Hello newbie here 9 weeks in ketosis

(Van Eternal) #1

Hi everyone,

I’ve been in ketosis for about 9 weeks now and decided to move away from the urine strip and bought myself a blood ketone meter and realised that my ketones after waking up are around 2.3 mmol, with sugar levels of about 3,9 mmo/l. However between my lunch and dinner I usually have a 4-5 hour gap (depending how hungry i am) and i realised that my ketones spiked up to 5.6 mmo/l, whilst sugar levels stayed the same. Is this normal ?

Another worrying thing that goes through my mind is ketoacidosis possible with low sugar levels?

I am currently eating about : 25-30 g carbs , 70 g of protein and about 250 -280 g of fat daily.

Please let me know if you experienced something similar

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #2

You are doing fine, don’t worry. Nutritional ketosis typically runs from about 1.0 to 5-ish, but I have heard of people with ketone levels a bit over 10.0. Ketoacidosis isn’t even a realistic threat until you reach 10.0, and even then it’s usually more like 20.0 when the problems start. As long as you are not a Type I diabetic, or so far advanced in Type II that your pancreas is no longer producing insulin, you are fine. As long as your pancreas is still producing even a small amount of insulin, that is sufficient to keep ketogenesis in check and the pH of your blood in balance.

It is actually possible to slip into ketoacidosis with a low serum glucose, but it is very rare. Euglycaemic ketoacidosis, as they call it, can happen to women who are either pregnant or lactating, and who attempt to fast. Pregnant or lactating women should not fast. Euglycaemic ketoacidosis can also be caused by taking an SGLT2 inhibitor, but if you are taking such a drug, your doctor should be aware of the risk and be monitoring you closely.

In any event, if you are concerned by your ketone levels, increasing your protein a bit ought to cause them to drop.

(Van Eternal) #3

Thanks for your detailed reply! You’ve resolved my worries, I was just concerned about the high level of ketones, and found it difficult to find anything online or in books about such ketones levels during ‘nutritional’ ketosis. I will try to slightly increase my protein intake, to aim for around 3mmo/l ketones. My pancreas is doing fine, I am a man so unlikely to be pregnant and I don’t take SGLT 2 inhibitor drugs.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge, I will look more into Euglycaemic ketoacidosisas as I didn’t hear that term before when doing my research about keto!
Also forgot to mention in my post, I started to feel much better after about 5 weeks in keto and stopped losing weight and my weight has been quite stable for the 4 weeks, which keeps me happy as I don’t want to lose more weight! Furthermore, I had noticed an improvement in my resting heart rate, as it dropped from 83-88 to about 70-75bpm !
Additionally, I always had problems with acne and when switching my diet to high fat I also saw a massive improvement. Im glad that I switched to a high fat diet, although my local doctor (in UK) told me it’s a bad idea and it can only make things worse, which is pretty sad that I can’t rely on an doctor in order to get advice. He was pretty shocked when observed improvement with my acne and heart rate and really didn’t have a logical explanation to why that happened.

Thanks again for your help and advice !