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UK Ketone Monitors & Sugar Per Day

Mbaker

Mbaker

Well-Known Member
Messages
4,339
Location
Essex
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Diet only
Dislikes
Available fast foods in Supermarkets
Could you please let me know what Ketone Monitor you use, it is probably about time I know where I am at. And when you are in Ketosis what level do you see as a norm.

I know the WHO say adults should have 9, and children 6 additional teaspoons of sugar per day, but what should the overall amount of sugar be per day. If you also know what your country specific recommendations are, that would be good to know.
 
I don't know about recommended amounts of sugar in the diet - but the body doesn't require any form of sugar at all.
To maintain the blood glucose at the correct level is the job of the liver - it releases glucose as required from its own stores.
 
Hi. I use the Caresens Dual. It’s free from Spirit Healthcare. Comes with a couple of free ketone strips and 10 free BG strips. The ketone strips are about £1 each.

Generally I’m somewhere between 1.5 and 3 when in ketosis (which is pretty much all the time), higher if I’m fasting.
 
Like @Goonergal I use the Caresens Dual it has the cheapest strips that I could find at about £1 per test. it also seems to need less blood than the SD Codefree to get a reading. It also does glucose but the strips cost more than the codefree so once I hd used up the freebies that came with the meter I didn't bother to get any more. I'm usually between 0.3 and 1.5 unless fasting when the highest I have seen is 5.1

As for sugar I know I need none so don't give a hoot what the WHO say.
 
I use the On-Call GK Dual monitor and pay about 80p per strip online.
My ketones vary quite a lot, depending on my protein consumption. I am currently in the 1-2 mmol/l range, but it also varies a lot depending o the time of day.
 
Goonergal said:
Completely off topic, but @Boo1979 I’m guessing you’ve recently visited Shoreditch - I have a pic of the street art that forms your avatar from a recent early morning walk around the area (I live not too far away).
Click to expand...
Yes indeed - its a very happy hunting ground for photo opportunities. Think I took that shot last year sometime. Have you seen the one of Teresa May as a dominatrix? Thats one of may favourites. I maaged to photoshop another image of Donald Trump as a baby so that he was a tiny figure at her feet - gave me a giggle.
Reminds me I must go on another photo trip there once the weather improves
These were the 2 shots I combined with good old Photoshop - I was doing a course on it last year - it can do some wierd tricks but its not really for me I think - prefer taking ( trying to take) decent shots without the trickery
 

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Thanks all for your responses. I'm not sure I phrased the "sugar" question correctly. Most of us reading this would want circa 1 teaspoon or slightly less pretty much all the time to function; I have always wondered if there were general guidelines for total sugar. Is the closest I can get to an answer the approximate grams of carbs ÷ 4, say in the Eatwell Plate / Guide or whatever it is called these days.
 
I use ketone strips in my Freestyle Libre scanner and am currently running at 0.8mmol.
 
Mbaker said:
Thanks all for your responses. I'm not sure I phrased the "sugar" question correctly. Most of us reading this would want circa 1 teaspoon or slightly less pretty much all the time to function; I have always wondered if there were general guidelines for total sugar. Is the closest I can get to an answer the approximate grams of carbs ÷ 4, say in the Eatwell Plate / Guide or whatever it is called these days.
Click to expand...
We do not need to eat sugar in order to function - there might be the equivalent of two teaspoons of glucose crystals dissolved in our blood - I am guessing there, but it doesn't have to come from sugar we eat.
 
Resurgam said:
We do not need to eat sugar in order to function - there might be the equivalent of two teaspoons of glucose crystals dissolved in our blood - I am guessing there, but it doesn't have to come from sugar we eat.
Click to expand...
Yes thanks understood. I believe in a documentary I some people were consuming on average around 22 teaspoons of sugar per day. I will be surprised if there aren't numbers, but stranger things have hapened.
 
Mbaker said:
Yes thanks understood. I believe in a documentary I some people were consuming on average around 22 teaspoons of sugar per day. I will be surprised if there aren't numbers, but stranger things have hapened.
Click to expand...
I think that some people glug down the equivalent of that amount of sugar in their fizzy drinks - if not more, and then eat loads more in cakes biscuits and sweets - non of it is required though.
 
Boo1979 said:
Yes indeed - its a very happy hunting ground for photo opportunities. Think I took that shot last year sometime. Have you seen the one of Teresa May as a dominatrix? Thats one of may favourites. I maaged to photoshop another image of Donald Trump as a baby so that he was a tiny figure at her feet - gave me a giggle.
Reminds me I must go on another photo trip there once the weather improves
These were the 2 shots I combined with good old Photoshop - I was doing a course on it last year - it can do some wierd tricks but its not really for me I think - prefer taking ( trying to take) decent shots without the trickery
Click to expand...

Haven’t seen that one - also planning another trip, when the weather is warmer and the mornings lighter.
 
If you want to end up in nutritional ketosis, spoonfuls of sugar are the last thing you should be putting into your mouth in whatever form! We don't need any sugar/carbs from external sources, but we do need some fats. Just keeping your overall carbohydrate consumption as low as possible for a while - 20-25g max carbs a day - should soon get you into ketosis if you are not there already.

Tthe original reason for me aiming for ketosis (as per Atkins induction phase), was doxtors orders to lose some weight, but as far as I'm concerned now the main benefit's been that my body has also converted (back) to dual fuel burning mode using both the few carbs I eat plus fats as fuel, and this provides a constant and steady source of energy, and keeps my glucose levels stable.

I've used an old style Ketonix, which acts like a breathalyser (which I believe some people actually use too) to measures acetone levels in my breath. This has a colour coded/traffic lights system to indcate ketone levels: none, low, medium and highish levels of nutritional ketosis. I never found any infornation on how these colours might relate to actual numbers though! It's not as accurate as a blood ketone test, but it served my purpose, and over four years has been far cheaper than having to buy the very expensive test strips for a meter. However the reader that came as part of my first Libre sensor kit can act as both a glucose and ketone tester as well as being a sensor scanner, and I've used a few strips when I've been feeling rich. It's also possible sometimes to taste or smell the acetone, and I get a taste occasionally, and I believe some people can smell any waste ketones in their wee, I may see anything from none to high readings on consecutive days with the Ketonix and I've since learned that you don't need to be in ketosis once your body has re-adapted tofat burning, as it switches in and out depending on what fuel is available to use at the time. Whch seems to suggest that actual levels may not be all that important and there's no real need to aim for high levels - unless for a specific reason. And once you've started burning fats, there's apparently no need to keep to a very low carb level, - under 50g a day should be fine, but preesumably depends on the individual.

Robbity
 
Mbaker said:
Yes thanks understood. I believe in a documentary I some people were consuming on average around 22 teaspoons of sugar per day. I will be surprised if there aren't numbers, but stranger things have hapened.
Click to expand...
Was it "That Sugar Film" ? I think it was something like in Oz most people are having something like 40 teaspoons per day looking at "healthy" foods (that could be completely wrong as I haven't watched it for a while). Depends what you mean by "sugar" also of course. The US sites often have the daily RDA percentage in foodstuffs but there doesn't seem to be one for sugar just for carbs.
WHO seems to say 6 teaspoons per day according to this
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/world-health-organization-lowers-sugar-intake-recommendations/
Was that what you were looking for?
 
bulkbiker said:
Was it "That Sugar Film" ? I think it was something like in Oz most people are having something like 40 teaspoons per day looking at "healthy" foods (that could be completely wrong as I haven't watched it for a while). Depends what you mean by "sugar" also of course. The US sites often have the daily RDA percentage in foodstuffs but there doesn't seem to be one for sugar just for carbs.
WHO seems to say 6 teaspoons per day according to this
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/world-health-organization-lowers-sugar-intake-recommendations/
Was that what you were looking for?
Click to expand...
Yes this is the sort of thing. I think I remember what you are referring to. This chap was a low carb eater in good health with Irish and Italian parents. The average total sugar content per day in his region I think was 44 teaspoons (or you 40 might be right) so he decided to do a medically supervised junk food diet, eating the same per day; sometimes to get the limit, literally eating sugar (I feel ill at the thought). Eating the same calories 2300 per day with the same workouts pre-experiment, he put on loads of weight, width, got fatty liver, high blood pressure, mood swings - basically made himself sick. He visited Aborigines and talked to elders who said circa 40 / 50 years prior they did not have diabetes etc. He proved a calorie is not a calorie and that for him eating the same sugar content as those in his region was a disaster. He was able within several weeks to regain his health after reverting back to LCHF.

So the guidelines say between 45 to 65 % of calories should come from carbs so for an average person on the recommended on 2000 to 2500 calories 250 to 312 grams per day are recommended as carbs. If we look at the carbs in bread, rice, potatoes and pasta and say call this around 25 grams per 100 gram of the weight of the food, then the total carbs are somewhere between 62.50 and 78. So dividing by 4 for teaspoons of sugar equivalent I workout that for a UK average woman the amount before added sugar is taken into account is between 15.6 and 19.5 teaspoons for an adult. If my calculations are somewhere near correct then adding the 9 teaspoons of additional sugars means that for a woman in the UK my estimated amount of sugar per day is between 24.5 and 28.5.
 
bulkbiker said:
Was it "That Sugar Film" ? I think it was something like in Oz most people are having something like 40 teaspoons per day looking at "healthy" foods (that could be completely wrong as I haven't watched it for a while). Depends what you mean by "sugar" also of course. The US sites often have the daily RDA percentage in foodstuffs but there doesn't seem to be one for sugar just for carbs.
WHO seems to say 6 teaspoons per day according to this
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/world-health-organization-lowers-sugar-intake-recommendations/
Was that what you were looking for?
Click to expand...

Oops! WHO knew?

In my pre-diabetic days I was taking 4 teaspoons in a mug of tea/coffee. So on my second hot drink of the day I would have been over that limit by 10:00am most days. Guess I would have been taking 16 to 20 spoonfuls per day in tea/coffee alone.
 
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