Sudden drop in keytones. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

(Chris Robertson) #1

I’ve gone on a keto diet in hopes that it will help with joint pain, headaches, and constant nausea. I have felt like I have had the flu for 20 years and the Doctors can’t figure out why. The keto diet is a hale Marry attempt to not feel sick all the time.

I’m a little more than 4 weeks in and have been testing with blood strips, urine strips, and a Ketonix to monitor how I’m doing. For 4 weeks I was getting the darkest possible reading from urine strips, blood strips have been giving me a reading of around 3mmol/l and the ketonix has been between 25 and 35 ppm. Yesterday the urine strips were barely registering ketones and the ketonix reading dropped to 15ppm. I’ve ran out of blood strips so I can’t test that for a couple days. Today my readings on the urine strips and ketonix readings have stayed about the same.

I know that the urine strips stop being an effective tool after a few weeks but didn’t expect there readings to drop so suddenly. Is it typically for a person to have a gradual drop in readings or does a persons body just decide one day that it’ll stop using fat and reading drop suddenly?

I was under the impression that the ketonix reading should remain consistent so I didn’t expect to see a drop there. Is it normal for the ketonix to give a lower reading when your body starts using the ketones more efficiently?

What I’m trying to figure out is if what is happening to me is normal or is the sudden significant drop something to be alarmed by. Is it a good sign and my body is finally using ketones and not simply producing them? or is it a bad sign that my readings dropped so suddenly with no obviose reason?

My diet hasn’t changed since I started 4 weeks ago and I’m consuming less that 20 carb a day (mostly coming from kale and broccoli) , protein is .8g per pound of lean body weight. Fat is primarily coconut oil and makes up about 80% of my total cal. From the time I’ve started the diet to now I haven’t felt any different than before starting the diet.

Sorry if I included irrelevant info. I’m new at this and don’t know what is relevant.

(Jay Patten) #2

Keytones will be less measurable as your body become more efficient at burning them. I’ve been keto 6 months and urine strips are worthless to me, and I would be willing to bet that not much would show up on a blood test, either.

(Chris Robertson) #3

Thank you for the reply. I didn’t realize that other forms of measurement became less effective too. I thought it was just urine strips that would show a significant drop. Is is normal to have such a sudden drop? I had anticipated the drop to be gradual.

#4

I do not believe the test is less effective it is the body is more efficient at using the keytones so the values drop as you fat adapted and now are burning the correct high test fuel.

(Mandy) #5

Only a month in but I experienced this as well. Used to vary wildly from 0 to 3.1. Now it hovers around 1.0 average. I spoke about it here:

(MooBoom) #6

My ketones crash and burn if I’m fighting off illness, stressed or tired. Might any of those apply?

(Chris Robertson) #7

No abnormal stress or any sleeping problems. I always feel a bit sick but haven’t felt worse than I typically do.

#8

I’ve been measuring my state of ketosis for almost 9 months. During this time, my metabolism has changed, but my blood ketones levels have not changed. Depending mostly on diet and activity, my ketones can be as high as they were when I was 70 lbs heavier and not fat adapted. The effectiveness of my ketone meter has not changed.

(Chris Robertson) #9

My breath keytons were nearly back to normal today and the ketostick was a shade darker. Is it possible my body flipped a switch when it learned that it could use the keytones so keytones dropped because I was using them and it took me a couple days to start making them as fast as my body was using them?

(Chris Robertson) #10

I sent ketonix an email asking about dropping breath scores and they told me that ketosticks measure what you aren’t using, a blood test measures what is actually in your blood, and the keytonix measures the ketones you are actually using. This means that as your body realizes you don’t need to produce extra keytones the ketostix will measure less and eventually can’t be used to see if you are in ketosis. As your body realize how many ketones your body is using blood keytones may drop slightly, in attempt to be more efficient. The ketonix reading shouldn’t go down and in many people it’ll go up becouse as your body learns to use more there should be more evidence of keytone use in your breath. If the ketonix reading drops it means your body isn’t actively using as many keytones.

I feel like this might back up my theory in my previous post given that my ketosticks are showing less ketones but the breath test is back to normal. What do you guys think?

(Candy Lind) #11

You can keep all this measuring up (and with it probably your cortisol level), but the big thing is how you feel. I think the drops are due to increased efficiency, and you should stop spending money on test strips & buy a nice ribeye, instead.

Do you really only like kale & broccoli? Are you afraid to vary that for some reason? You said your fat is primarily from coconut oil. Not that CO is bad, but are you eating any fatty cuts of meat? Are you eating any offal (liver, other organ meats)? If you are limiting your diet this way, are you taking any good vitamin/mineral supplements?

Are you supplementing electrolytes (salt, magnesium, maybe potassium)?

Maybe you can give us a couple of days of what you are eating, and we can see why you’re not feeling better.

#12

and you should stop spending money on test strips & buy a nice ribeye, instead.

excellent comment, will remember that forever!!

(Chris Robertson) #13

I don’t limit my veg to Kale and broccoli but those happen to be my favorite veg so that is the bulk of the veg I eat. I do mix in other veg with all my meals but always have eat at least a one serving of kale or broccoli with every meal to go with the other veg. I eat fatty beef, lamb, dark meat from chicken, beef liver, chicken kidneys, and ox heart. I cook with lard but don’t like my food dripping in grease and fat so I supplement with fat bombs which are made with virgin coconut oil. My salads get a drizzle of olive oil. I also eat some cheese some days but not a tone of it. I do supplement salt, magnesium and potassium and I take them with apple cider vinegar because I’m told it helps with absorption. I wasn’t trying to list all of what I eat in my original post, I was simply trying to illustrate the bulk of where I get my veg and fat.

I don’t plan on testing myself this often permanently. I’m doing it now so that I can better understand how my ketone levels are effecting how I feel and so that I can understand how the different foods I eat are effecting my ketosis. While I am becoming fat adapted I’m being much more strict and keeping my carbs lower than I will after my body has become fat adapted. I’m not trying to lose weight, I just want to feel better and I want to eat as many carbs as I can while gaining the benefits of ketosis. I feel like the best way to know how much of what I can eat is a period of testing. That means in the beginning I’m not getting much variety because I want to become fat adapted, when tests start indicating I am fat adapted I will be adding more variety and more carbs. When I know what I can and can’t eat long term I won’t need to test as much or possibly at all.

I actually suspect the reason I’m unwell is because there is a very good chance I have lyme disease but in Britain the NHS won’t test for Lyme disease unless you have a rash. To make it more difficult they don’t use the specific test to identify the strain of Lyme disease that I probably have so going private wouldn’t give me the info I need. I will need to go to a different country to get tested which is currently prohibitively expensive. So I’m trying keto and hoping it works. If it doesn’t cure me I’m hoping I will at least feel better. From what I have read some people don’t feel the full benifits of keto until they have done it for over a month so if keto is going to help I don’t necessarily think it’ll be helping yet.

(Candy Lind) #14

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH! I can’t tell you how much I feel for you, if that is the case, and that stupid rash thing is the bloody tip of the iceberg! My FIL contracted Lyme at age 87, and we had hell getting him tested even though our nurse cousin (and his health advocate) kept badgering for it. He completely lost his mind (that’s how it affects geriatrics) and has never fully gained it back, even after IV antibiotics on 2 occasions.

You are doing all the right things. Your diet sounds superb. Be sure to supplement electrolytes (especially salt) and KCKO.

Now, go out and find some kind of poison plant (gloves on!) and rub a strategic bite location so you get a rash. Then go to the doc with guns blazing! :smiling_imp: If not the particular strain, at least you will know more than you do now. GOOD LUCK.

#15

I’ve found the axiom “what gets measured gets managed” instrumental in my life. I’ve applied to health (ie. body fat%), financial (ie. net worth), and hobby (ie. learning a second language) endeavors.

Feelings are ephemeral. I don’t feel like working out; I don’t feel like doing collections; I don’t feel like doing my assignment. I can’t let how I feel run my life. I have to work on how I feel everyday. It’s not left to chance, I manage how I feel so that I get the results that I want.

I measure BG and BK because they are a result. They tell me what’s going on with my body under the given inputs (whatever I ate, activity level, quality of sleep, stress level, etc). For me, enjoying the journey means being efficient- exerting the least amount of effort necessary to get to my desired destination.

I realize that everyone is different. YMMV.

(Chris W) #16

Everyone seems to react different to the urine sticks, I was until I ran out testing purple nearly every day I did not have high protien ( or get knocked out by carbs or the like.) That was 6 months in well past fat adaption, I think more than anything its a matter of how much SCT, and MCT you are ingesting as they are typically used to make energy/ketones before animal fat is by the liver. I always have a lot of butter and coconut oil. Some people claim hydration effects them but you could not prove that by me.

Ketonix actually lied a little to you.

Urine strips measure excess acetotoacetate that the body has dumped, typically that means you are making more than you body can use, as people fat adapt the liver is being bypassed and less is needed so less are produced to supplement energy. The only efficiency gained in the process that your body is not wasting them through urine. As you fat adapt you just make less ketones but you will also use less so that system is in stasis more or less.

Acetone(breath ketone) is a byproduct of the production of BHB(blood born measurement) from acetotoacetate (urine measurement). The measurement of using ketones is technically not possible(but you can measure your RER which is how much co2 you are breathing out which is lower than when you burn carbs)
Its cool to monitor ketones, but don’t chase them, you will never figure that out and only get yourself stressed out.

(Chris Robertson) #17

Ketonix specifically stated Acetone is the byproduct of the use of blood ketones not the production. They said that the reason Ketonix measurements show little to no correlation to BHB because it doesn’t measure the production of keytones at all, only that keytones are being used. So this isn’t the case?

(Chris W) #18

Then they stated wrong.
Acetone (a ketone) is created when the body breaks down acetotacetate(a ketone). The ketone created is BHB(a ketone) from the process. They are measuring acetone, acetone is volatile and is expelled and evaporated pretty quickly. It is probably the best real time test for being ketogenic but also most likely the least reliable for a level of ketosis in my opinion. In using my breath meter I can have swings that change inside of several minutes that are drastic based on a few tests I have done. I agree with the correlation part a few people have tried to make a comparison but that is far from scientific using blood and breath meters.

Acetoacetate and BHB can both be adsorbed by cells and used for energy but other than seeing a difference in your CO2 output level I am not aware of way to see them being used up short of watching the levels drop.

(Chris Robertson) #19

That clear things up, thank you.