Going to bed high on purpose

Almost a third of people do this

In a 2026 survey of 583 adults with diabetes, 31% said they purposefully go to bed high to guard against overnight lows.¹

This is common enough that researchers treat it as a measurable behavior. In that study, hypoglycemia avoidance was one of ten attitudinal dimensions used to group people, and one of the four statements defining it was "I purposefully go to bed high to guard against overnight lows."²

If you do this, you’re not doing something unusual. You’re doing something a large minority of people with diabetes have independently arrived at.

Why people build in a buffer

A low overnight is the thing you can’t manage. During the day, you feel it, or you see an alert and respond. When you're asleep, both are less reliable. Sleeping through an alarm is not carelessness. It’s sleeping.

So people build in a buffer. A higher number at bedtime is a margin against the one event you cannot catch.

The survey records why people do this; it does not establish that running high prevents overnight lows.

The morning pays for the night

The trade is the hours afterward. Time spent above range overnight is still time above range, and a high bedtime often means waking up high.

There is a second cost, too. When asked what matters most about overnight and morning glucose, people put avoiding lows first and waking in their target range second. The average level people say they would like to wake at is around 100 mg/dL.³

People describe running high at bedtime to avoid lows, even though it can mean waking above range. The survey measures attitudes, not whether this prevents lows.

Talk to your care team

This page describes what a survey found. It is not guidance about your own insulin, and your bedtime numbers are a conversation for you and your care team. If you’re running high at bedtime because you’re frightened of going low, share that at your next appointment. It’s a specific, solvable problem, and it’s more common than most people realize.

Sources

1. dQ&A, PWD Survey Results: Luna Patient Segmentation & Jobs To Be Done, January 2026 (fieldwork 13–19 December 2025), slide 51; n=583 US adults using insulin and CGM. Purposefully going to bed high to guard against overnight lows; self-reported attitudes, not outcomes.
2. dQ&A, PWD Survey Results: Luna Patient Segmentation & Jobs To Be Done, January 2026 (fieldwork 13–19 December 2025), slide 51; n=583 US adults using insulin and CGM. Purposefully going to bed high to guard against overnight lows; self-reported attitudes, not outcomes.
3. dQ&A, PWD Survey Results, January 2026, n=583, slide 59.