Keto pins and needles

(Evelyn) #1

Hi everyone! I’m New to the group, but have a question. I recently did keto a couple years ago. It worked great. I just restarted last Wednesday. As of last night I started getting pins and needles in my arms from my elbows to my finger tips. I’ve never had this happen is it normal? And how long should it last? What can I do to get rid of it? Thanks everyone!

#2

Hello and welcome.

To answer your question: eating a well-formulated ketogenic diet does not cause ‘pins and needles’ in your arms or anywhere else.

My question is: has anything else changed recently?

Keto is very simply a process of metabolic normalization. Years and/or decades eating the standard approved diet (SAD) damages one’s metabolism. How long it takes to fix depends on the extent and severity of the damage. What specifically you experience when the fixing begins is very individual. For example, eating SAD may mask symptoms of various problems that start to become noticeable when you stop eating SAD. On the other hand, unusual stuff that happens is sometimes coincidental. Every cough and sniffle is not the Black Death.

Ketosis is the normal, natural and healthy metabolic state to live in and thrive. Our ancestors lived in ketosis close to 100% of their lives for several million years. Best wishes and hope this helps.

(Allie) #3

Doubt that’s anything to do with keto tbh.

(Joey) #4

@Evie7880 Welcome!

Yeah, eating more healthfully doesn’t produce pins 'n needles. Typically this is caused by a “pinched” nerve somewhere.

Give thought to what you’ve been doing (physically) that might be causing this.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #5

I’ve been on a ketogenic diet for five years, and for the past twelve months or so I have been occasionally noticing numbness in my hands. But this is positional, and it is caused by lymphatic fluid backing up in my arms and pinching the nerves, when I sleep in certain positions. Changing positions alleviates the sensation. The fluid backup is the result of trauma to lymph nodes during surgery to repair several bad breaks, and has nothing to do with my diet.

I have noticed, however, that the surgical scars have healed abnormally well. A friend of mine was remarking on that, the other day. That I do attribute to keto, because a couple of other surgical scars from long ago also improved noticeably after I had been on the ketogenic diet for a while.

(Robin) #6

It’s so tempting to link any physical anomaly to keto when we first begin. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, sometimes it’s just some random fluke or a thing that will go away just as mysteriously as it appeared.

Time will tell. Keep us in the loop. Good luck

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #7

Not for nothing, there is a logical fallacy called post hoc, propter hoc, which is Latin for “A happened after B, therefore B caused A.” Perhaps B did cause A, but the mere fact that it happened first is not proof of that. Proof has to be found elsewhere.

However, if A happens after B, I can’t think of any way that A could possibly have caused B, barring time travel or some weird quantum effect that violates relativity. (And so far, not even quantum entaglement has been shown to do that.)

#8

I did a quick search and it seems while there may be another cause, it is possible that Keto is causing the pins and needles and there are easy suggestions in this article

A bunch of other articles came up as well. I did want to mention that when I started Keto in 2017 I did have weird symptoms, either while eating keto or fasting, such as gout like symptoms even though I was not prone to it (but gout and kidney stones are common on both sides of my family) which I was able to remedy as well as other things although I never did have pins and needles. Everything eventually went away

(Joey) #9

I’m definitely prone to this temptation … everything good that has happened in my life in recent years is attributable to avoiding carbs.

(Robin) #10

Same here. And I would add avoiding cads.

#11

@Saphire Thank you for the link. Reading it helped me clarify my thoughts about starting keto. To wit, and these are my own observations/speculations:

As I noted originally, eating the standard approved diet (SAD) for years or decades causes some degree of metabolic damage. My initial comments addressed that specific aspect of starting keto.

And yes, in addition - which I did not address - eating SAD also causes excess water retention. Once a person starts keto and begins to learn about what’s happening, this fact becomes common knowledge. As does the knowledge that the initial purging of excess water takes important water soluble electrolytes with it. And for some people, the reduction in electrolytes causes temporary discomfort of different sorts and severity for a few days or weeks. And of course, the common recommendation to ‘cure’ the discomfort is ‘more salt!’ to replenish the lost electrolytes.

Most newbies, however, don’t know this and don’t learn about it until they start keto. Within a few days they experience several pounds of water weight loss and some weird symptoms of varying degrees of discomfort and concern. At that point they either conclude that ‘keto is going to kill me’ and run for the exit, or seek info and help - like the OP.

The standard dietary guidelines haven’t just demonized saturated animal and dairy fats. They have also demonized sodium. Most people eating SAD are terrified of eating too much sodium. In the process of minimizing their sodium intake they simultaneously and inadvertently also minimize their potassium and magnesium intake. And because dairy is the primary source of calcium, the fear of dairy fat results in minimum calcium as well.

So the typical SAD eater going keto is very likely already deficient or very nearly deficient in sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium. The initial water purge dumps most of what little they’ve got and the sudden much more severe deficiency manifests in any of a number of ways - aka ‘keto flu’, etc.

The response is quite variable, of course. Many of us never experienced so much as a hiccup. Others experience multiple symptoms of varying extent and severity. I think the differences are due primarily to what the electrolyte situation was eating SAD prior to keto. Then, of course, the resulting dysfunction from depleted electrolytes expresses itself in whatever specific manner determined by the overall health and metabolic condition - all of which are very indvidual.

Thanks for reading.

#12

Interesting insight. I agree that it can cause varying symptoms and of course if anyone is currently seeing a healthcare practitioner or is on medication they need to keep them informated especially of any new changes or symptoms.

I do not think it perfectly correlates with prior SAD diet. I definitely had the keto flu. I had been eating a whole food diet since 2009 when I went gluten free or tried to and started really reading labels. Since then if there were any ingredients that were unpronounceable or the ingredient list exceed the fingers on one hand, I usually abstained unless I was out with family or friends and even then I tried to avoid carby foods or junk food if possible. Right before I started Keto and IM I had also lost about 15 lbs making more of an effort on a mediterian diet where I figured out later I was eating between 75 - 150 carbs a day.

I am always a little leary of calcium supplementation , unless I am also taking K2 (please do your own research on this) which is supposed to direct calcium to the proper locations but I eat a ton of dairy. During a fast I will supplement magnesium, salt and potassium but not calcium but this is where it is a good idea to do your own research or consult a professional as I simply do not know if it is a good idea or not

(Joey) #13

Totally agree. Calcium supplementation is generally a bad idea since we rarely lack calcium in our diet, we lack K2 (as you note) along with D3 (which may be deficient if you hide from the sun, like we’ve foolishly been told).

Worse yet, dietary calcium supplementation often puts the excess calcium in the wrong places - arteries - instead of teeth and bones. Again, K2 + D3 are the keys to proper calcium uptake in the places it is meant to be.