August 13, 2025

   Dawn Phenomenon

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HI ,

Starting about 4am the body starts to wake up metabolically. The most common hormone researchers look at to measure this is cortisol. For about four hours in the morning, beginning at 4 a.m., cortisol spikes up to get the engines inside of us up and running. Glucagon is another hormone that increases during this early morning cycle. The reason for this is that both cortisol and glucagon tell your liver to both convert stored sugar and release it into the bloodstream as well as actually make more new sugar. Your body wants you to have plenty of blood sugar to fuel your brain and muscles first thing in the morning. In a natural pastoral environment, this is needed so you have the energy to either prepare food or go find/catch food to eat. But in a modern environment, this can set us up for problems.

What kind of problems am I talking about? Metabolic problems, weight gain, and inflammation that gradually create chronic disease. I was listening to Dr. Bikman the other day, a biomedical professor and researcher, describing how he was growing fat cells in petri dishes. He could put all kinds of food nutrients in with the cells, but they would not grow into big fat cells until he added the hormone insulin to the dish. The basic message was that the only way any of us can get fat is through the action of insulin. A Type 1 diabetic does not produce insulin, and they can eat all they want all day long and they gradually starve to death. Without insulin telling the cells of the body to let nutrients into the cells, they will starve to death in the midst of plenty.

So what normally causes the body to produce insulin? Sugar. When your pancreas senses blood sugar levels have hit a certain level, it dumps out insulin. Blood sugar is damaging to the blood vessels and nerves of the body above a certain amount. Insulin is there to protect the body by causing the cells of the body to suck up that sugar to remove it from the blood. In small amounts, this is a good thing because the cells turn that sugar into energy to do whatever each cell does. But most cells can only absorb so much. If there is too much sugar, it is the fat cells that suck up all the rest and turn it into fat droplets. Later, when there is no blood sugar to feed the cells, those fat droplets are returned to the bloodstream and go to the cells to be burned as an energy source just like sugar. But if there is always enough sugar, and sometimes too much, those fat cells keep on sucking up the excess sugar and they keep on getting bigger and bigger. The problem is that at a certain point, the fat cells get too stretched out, causing them to dump out a whole bunch of inflammatory molecules. They are crying and making you feel bad to let you know how stressed they are.

So let’s circle back to the dawn phenomenon. What is the issue here? As I already mentioned, your body is increasing your blood sugar level through the action of cortisol and glucagon. By 7 or 8 in the morning, your bloodstream has as much blood sugar as your body wants. It is already pumping out insulin to deal with this morning sugar load. But when do we usually start eating and what do we usually eat in the morning? Most people have their breakfast by 8 in the morning, and America's favorite breakfast foods are full of carbs and sugar. It might be breakfast cereal, toast and jam, pastries, bagels, oatmeal, or maybe a fruit smoothie or fruit juice. A vegetable smoothie is a massive load of carbs and sugar. As far as your body is concerned, all of these are simply sugar, and it already has as much sugar rushing through your bloodstream as it can handle. Virtually every carbohydrate calorie you eat at this time of the day will be shuttled to fat cells and turned into fat. If you don't want that to happen, you would have to burn those calories immediately with an intense workout. How intense? Well, the average breakfast ranges from 300 to 800 calories, and you only burn 100 calories for each mile you run. So on average, you need a good 5-mile run if you want to avoid putting those excess sugar calories into your love handles.

In the old days, this was not a problem because people got up early and did physical labor for several hours before eating breakfast. Breakfast was not how you started your day. You burned off that load of blood sugar provided by your hormone boost for the morning before you put any more sugar/carbs into your body. Is there another way around this? There is – don't eat carbs or sugars in the morning. Stick with proteins, fibers, and fats. Bacon and eggs are the classic American version of this. Throw some low-carb, high-fiber veggies in with this, and you have a winning breakfast. For myself, I generally eat dinner foods for breakfast, generally leftovers. But then I don't eat many carbs or sugars anyway.

A further bit of research yielded the unfortunate information that coffee in the morning also triggers this insulin response, but for a different reason. The cortisol and glucagon produce a state of temporary insulin resistance. That means the body has to release more insulin than usual to lower the blood sugar and put it into cells for energy. Well, caffeine also creates this state of insulin resistance, amplifying the amount of insulin needed to lower blood sugar. Remember I said how it is the insulin level that causes fat cells to grow and get fatter? Well, this is doubly happening in the morning because of the combined effects of the hormones and the caffeine. If all you had was coffee in the morning, this probably would not be much of an issue as the sugar has places where it is needed other than fat cells. But if that coffee is accompanied by a doughnut or breakfast pastry, then fat cells here we come.

If all that I am talking about is fat cells getting fatter, storing energy for later, then health-wise this is not much of a concern. And in fact, we are designed to put on an extra 20 pounds of fat in the fall to provide us with survival energy for the winter months. This much fat is not an issue for the body for a few months at a time before being used up. But more fat than that or fat carried all year round becomes a massive source of inflammatory chemicals. These chemicals set us up for degenerative joints, atherosclerosis, liver, and kidney disease, virtually the whole list of chronic disease conditions. The latest numbers are saying that 80% of Americans have some degree of metabolic disease. Something as simple as when you eat your breakfast and what you eat is the starting place for these statistics.

So what is the answer? The short answer is don't eat carbohydrates or sugars before 10 or 11 in the morning. Stick with proteins, fibers, and fats. Although if you really want to be healthy, watch those fats in the morning. Those high insulin levels in the morning will dump those fats you ate at breakfast into those fat cells as well. Your body is not going to burn them as your body does not burn fats for energy until it has used up the available sugars first. (This is a general truth, but there are certain body cells that only burn fats just as there are certain body cells that only burn sugars.) Save your carbs for later in the day. They are good for helping you wind down in the evening to get you ready for bed. Proteins tend to rev you up, so you don't really want to eat a load of protein within 4 hours of bedtime.
 

Start your day with protein, have your main meal midday, and end the day with a small meal several hours before you go to bed. Save the carbs for later in the day. Don't snack – stick to two to three meals a day. This last advice regarding snacking is part of another story for another day. This is a simple dietary plan that is fairly easy to implement. It will have huge metabolic benefits.
 

Take care,

David

Ellen

Here it is Thursday night. We just got our hair cut and now Ellen is having her favorite evening snack - banana and peanut butter! Ellen is a fast metabolizer so food digests quickly for her. She can't eat very much at one time, so what works best for her is several small meals each day. Lately that has meant bananas and peanut butter at about 7pm.

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"No human can see the truth. To see the truth you have to see things from every angle, situation, and condition simultaneously. The most a human can every have is a perception.."

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~David DeLapp

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~David DeLapp