Why Are Ketone Levels Lower in the Morning?

Published: June 26, 2018
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Why Are Ketone Levels Lower in the Morning?

You might be wondering why your ketone levels are a little bit lower in the morning. Well, here’s what’s going on. When your body first wakes up, you have a big rise in what’s called cortisol. This cortisol triggers the liver to go through glycolysis. Now what glycolysis is, it’s where it takes any stored carbohydrates, and I mean any small amount, and converts them into glucose to be used as energy. This is a natural phenomenon that happens in the morning where the liver just does this. What this ends up doing is it causes the pancreas to have to secrete insulin, and when there’s insulin in the blood ketone levels are lower. Insulin will blunt ketones, so therefore, we end up with lower ketone levels. But what you’ll find is as the day goes on and as you eat more food or if you’re fasting as the day goes on and you’re a little bit more active the ketone bodies will start to appear quite a bit more.

What is the Dawn Effect?

It’s a natural cycle (called the dawn effect or dawn phenomenon) that you can expect to have lower ketone levels in the morning. Sometimes the ketone level can be dramatically lower than what they were the day before. Don’t be alarmed, and as always, if you’re looking to test your blood ketone levels like you should be throughout the course of the day, make sure you check out Keto-Mojo by clicking on the link and learning more about everything you need to do to understand the data behind the ketogenic process inside your body. I’ll see you there.

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