Need help understanding Keto 60 days in, low BS, high insulin -Help

[KetoCancerMom]

You’ve said that you’ve been doing this for 60 days (2m). I’d honestly wait a bit longer before stressing out over numbers. Give it another 4m and then check again. At this point your body is still going through many changes!

[Janie]

I discovered I was pre-diabetic 6 or 7 years ago when I came across old bloodwork and my doctor never mentioned it!

I couldn’t lose weight on a CICO diet no matter how well I stuck to it.

My current doc doesn’t test for A1C because my fasting glucose is under 100. The thing is - my fasting glucose was good back when I was pre-diabetic so my blood sugar had to be spiking and not coming down except overnight.

I paid to have my A1C, fasting insulin and fasting glucose checked about 9 months into keto and all looked good. No longer pre-diabetic.

[betsy2]

Have you looked into hyperinsulinemia?

[PaulL]

I just don’t understand how my daily blood sugars are low but my insulin is high when I am not eating but less than 20 total carbs a day

This is the result of insulin resistance. Your carb intake is promoting the secretion of a lot of insulin, and that’s why your blood sugar is low—one of the jobs of insulin is to lower blood sugar. If you want to bring your insulin down, you may need to eat less carbohydrate.

Also, be sure you are eating enough. Protein should be in the range of 1.0 - 1.5 g/kg of lean body mass/day, and fat should be filling in the calories to satisfy your hunger. The body will respond to a sufficiency of calories by ramping up your metabolism, spending energy on getting healthy, and even feeling free to waste some.

[PaulL]

You say 20 net carbs but my doc said there truly is no such thing as “net carbs” and to count total carbs.

Sounds as though he’s been talking to Eric Westman. The whole net carbs thing hangs on the indigestibility of fibre, and it’s begining to look as though fibre is a lot more digestible than people have been thinking. Dr. Westman believes that it’s simpler and more clear-cut simply to count total carbohydrate.

I do put a bit of Stevia in my coffee. I checked, it didn’t make my blood sugar go up,

No artificial sweetener permitted to be sold in the U.S. will raise your blood sugar. The Food and Drug Administration won’t permit it. However, their effect on insulin is completely ignored, and people on these forums often find that one of these sweeteners has an effect on their insulin. The way to test is to take your blood sugar reading as a baseline, then eat some of the sweetener you are testing, then test your blood sugar at 30, 60, 90, and 120 minutes. (It should go without saying that you shouldn’t eat anything else before or during this test.) If you see a significant drop in blood sugar, that means your insulin spiked as a result of eating the sweetener. Unfortunately, there is no home test for blood insulin, so we have to check for an effect the hard way.

[Lauramt2287]

So I did a test with Coke Zero. My blood sugar starting was 91. When I tested 30 minutes later it was 86, and 3l1 hour later it was 84. So it sounds like the Coke zero caused an insulin spike. Interesting.

[Erevehc]

That’s too small of a difference to be a true spike, there’s naturally up to a ten point variation throughout the day that has to do with time of day, circadian rhythm etc. I’d only attribute it if the drop was maybe 15-20 points (or more of course)