Today, we're to talk about hypoglycemia. There's several different types of hyperglycemia.
So let's talk about all of them. Let's start with discussing hypoglycemia without symptoms.
So let's say for example, you notice your blood sugar's very low, but you feel fine. There's no symptoms.
This usually occurs when you're doing the ketogenic diet or you're doing fasting.
Now, the way they define hypoglycemia, if you're a diabetic, his blood sugar's less than 70. That would be milligrams per deciliter, not that you need to know that but that's what it is. If you're not a diabetic, if your blood sugar's less than 54, they consider you having hypoglycemia. But when you start a ketogenic plan, and you're not consuming large amounts of carbs anymore, your body's gonna burn ketones and fat, are no longer dependent on glucose, the amount of glucose that you need, your liver makes.
And so your blood sugars are going to go pretty low, they can go below 54. They can even go 45. And so the question is, is that dangerous? Well, it really depends on if you truly have hypoglycemia.
And one simple way to figure that out is just do you have these symptoms? Do you have trouble talking confusion, irritable? Are you hungry, you crave carbs? You have sweating, shaking, weakness, fainting. The vision problems like difficulty seeing, when you notice that your blood sugars are low, do you get a headache, so many people have low blood glucose, and they have absolutely none of these symptoms like they did before before they started the ketogenic plan.
So the reason why the blood sugar is low is because you're not consuming any more sugar. So the body is running off of a different fuel, and the amount of sugar in the blood is low, because you're not using that much sugar anymore.
Now let's take another scenario, let's say you have hypoglycemic symptoms, but without having low blood sugars. Okay, so now you have all these symptoms right here, but you check your blood sugars, and they're normal. What's up with that? Well, that's not a true hypoglycemic condition. They call it either pseudo hypoglycemia, which is kind of like a false hyperglycemia. Or they another word for it would be idiopathic postprandial syndrome, which is a fancy term for having your blood sugar's drop, after you eat about two to four hours after you eat.
And they don't know what causes so they call it idiopathic, which means unknown cause. So you do have some of these symptoms, but your blood sugars are normal. And the reason why this occurs is because there is a problem with your insulin receptors, something called insulin resistance. So over the years, when you consume a lot of carbs, and you constantly have the stimulation of insulin over and over and over again, the receptors for insulin start to become downgraded, so they don't work anymore. So then your body makes more insulin, more insulin. So we have a situation where we have hyper insulin anemia, that means too much insulin in the blood, which normally is supposed to push the blood sugars down, but the receptor is blocking it. So it's not really connecting into the cell. So we have a situation we have dysfunctional insulin. So we have the symptoms, yet we have normal blood glucose. So in one part of the body, we might have high levels of insulin, another part it might be low, so it can really give you a false picture of what's really happening with insulin in general.
Now, just as a side note, when you get insulin resistance, you can either have two things happen, you can have symptoms of low blood sugar without having your blood sugar's drop. Or you could have your blood sugar's drop, because there's too much insulin is pushing it down with these associated symptoms. So it is a little bit confusing, and you have to look at the whole picture of what's happening. But the cool thing is the solution is, is just the same, which I'm going to get to in a second.
Now there's also something called reactive hypoglycemia. Now, the difference between this and regular hypoglycemia, which is actually called spontaneous hyperglycemia, really has to do with this is related to after you eat, and the other one relates to when you're fasting. And again, just to make this complex topic, very, very simple. If you just got off your carbs, by doing healthy keto, and you included intermittent fasting, very gradually getting your body to adapt to fat, so it's no longer dependent on blood sugars. So your insulin levels come down and you're correcting insulin resistance, you will no longer have hypoglycemia. Now if you look up what to do for hyperglycemia. In a medical textbook, it may tell you different things based on if you're not a diabetic, or you're diabetic, and mercs manual, it actually suggested to consume more protein and a low carb diet, which I agree that would be a good solution and may not fully resolve unless you continue this and you maybe have moderate protein, low carb, and then you also do fasting, but it's going to greatly help you because part of the breakdown of protein does turn into green. glucose, so it can greatly help your blood sugar's. But if you're diabetic, one of the most common causes of hyperglycemia is when you're taking too much insulin, or other medications that increase insulin, because insulin will push your blood sugar's low. So basically, you just took too much insulin, it drops you down into hypoglycemic reaction. And so the medical recommendation would be frequent eating, or keep some candy in your pocket to quickly raise your blood sugars. My suggestion for both of these situations, which again, check with your doctor before doing this, in addition to these other types of hypoglycemia is simply to get on a ketogenic diet, because the main problem with hyperglycemia, which is low blood glucose, is the high insulin that's pushing it down. But if you can connect the dots, that the biggest trigger for this insulin is consuming carbs, then it makes obvious sense to go in a low carb diet.
Why would you do anything else than that? The other thing to do is eat less frequent meals.
It's called intermittent fasting, because eating will also stimulate insulin. But if you actually can get your insulin into a healthy level, you won't have hypoglycemia. And when you start the ketogenic plan, just realize that your blood glucose will come down because you're no longer living on sugar.
But the cool thing is you won't have these symptoms. If you do, it tells me you're not out of the woods yet. And you need to do this more gradually. But eventually, your body will adapt, it will burn more fat fuel and less sugar fuel. And you won't have these symptoms, but you will have low blood glucose.
