SHOW NOTES:

You went to bed at a perfect 110. No active insulin. Flat arrow. You did everything right. You wake up at 182. Nothing happened -- no low, no alarm. You just slept. Except something did happen. You just weren't awake for it.

This episode introduces the dawn phenomenon: the pre-dawn hormonal surge (cortisol, growth hormone, glucagon, epinephrine) that causes your liver to manufacture and release glucose into your bloodstream between roughly 3am and 8am, every single night, without your permission. For people without T1D, the pancreas handles this automatically and they never know it happened. For T1D people, the glucose just lands -- and then we stand in the kitchen at 6am holding an insulin vial up to the light, wondering what on earth went wrong.

This is Week 3 of the While You Were Sleeping Challenge. We're getting into actual mechanisms.

In this episode:

• What the dawn phenomenon actually is and what triggers it
• Hepatic glucose output explained in plain English (and why it sounds like a Jurassic Park sequel)
• Why non-T1D people never notice this happening overnight
• What 34 years of blaming the insulin vial actually looked like
• How to start spotting the dawn phenomenon in your own overnight CGM data

This Week's Challenge: Pull up your overnight CGM graph from last night. Do you see a gradual rise starting around 3 or 4am when your blood sugar was otherwise flat? Just look. Don't change anything yet.

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil: TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912 Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon: Type 1 Diabetes – One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ Type 1 Diabetes – True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

SHOW NOTES:

Sleep deprivation reduces insulin sensitivity in everyone. That's not a T1D-specific finding. Here's what is.

In people without diabetes, the system has a feedback loop. Insulin sensitivity drops, blood sugar ticks up slightly, the pancreas compensates automatically, and the whole thing resolves before they're even awake. They make coffee, go about their day, and have no idea any of it happened. For T1D people, that feedback loop doesn't exist. The penalty just lands.

This episode explains why the same sleep deprivation hits harder when you don't have a functioning pancreas to compensate -- and why T1D people have been quietly doing the backup system's job manually every single morning, often without realizing that's what they were doing.

We're in Week 2 of the While You Were Sleeping Challenge.

In this episode:

• How a healthy pancreas automatically compensates for sleep-related insulin sensitivity changes
• Why the T1D body absorbs the full 21% impact without automatic correction
• What "doing the backup system's job manually" actually looks like before the first cup of coffee
• The emotional reality of running on interrupted sleep while managing blood sugar
• What to add to your data tracking this week

This Week's Challenge: On mornings after rough nights, notice if you had to work harder -- more corrections, more frustration, numbers that were less predictable. That's the 21% showing up in real life.

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil: TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912 Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon: Type 1 Diabetes – One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ Type 1 Diabetes – True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

SHOW NOTES:

Here's the number: 21%.

One study. People with type 1 diabetes. Sleep-deprived condition (4 hours) versus adequate sleep (8.5 hours). Same food, same insulin, same activities. The sleep-deprived group showed a 21% reduction in insulin sensitivity the next day. Every single participant.

This is the episode Neil has been building toward. If you've ever had a day where your insulin felt slow -- where corrections didn't land, where you corrected twice before breakfast and were still running higher than expected -- this episode gives you a name for what was happening. And it changes how you respond to those mornings going forward.

This is Week 2 of the While You Were Sleeping Challenge. This is the research drop.

In this episode:

• The specific study on sleep and insulin sensitivity in type 1 diabetes -- and what it actually showed
• What a 21% reduction in insulin sensitivity looks like in real life (the bathtub analogy)
• Why the effect showed up in every single participant, not just some
• What LeBron James figured out about sleep that the rest of us are just now learning
• How to use this information to give yourself grace on mornings after rough nights

This Week's Challenge: Look back at your data from Week 1. On the mornings after your worst nights of sleep, did your insulin feel different? Did corrections land differently?

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil: TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912 Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon: Type 1 Diabetes – One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ Type 1 Diabetes – True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

SHOW NOTES:

The pump site. The insulin. The food from six hours ago. The stress. The general vibe. Neil has blamed every single one of these for blood sugars that made no sense -- and for 34 years, he kept leaving one variable off the list entirely.

This episode is about blood sugar archaeology: the 7am investigation T1D people run every morning. Holding the insulin vial up to the light. Going through the mental checklist. Sometimes coming up completely empty. The problem wasn't missing something obvious -- it was missing a variable that was never on the list in the first place. And on Monday, Neil delivers the specific number from the research that changes what that variable looks like.

Week 2 of the While You Were Sleeping Challenge kicks off here. Today, he sets the stage and helps you look back at the data you've been collecting.

In this episode:

• The full list of things Neil has blamed for blood sugars that didn't make sense (34 years of data)
• Why the T1D blood sugar checklist keeps coming up empty
• The "Law and Order at 7am" method of investigation -- and why it fails
• What the research says is the actual missing variable
• How to look back at your Week 1 data before Monday's big episode

This Week's Challenge: Think about the most confusing blood sugar you've had recently. What time did you go to sleep the night before?

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil: TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912 Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon: Type 1 Diabetes – One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ Type 1 Diabetes – True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

SHOW NOTES:

You went to bed at 112. Flat arrow. No active insulin. Textbook. You should be proud. You wake up at 218. So you run the checklist -- check the site, question the insulin, replay every meal from the day before. And you come up empty.

Here's what this episode proposes: you were solving the right puzzle with the wrong set of clues.

Neil connects sleep directly to blood sugar management in T1D -- not in a vague "stress affects glucose" way, but in a specific, directional way. The relationship between sleep and blood sugar runs both directions, and the second half of that equation is what T1D content has been leaving off the list. This is the episode where the puzzle starts to get a new piece.

We're wrapping up Week 1 of the While You Were Sleeping Challenge. If you've been tracking your sleep and morning numbers, keep building. This is the episode that starts making sense of the data.

In this episode:

• The two-way relationship between sleep and blood sugar in type 1 diabetes
• Why morning blood sugars sometimes have nothing to do with what you ate the night before
• What happens to insulin response when sleep is disrupted
• Why doing all the right things still produces confusing results sometimes
• What to add to your data tracking before next week's big number

This Week's Challenge: Track sleep hours, morning blood sugar, AND how easy or hard it felt to manage your blood sugar the next day. Did your corrections land where you expected?

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil: TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912 Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon: Type 1 Diabetes – One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ Type 1 Diabetes – True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

SHOW NOTES:

When's the last time you actually slept through the night? No CGM alarms. No blood sugar math at 3am. No lying awake wondering if your number was stable. If you can't remember, that's exactly the point.

In this episode, Neil digs into something that doesn't get said often enough: type 1 diabetes makes sleeping harder in specific, documented ways. Not in a general "I have a lot on my mind" way -- in a real, researched way that affects sleep architecture in T1D adults compared to those without the disease. From CGM alarms to actual lows to the anxiety of lying awake next to a flat-line CGM your brain still won't fully accept, this episode names what 3am with T1D actually feels like.

We're in Week 1 of the While You Were Sleeping Challenge. If you missed Friday's episode, here's the whole thing in one sentence: we're tracking our sleep for eight weeks and figuring out what it's actually doing to our blood sugar.

In this episode:

• What actually wakes T1D people up at night -- and why it's not always the alarm
• The documented differences in sleep quality between T1D and non-T1D adults
• Why people with T1D spend more time in lighter sleep stages
• What "T1D sleep mode" looks like (the nature documentary version)
• Why being awake at 3am with a stable number is not you being irrational

This Week's Challenge: Write down what woke you up last night. One line. Alarm? Low? Anxiety? Just woke up? You're collecting data.

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil: TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912 Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon: Type 1 Diabetes – One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ Type 1 Diabetes – True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

SHOW NOTES:

If you've ever woken up to a blood sugar that makes no sense -- went to bed at a perfect number, did everything right, and still saw a confusing morning high -- this episode is for you.

Neil Greathouse, who has lived with type 1 diabetes since February 14, 1992, kicks off the 8-week While You Were Sleeping Challenge by asking one question: what was happening the night before your worst blood sugar day last month? For 34 years, Neil blamed the pump site, the insulin, the food, the stress -- pretty much everything except the variable that was right there the whole time. This is the episode that puts sleep on the T1D checklist for good.

This is Week 1 of the While You Were Sleeping Challenge. Whether you're starting here or catching up, you're not behind. Over 1,200 people are doing this challenge with you.

In this episode:

• Why mystery blood sugars might have a cause you've never considered
• The full list of things Neil has personally blamed for blood sugars that didn't make sense (it's a long list)
• Why this 8-week sleep challenge is, in fact, diabetes content
• How to start the simplest data-collection habit of the whole challenge

This Week's Challenge: Write down how many hours you sleep each night. If you want to add one layer, note your fasting blood sugar the next morning. Don't change anything yet. Just notice.

Helpful resources and newsletter: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Connect with Neil: TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912 Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon: Type 1 Diabetes – One Day at a Time: https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ Type 1 Diabetes – True Stories: https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1

Helpful resources and newsletter:
https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Sponsor Connect

Blue Circle Health offers free coaching and care that fits real life for adults with type 1 diabetes. They help with insulin adjustments, CGMs, burnout, and the mental load of diabetes, without fighting the healthcare system alone.
Sign up free at:
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Connect

TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@the.betes
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebetes
Facebook: https://facebook.com/neilgreathouse
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/neil-greathouse-a607b912
Website: https://yourbestt1dyear.com

Books on Amazon

Type 1 Diabetes – One Day at a Time
https://a.co/d/6UHooWJ

Type 1 Diabetes – True Stories
https://a.co/d/dfIlyI1