Blood sugar dropping

#1

Has anyone had issues with their blood sugars dropping on days they do not follow a regular routine. It seems like on our days off my husband has issues with blood sugar going low. We realized on our days off we sleep later, don’t eat at the same times and don’t always eat the same things as we do on the days we work. My husband and I have been on a keto diet for 15 months.

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #2

I haven’t noticed that for me, personally.
I eat a variety of keto things, but my glucose follows a relatively normal pattern (for me).

What kinds of numbers are you seeing?
When you say “going low” are you talking under 70? Under 60? What is it usually?

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #4

Its very different with fasting, though. My fasting BG can get that low (48ish) after 48hrs fasted, but that’s not necessarily the same as a different routine.

But I believe the OP is saying this is happening on weekends (for example) when their normal routine is, well, not normal.

(Bob M) #5

Wow, your blood sugars get low. The lowest I see (during the day, night is lower) is about 60 or so after 4.5 days fasting. But I start near/above 100 in the mornings when I eat, and this goes down every morning while fasting.

I don’t see any difference with weekends, but my weekends are very similar to my weekdays.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #6

First, how do you know that your husband’s blood sugar is dropping? It it from symptoms, or from measuring? If from symptoms, is he taking any medications that might be causing hypoglycaemia?

If there are medications involved in this situation, your husband should be consulting with his physician to periodically reduce the dose to prevent hypoglycaemia.

If, however, your husband is not on any medications that affect blood sugar, and is not experiencing any symptoms, then he is fine. The “low blood sugar” levels are calculated for people who are carb-adapted; people who are fat-adapted and producing ketones to feed their brains can safely go quite a bit lower.

There was a famous set of experiments done by George Cahill in the 1960’s, on the effect of starvation in human beings, in which at one point the researchers used a hyperinsulnaemic clamp to drive their subjects’ glucose levels down to levels that in most people would cause coma or death. (This was a highly unethical thing to do, and would never be permitted today.) But the subjects were fine, it was the researchers who experienced the heart palpitations and sweating, because they were doing something highly risky and knew it.

Nevertheless, even though the experiment was unethical, it does show that low blood glucose in the context of ketosis does not hold the same risk as it does for people not in ketosis.

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #7

As an example (n=1) I tracked my glucose during a 72 hour fast, starting with dinner right before.
As my glucose went down, my ketones went up (I only checked those every 4-6 hours).
You can see that not only was my glucose fairly low, but it was also fairly steady.

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#8

He was but on Benicar HCT in May. His endocrinologist says this should not impact blood sugar, but I am not sure.

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #9

I’d suggest monitoring his glucose with a meter, just to see what the trends are.

If he’s not against a lot of monitoring then i’d suggest starting with checking every 2 hours.