Dehydration and Ketosis

[Celeriac]

Last week, I had a few of MrCeleriac's Ricola sugar-free sweets. I had higher BG but I didn't think that I had kicked myself out of ketosis, but it seems like I did.

When I did my popcorn experiment in August it was an eye-opening failure, but even with much higher BG for longer, I didn't feel rough. The sweets didn't make much of a blip but I've felt rough, really dehydrated.

I seem to have the sniffles since last week also, but I'm getting dry mouth, headaches, brain fog. Even though I'm getting better numbers eg 5.1 FBGand 5.5 before lunch today, I just feel so thirsty and er knackered. Does it take a lot of water to get back into ketosis ? Weirdly I'm not gelling yellow cloudy pee etc (sorry for TMI).

 

[Robbity]

@Celeriac, what did the sweets have in them? I think they'd need to be pretty high carb (and the digestible variety rather than the un-digestible sugar alcohol, polyol variety) to really knock and keep you out of ketosis. Have you got any way of testing for ketones to confirm that this has happened? If not get thee to a chemists and get a pack of Ketostix. They're not ideal as they can also not show any ketones if you're well into ketosis and no longer disposing of surplus ones, but may be a guide.

The best advice I can give is to go very low carb - i.e. max 20g carbs a day (from veggies) and maybe extra fat for a while to be sure you are in ketosis again. Essentially you need to be sure that there are few enough carbs in your body to make it switch (back) to fat burning mode. It's quite possible to go in and out of ketosis over short periods (e.g, over the course of a day) , and you body can also be doing this without a low carb diet and without people necessarily knowing about it - it's a natural process. This switching in and out can happen even if you're well into ketosis, aka "keto adapted", so as a result shouldn't cause any side effects - your body already knows how to do this. I've seen this happening, and my ketone levels certainly can go up and sometimes right down to apparently none, depending on what I've eaten, when I last ate, and what my activity level's been, etc.

I've never come across anything about requiring water to get you (back) into ketosis, so can't help you with that. But you certainly do need plenty of water, and possbily extra minerals (e.g. salt, potassium) on all low carb diets to replace those you've possibly lost as your kidneys are flushing stuff out at a faster rate.

Robbity

 

[Celeriac]

Hi @Robbity

Soo.. bought another meter, because that's actually cheaper than buying the control solution and not showing wild differences to the other one. Have ordered ketostix which I'll pick up from pharmacy tomorrow (they were out of stock).

The sugar free sweets were the polypol kind. The headaches have gone, I'm not feeling as dehydrated as I was, I don't suppose having sniffles has helped, or the 6.4g poppadum I had last night which kicked me up to nearly 7 very briefly.

BG has been back in range since Monday despite the poppadum and got 4.8 early evening today.

Am eating creme fraiche every night to stop liver dumps (works for me) and have had more ghee, coconut oil, palm oil and olive oil. Evian contains magnesium and potassium, I should check whether it adds up to enough with food. I'm considering buying an organic meal replacement powder with loads of vitamins rather than tablets. I'm really unsure that bouillon powder, even organic is that nutritious. The Marigold Engevita nutritional yeast that I mix in with it is tho.

Don't normally eat carbs which aren't non-starchy veg or dairy. I reckon I don't usually go over 25g but I'll work them out as that's a good idea thanks.

The sugar free sweets and the poppadum were experiments. I probably should avoid doing them, but if I didn't experiment I wouldn't have discovered that creme fraiche prevents Dawn Phenomenon liver dumps for me - it's the difference between 5.5 and 17.1 !

I've been eating low carb since 2008 and not experienced the dehydration-thirst thing before but it certainly does seem to have improved a lot this evening. I don't remember ever getting anything like this before.

I've not used ketostix, here's hoping I don't drop the thing down the loo !