Yesterday, I wound up with a really hard headache before dinner. When I started eating, my headache was 75% gone before I finished my meal. Then, after dinner, the sugar cravings hit. It really caught me by surprise because I didn’t expect to have cravings so quickly after a drop in my carb intake and I haven’t been trying to be low-carb, just less carbs than I was. I was still eating plenty of veggies and still had some grain.
I got ahold of my friend, Lydia from Divine Health and talked it over with her. I will be completing her intake forms this weekend and she is going to do nutritional counseling with me to help me figure out how best to do this.
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If your bG has been running high, when it starts to come down, you can get symptoms of hypoglycemia even though you’re not really that low.
Check this out, the two gram cure: http://www.phlaunt.com/lowcarb/19058561.php
Note that you really do need it to be glucose though.
It’s not TF at all, but I use Sweetarts to treat hypoglycemia myself. I don’t like Sweetarts, so there’s no temptation keeping them around. 😉
To me, they are cheaper and less nasty than the official glucose pills they sell in pharmacies. I ONLY use them for treating hypos, so I consider them “medicine”. I’ve no idea if there’s a TF choice; seems unlikely since you want it to be pretty much JUST glucose.
Interesting. I wondered if it was low blood sugar but I haven’t been able to get a monitor yet. I will pick up a roll of Sweetarts to have on hand if it happens again. I have raised my carb count since that happened and I’ll lower it slowly to see what we can figure out. I’m hoping Lydia from Divine Health will be able to help me piece it all together.
I’d rather see you use a method that is more healthful to help with low blood sugar. You can mix a small amount of raw honey with coconut oil – I’d say 1 part honey to 3 parts coconut oil. This way you have some fat for long burning energy and the little bit of honey to help it go up, and you are not dumping straight sugar into your bloodstream. 10 grams of carbs can make your BGL go up 40 mg/dl. 1 teaspoon of honey has about 6 grams of carbs. Since you don’t know your exact BGL – I’d recommend no more than a teaspoon of honey to start with – you may be able to get away with even less. We just don’t know for sure, unless we test. Anyway, hopefully that helps until we know more info!
lydia recently posted..Beet Kvass In A Pickl-It
Honey is only about half glucose, so it won’t raise bG as fast. Also, fats cause carbs to absorb more slowly; this is a good thing when eating meals, but bad when correcting a hypo. When correcting a hypo, you want to raise bG as fast as possible, and the way to do that is with nearly pure glucose.
Since KerryAnn isn’t on insulin or insulin-increasing drugs, a genuine hypo is unlikely. But it often feels like a hypo when your bG comes down to normal levels from higher levels.
The feeling of say dropping from 180 to 120 rapidly can be similar to the feeling of a real low at like 50 or 60, even though 120 isn’t low . You can feel dizzy and lightheaded and vaguely ill when bG drops fast, even if the actual number isn’t low.
This is what the two-gram cure is intended to address, a small enough rise in bG to just make you feel better and kill the carb cravings ASAP. How much a Sweetart will raise bG depends on body weight; it’s 2 grams of glucose and for a 140 lb person, will raise bG about 10 mg/dL. This is a small enough rise that it’s unlikely the pancreas will react to it with insulin release.
Of course, an actual insulin user needs to know how much it raises for their weight, and how low they actually are, the goal being to not overdo and wind up with high bG while correcting a low.
I’ve been on a multiple daily injection regimen for 5 years and only needed to use the Sweetarts three times, though I needed many more than the single Sweetart for the 2-gram cure each time.
Once was at the beginning when my insulin resistance suddenly changed – this happened after about a month on insulin, the lowered bG reduced my IR and all my ratios changed. The one day, I took a normal dinner dose, and afterwards, my bG fell down to 50.
The second time was at the YMCA, when I hadn’t realized how MUCH exercise would lower my bG and found myself very low after my first aquacize class – bG around 55 and bp also dropped to a ridiculously low number. It was a morning class , so I later learned to skip my breakfast insulin to let my bG run high so I’d have some to burn.
The final time was when I had a stomach bug and couldn’t keep food down after I’d already taken the insulin, a potentially dangerous situation (though moreso for a T1 than for me as a T2).
I agree it’s not at all an ideal food, but… on the other hand, I’ve eaten less than a roll of Sweetarts in five years, so not gonna get too upset with it, ya know? If that were the ONLY cheating I’d done on TF, I’d be a lot better off than I am! 😉
I keep them everywhere, in my insulin bag, in my purse, in the nightstand, in the glove box of my car, in my gym bag. It really helps that I don’t like them as they last a LONG time when you don’t eat them!
For me, though they are an illegal “food”, I don’t consider them food, but medicine. Basically, a few Sweetarts is instead of a glycogen shot. Since glycogen has to be refrigerated, I couldn’t keep it handy for safety reason the way I can keep Sweetarts just everywhere I might need them.
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I’m curious to learn more. I’m struggling to figure out how many carbs I should be eating, but I’m so overwhelmed with other stuff right now that I don’t think I can take on doing bg readings.
I suggest a reasonable amount of carbs is 20g @ breakfast and 40g @ lunch and dinner.
100g/day allows you to eat all the nonstarchy veggies you want and a couple small servings of relatively low-sugar fruit. IMO, it’s a reasonable place to begin for most folks. And really, you don’t have to count, just cut out sugar, grains, legumes and starchy veggies and you’ll pretty much be under 100g/day.
I was under 50g/day for several years to control my bG before I went on insulin. This is TOO low and going too low can screw up your metabolism, causing high cortisol (later resulting in adrenal fatigue) and a bad case of reverse T3.
jpatti recently posted..beef broth
Agreed, going too low too fast and for too long is not good for those with adrenal/thyroid issues. I agree that in a dangerously low blood sugar situation that straight glucose is a good idea to have on hand. Typically, that will only happen with someone who is on a carb heavy diet and already insulin resistant. That is why I advised Kerry Ann with the coconut oil /honey. Until we see numbers tell us otherwise, I don’t feel she is in this dangerous of a place and we are working to make sure she keeps herself stable with eating every 2-3 hours and keeping the carbs balanced with good protein/ fat! I appreciate your advice and insight jpatti!
lydia recently posted..Beet Kvass In A Pickl-It
Recently, I’ve seeing a few reports of folks having problems on GAPS cause of going too low-carb.
But it’s been longer than that, within the low carb community, we’ve had folks decided to do all meat, or meat & eggs, thinking if restricting carbs was good, then removing them entirely was better.
It’s just not so. Fixing your bG or losing weight only to trash your adrenals and thyroid is NOT helpful!
For me, before insulin, it took less than 50g/carb to keep my bG under 140 postprandial.
Years and years of that left me with such severe adrenal insufficiency that I was mostly bedridden; and once I got that fixed, I still had a bad rT3 issue. I’m off meds now, but it was a couple years of hydrocortisone and T3-only meds to fix myself up. Not a path I recommend to anyone!
Even WAPF overdoes it a bit, emphasizing animal foods so that many don’t realize that veggies are still good foods – our foremothers were right about cod liver oil and they were ALSO right about eating our vegetables!
And some of the issues with fructose… some people think it means they shouldn’t eat fruit! No, you shouldn’t eat piles of sugar and HFCS! Obviously, some fruits are lower in sugar than others, but a cup of berries (or half cup for blueberries which pack tighter), or a cup of melon balls, a half apple, pear or peach, these are good foods too!
If I weren’t ranting here, I might have time to update my own blog. 😉
jpatti recently posted..beef broth