Question about The Brain's Fight or Flight Response during Ketosis - Meditation

sugar
cortisol
insulinresistance
bloodglucose
ketosis
(Jason Cole) #1

Hello Everyone!

I am quite new to this entire Ketogenics diet/lifestyle. I am currently on my second month. I have a lot of mental blocks in life and so the whole idea of weighing my food seemed ridiculously challenging and if I have to do that I simply will not do the diet, and so I do not do it. Instead I have cut out ALL of the carbs and ALL of the sugars from my diet completely aside from the few that remain in trace amounts in the vegetables that I eat, which I presume most of them get carried away by the fiber. To make this more challenging I am on a plant based diet, but enough about me!

I teach meditation workshops where we deal with lowering heart rates which lowers the blood pressure that in turn lowers things like adrenaline, cortisol and insulin spikes.

When a regular average person eating a regular average diet encounters a perceived threat — a large dog barks at you during your morning walk, for instance — your hypothalamus sets off an alarm system in your body. Through a combination of nerve and hormonal signals this system prompts your adrenal glands to release a surge of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol. Adrenaline increases your heart rate, elevates your blood pressure and boosts energy supplies. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, increases sugars (glucose) in the bloodstream, so you are getting an insulin spike, it enhances your brain’s use of glucose and increases the availability of substances that repair tissues.

So my big question here today is:
If you are fully fat-adapted will the brain continue to release adrenaline and cortisol (higher glucose levels) during those fight or flight moments even though it now seeks out fats for energy instead of sugars? And how does that affect your state of ketosis? For example you are sleeping during a night-fast and you hear a loud thump that makes you jump out of bed with your heart racing? Does that insulin spike kick you out of ketosis?
I am less concerned with the state of ketosis as I know it is easy to get back into that, I am more concerned about how the brain reacts under stressful situations in hopes that a ketogenic diet would be beneficial for maybe having less stress/reactions in ones life.

Thank you!
Jay

(Jacob Wagner) #2

I don’t have the science to know the mechanisms (others may). However I am certain that the body still has a fight or flight responce. I can still react quickly to what is going on around me when seconds matter.

My suspician is that the reaction improves. My reasoning is that on a high carb diet the body is constantly under chemical stress to regulate and maintaine hromonal balance. That causes inflamation and also the production of stress hormones like the ones you describe. I can only assume that a body baithed in stress hormines becomes conditioned to them and would therefore have a deminished reaction to a critical spike in them.

Perhaps someone who knows the #science better than I can fill in the gaps.

–Jacob

(Todd Allen) #3

Chronic unrelenting stress keeping ones blood sugar somewhat elevated all the time is a problem and it can impact ones level of ketosis.

But a surge of hormones such as adrenaline and norepinephrine from a threat like an animal attack if it dramatically kicked your blood sugar up say from 80 mg/dl to 140 mg/dl that’s only 3 grams of glucose. Not a big deal if the duration is short.

(Bunny) #4

1 all body types intersect with the other on a variable scale of axis!

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(Jason Cole) #5

Wow, thanks for all of that everyone!

I am not doing this for weight loss myself, it is strictly an experiment to see if I can survive on green veggies and nuts alone, so far so good, I even quit using cannabis for over 30 days and no seizures as has happened in the past when I quit cannabis for this long! So that is a major bonus.

I have an ectomorph body type so I was already quite slim when I started this diet routine, weighing in at 145lbs, the first month I dropped down to 130lbs, then nearing the end of the second month I have gained all the weight back up to 145lbs, however, I am visibly more lean whereas it was not as visible (like around the ribs) when I had first started. So it is a whole new 145lbs! After three months of Keto is over I will be starting at a gym to build upon what I have gotten down to and hopefully can keep this same diet going as I really like it.

I did not cut out all carbs right away i slowly phased them out before going full force into this so I think that might be why I never experienced any keto-flu symptoms or lack of energy or anything like that, also I was already living on a vegan diet for the last year and a half prior to this.

I love this forum and how everyone can help each other learning through all of this!

Thanks again!
Jay

(CharleyD) #6

Short answer is yes, there’s nothing changed with fight or flight while on ketogenic. You’ll still produce cortisol when stressed, liver will still make glucose when frightened, stressed and at dawn like normal.

And as a martial artist I still abuse the heck out of adrenaline to spar and break boards. If anything, the ketogenic way of eating makes relaxing from stressful situatons come much easier.

(CharleyD) #7

This is something I don’t have the guts to try after learning about essential fatty acids, amino acids and vitamins and minerals. As you can store an amount of them, and your body will down regulate what it can to preserve what it can’t synthesize, you may very well not run into problems (deficiency symptoms) for a while actually.

Best of luck and let us know how it goes!