that seep into my brain is to avoid this food group or cut back on that one that and stop the spikes from happening.

I don’t want to single out any particular way of eating, but diabetes has distorted my relationship with food without me even realising.

The average male needs to consume about 8,000 kilojoules of energy per day to fuel his body so that it can function properly and match energy expended through activity. I don’t think I was even coming close to that. Not to mention having an active job where I’m on my feet all day expending even more energy by the minute.

I honestly cannot ever recall being taught to eat to fuel my body and meet my daily energy needs – from healthcare professionals and diabetes websites alike. Or perhaps I wasn’t listening carefully enough.

The past month or so has been a bit of a learning curve for me. Let me just say that it is pretty challenging to eat 8,000 kilojoules of quality food every day, and I have slacked a little at keeping tabs on this at times.

Of course, as with anything you make a major change to in life, diabetes management also demands attention and there have been a few tweaks to basal rates. I’ll share more specifics in time. 

But I’m sitting here in the sunshine typing this today, feeling far better than I have in quite some time.