Breaking Out of Insulin Resistance

[lucylocket61]

Why the heck would someone go on a low carb diet if they did not have a blood glucose anomaly like type 2 diabetes or Reactive Hypoglycemia?

My husband does it to help him keep his weight down, and he has more energy when he low carbs at around 130g a day.

Same for one of my adult children. There are many reasons to low carb.

 

[Alison Campbell]

Please get help for your anxiety around eating.

Just 3 days of 150G plus and you will be feeling so much better. Easy to say but if you can't do that then seek help please.

 

[lindisfel]

My husband does it to help him keep his weight down, and he has more energy when he low carbs at around 130g a day.

Same for one of my adult children. There are many reasons to low carb.

I would hypo on that much carb.

 

[lucylocket61]

I would hypo on that much carb.

we are all different. I eat about 80-100g of carbs a day with no problems. My husband and adult child are not diabetic.

 

[lindisfel]

My husband does it to help him keep his weight down, and he has more energy when he low carbs at around 130g a day.

Same for one of my adult children. There are many reasons to low carb.

Right or wrong most doctors would not agree to cutting out a food group, they would recommend calorie restriction. Of course it is probably the quickest way for young men to get a six pack!

 

[lucylocket61]

Right or wrong most doctors would not agree to cutting out a food group,

They are not cutting out a food group, they are cutting down a food group to a sensible size. Just like cutting down on fats or whatever. You asked:

Why the heck would someone go on a low carb diet if they did not have a blood glucose anomaly like type 2 diabetes or Reactive Hypoglycemia?

and I am answering it.

 

[ickihun]

Why the heck would someone go on a low carb diet if they did not have a blood glucose anomaly like type 2 diabetes or Reactive Hypoglycemia? Perhaps I would do it if I developed a masochistic complex. Then again I know it stops my repeated hypos after meals.
People should not complain when they persecute themselves, they get no sympathy.
. D.

It's a funny world, at times.
Some things dont shock me anymore.
There's us diabetics forced to rethink our diet when some people find it very easy to do.
I would too if i didnt have to worry about diabetes. Must be lovely to have that utter freedom.
How the other half live eh?
If only i didnt have diabetes to consider....i wonder which diet i would choose?
Ive always been overweight and encouraged to eat veg and rabbit food. Hence i really cannot be bothered with it anymore, it doesn't work.
Im delighted to do something as refreshing as low carb now. Even a bit more than 100g is still better than muesli and veg. I've always preferred meat and fish to chips or mash. Veg has always been a bore for me. Even blended for soups got very very tiresome.

I think i would have eventually sort out a diet to help thyroid and good skin if i hadnt been overweight and then diagnosed with my childhood diabetes.
You?

 

[lindisfel]

Hi Ickihun I would still love eating a chip butty, but I am a bit like Orville of, "I wish I could fly up to the sky, but I can't!" fame. . D.

 

[Triceraptors]

Second night in a row, two hours after meal and going to bed, I wake up with hypo symptoms. My heart is beating like crazy, shaky legs, sweat and total lethargy and headache with shaky, shallow breathing. My blood glucose at the time of event was 5.0 where meal consisted of chicken, eggs, bacon and around 100 g of white beans. Can someone give me some ideas?

 

[AdamJames]

Second night in a row, two hours after meal and going to bed, I wake up with hypo symptoms. My heart is beating like crazy, shaky legs, sweat and total lethargy and headache with shaky, shallow breathing. My blood glucose at the time of event was 5.0 where meal consisted of chicken, eggs, bacon and around 100 g of white beans. Can someone give me some ideas?

It sounds a serious enough situation that I'm a bit worried about offering advice, but I know what it's like to have a (much less serious) problem where the advice from GPs doesn't help, or they don't know what the problem is.

So I'll phrase this carefully: If I was in your position and *had* to try to resolve this myself, all I know from myself is that, depending on what I've been doing over the previous days / weeks, I can either tolerate a lot of carbs, or as little as around 6 grams can give me a huge and long-lasting spike.

So *I* would try starting to build up my carb tolerance in *very* small increments. How many carbs in 100g white beans? 20 or more? If that can cause me big trouble, I can imagine it causing you big trouble in your current state.

*I* would dedicate an entire day to sitting down with a glucose meter, taking a reading every 2 hours, in between each reading eating 1g, 2g, 4g, 8g, 16 g etc of carbs and see what happens. At the very least, the results would be something to show a GP or specialist.

Only if I couldn't get medical help initially.

 

[AdamJames]

Second night in a row, two hours after meal and going to bed, I wake up with hypo symptoms. My heart is beating like crazy, shaky legs, sweat and total lethargy and headache with shaky, shallow breathing. My blood glucose at the time of event was 5.0 where meal consisted of chicken, eggs, bacon and around 100 g of white beans. Can someone give me some ideas?

I can't stress enough that this is what *I* would do if I either could not get medical help, or attempting to follow the medical advice was making me ill but nobody was willing to put me in hospital to observe me.

I'd like to be in the company of at least one person who could take me to hospital quickly if need be, and I'd tell them what I was doing.

I'd first decide the testing schedule.

I'd go for:

Take 3 readings. Eat 1g carbs, Wait 2 hours.
Take 3 readings. Eat 2g carbs, Wait 2 hours.
Take 3 readings. Eat 4g carbs, Wait 2 hours.
Take 3 readings. Eat 8g carbs, Wait 2 hours.
Take 3 readings. Eat 16g carbs, Wait 2 hours.
Take 3 readings. Eat 32g carbs, Wait 2 hours.
Take 3 readings.
(3 readings and average each time because of the meter's inaccuracy - likely to obliterate my data with noise at least for the first few sittings).

So that's 6 intakes of food.

How many calories did I eat yesterday? Let's say 1,500, so aim for the same today.

So each sitting, I'd have about 250 calories from protien and fat, the ratio of which I'd keep in line with a "very low carbohydrate" diet which you've been on, so about 20% protein, 80% fat (adjusting the carbs out, by necessity). Add the appropriate amount of carbs for the current sitting.

That's potentially going to be useful data for a medical person, and may even give me guidance on my current carb tolerance.

If I can handle 8g well but things go crazy at 16 for example (it will only be rough because the 16g spike may be affected by a higher starting point due to the 8g spike not having finished yet). Then I'd stick to 8g per meal the next day, and see if I can handle even more the day after.

If. I. Can't. Get. Medical. Help!

 

[AdamJames]

You probably can't be too fussy about types of food if doing that test, but once I'd done it I'd then address what else might have happened after a while in deep ketosis, so I'd be ensuring I had foods with plenty of potassium, magnesium and sodium.

 

[Robbity]

It's a funny world, at times.
Some things dont shock me anymore.
There's us diabetics forced to rethink our diet when some people find it very easy to do.
I would too if i didnt have to worry about diabetes. Must be lovely to have that utter freedom.
How the other half live eh?
If only i didnt have diabetes to consider....i wonder which diet i would choose?
Ive always been overweight and encouraged to eat veg and rabbit food. Hence i really cannot be bothered with it anymore, it doesn't work.
Im delighted to do something as refreshing as low carb now. Even a bit more than 100g is still better than muesli and veg. I've always preferred meat and fish to chips or mash. Veg has always been a bore for me. Even blended for soups got very very tiresome.

I think i would have eventually sort out a diet to help thyroid and good skin if i hadnt been overweight and then diagnosed with my childhood diabetes.
You?

One very basic reason for eating at least reduced carbs is that this was the way we used to eat prior to the 1970s and "fat bashing" - so there's essentially nothing wrong in that respect. Taking anything to extremes however is a different matter. I very definitely would stick with eating a varied and healthy low carb diet - it has already helped me with other isssues (mainly lifelong chronic migraines and more recently, severe brain fog) and I see no reason not to eat this way from choice (rather than diabetic "necessity")... And since both my mother and maternal aunt suffered from senile dementia, even a strict ketogenic diet has a certain appeal.

Robbity

 

[EllieM]

My endo told me to visit dietician in order to sort out my eating disorders and do gradual refeeding because it can drop electrolytes to dangerous levels and require an ambulance.

Honestly, I think you're overthinking this (not uncommon when people are suffering from an eating disorder). Your doctor has told you that you don't have diabetes, and your symptoms are consistent with the dietary restrictions that have caused an eating disorder. Many of the people on here will be giving you advice about diets suitable for diabetics, many of whom are trying to lose weight, which you are not. I strongly suggest you seek advice from a dietician about refeeding, asap. 1500 calories is probably not enough to maintain your weight, let alone increase it, though it may be an appropriate when refeeding. If it were not for the refeeding risk, I would be urging 3 meals and 3 snacks a day, a normal mix of carbs, proteins, fats. I'm surprised that your doctor just told you to do refeeding gradually, without any more info. I'm assuming that your BMI can't be that bad, otherwise he should have admitted you to hospital. (Which also means that your refeeding risk isn't that bad?). Actually, from my observations of young people in an eating disorder unit, they all got 3 meals and 3 snacks a day, it's just that the quantities were less when they were refeeding.

The behavior during OGTT was constant rise in blood sugar, up to 14 mmol/l at two hours. Then in one hour it dropped to 5.2 and 30 mins later I ended up hypoglycemic at 3.8.

None of these readings will send you to hospital, though they might be less than ideal if maintained over several years.

A starving person feels like sh*t, irrespective of their medical condition(s).

Disclaimer : I am not a doctor or a dietician, though a family member did have an eating disorder (now recovered).

Good luck, I hope you feel better soon.

 

[Triceraptors]

Is it possible to have normal fasting blood sugar, no antibodies and still have diabetes? I read up about MODY and some of the symptoms seem very similar to main.

 

[AdamJames]

Is it possible to have normal fasting blood sugar, no antibodies and still have diabetes? I read up about MODY and some of the symptoms seem very similar to main.

I'd focus on what you know for sure.

Unless I'm missing something, you'd admit that your body isn't in great shape right now, and it's pretty clear that it's because you took drastic action with diet which wasn't necessary.

Why not try to fix that first, then eat normally.

It's just possible that the problem is not that you have a metabolic disorder, but it's your preoccupation with worrying about potential problems that is likely to cause you to take actions which give you a metabolic disorder, such as the temporary one you are currently experiencing.

Hopefully you'll be back to eating normally soon. At that point, why not stop reading up on things that can go wrong and worrying yourself, and instead think of somebody you know who appears to be healthy, and copy what they eat for a few months.