Title: Why is Blood Sugar Sometimes Higher Than Expected on Keto?
Everything in there is pretty much what I’ve found to be true. For instance, I get higher blood sugar when exercising. My Hba1c is going up slightly over time. Yet, I’m getting more muscular and stronger at the same time.
About the only thing for me that is tricky is HOMA-IR. Sometimes mine is low and sometimes high. This relies on fasting insulin, which I also have found to be highly variable, for reasons I don’t understand.
You gotta love Amy. Great perspectives and great presentation.
I confess to falling into that reaction to a morning FBG that stays around 110. My reaction to the number is getting better, but I’m still uncomfortable about it. If I test it all day, then it goes down into the low 90s, but I’d still prefer it to be 90 in the morning.
I’ve never had a HOMA-IR test or even a plain fasting insulin. My GP is very pro-keto and knowing how I say I eat he has never thought it worth looking at.
You could try one of the apple cider vinegar tricks, to attempt to lower your morning blood sugar. You drink 1-2 tablespoons of AC vinegar in water before bed. She discusses one of the more well-known studies, where they added cheese (not sure why they did that – it’s never good to have two variables).
Of course, most of these studies are short-term, and we don’t know the long-term effects.
If your GP is up for it, a HOMA-IR is just fasting blood glucose and fasting insulin. It provides one more data point.
Though, as you can see, mine are all over the map:
I’m not particularly impressed. At some point she suggests to do some jumping Jack’s to lower BG. Well, for many people, exercise raises BG, myself included. I stopped reading.
This raised BG at some moments of the day still puzzle me. If I’m in ketosis, “fat adapted” (whatever that means, because I also don’t get this), why would my BG need to raise? On the one hand, many in the keto community of bloggers say you can exercise perfectly well on ketones. But, but, but… my body goes scrapping whatever it can find to make my BG go up when I wake up, or exercise… ok.
Not sooner than this morning, I’ve read on another thread about the fire on the bottle thing and someone wrote that saturate fat causes insulin resistance… damn. Is the stuff good, or bad? Make up your mind already. Lol
Anyway, all of that to say that they have no idea, but publish again and again the same stuff someone else published. I’m not talking peer-reviewed! I’m talking these bloggers.
Einstein had great ideas, then spent decades trying to prove quantum mechanics didn’t make sense. The point being that it isn’t because someone had a brilliant idea once… or twice, that everything they say is right till the end of days.
Dr Westman himself says they don’t know much about this, I’ve heard it in a podcast where the interviewers, two quickly forgettable keto MDs tried hard to put words in the mouth of the diplomatic Dr Westman to no avail.
So, is it ok to have higher BG sometimes? Ever? They don’t know, but in a blog, you can say anything you want, including coming back with the do a few jumping Jack’s, so you BG has a place to go… really? And poor old me, thinking I was exercising on fat fuel. Why would my body want to use BG when I’m a lean, mean, ketone machine?
Mind you, I’ve come to make peace with raised morning and post exercise BG, because I eat very low carb anyway and my area under the curve is ok. But from there to claim I know for sure that’s ok for everybody…
Everybody’s different when it suits the narrative, but we’re all the same when it doesn’t.
My advice then, because if it’s true for me it surely is true to all human beings of this planet: DON’T do jumping Jack’s to get your BG down. It’ll just raise it further. Amy is wrong.
Jack’s still jumping and his BG is still rising.
I agree with you there. For me, my blood sugar goes up when I exercise.
In fact, when I was wearing my CGM, the highest daily blood sugar I remember was when I exercised in the morning, then did a physically-demanding home improvement project all day. My blood sugar was over 100 all day, whereas it normally starts high and goes down all day:
But this actually supports Amy’s argument, in that I have higher blood sugar in the morning (5.3 x 18 = 95), but a calculated HbA1c of 4.6.
That was from my European CGM. My US one read higher for some reason, and that was the one that gave me a reading over 100 the entire day.
The issue is this: is that >100 all day long because I’m eating very low carb and doing exercise better than >100 all day long because I’m eating carbs instead? I think it is. Do we know for sure? We don’t, but I can’t see that the damage caused by high blood sugar all day long due to carbs/insulin is the same as “high” blood sugar all day long due to low insulin but physiologic insulin resistance. (If it were, we as a race would have died out a while ago.)
That’s definitely the best solution. Continuing may have led to learning, given it was Miss Amy, who is a gun, and not prone to doing the keto crazy. So well done, you’ve definitely avoided that horrible possibility.
I think I did that one a few years ago. I recall drinking some ACV at various times. Never had any affect I could see.
Before I do that sort of thing, at least nowadays, I like to think about whether or not I think it’s sustainable. Do I really envision doing that daily for (as far as I know) the rest of my life?
Keto? Yeah, I can do that forever. Easy peasy. Drinking dilute acid? Not sure on that one.
I’ve tested my blood sugar a lot and with respect to exercise the pattern is clear, low intensity exercise drops my blood sugar and high intensity exercise jacks it up.
My gut feeling is spiking blood sugar through intense exercise is fine. At least for me as the highest I’ve seen it from exercise is 125 mg/dl a value that most think of as ok after eating. But I see no value to spiking blood sugar through food and if I eat any carbs I’ll do some light activity and do my best to keep my blood sugar well below my highest exercise induced spikes.
