Hello everyone,
I’ve started keto like 7 days ago and my novorapid Insulin injection dropped from 24 units daily to 4.
And my Lantus injections from 34 to 12.
My Blood Glucose is well under 150 most of the times and I’m pretty happy about it.
I’m not eating any carb but the small amount in avocado, whole milk and cream maybe.
The question is, since there are cells in the body that don’t have mitochondria and thus unable to burn ketons and are dependent on Glucose (Like parts of the Eye and red blood cells), how do you guys calculate your insulin amount for them?
Do they even need Insulin to get energized from blood glucose?
And If we as Type 1’s, totally drop insulin and keep the blood glucose in check (since it’s possible in the keto diet) what will happen to those cells?
My limited understanding, just by following T1s on Twitter who do low carb, is that some of them get outstanding glucose control using low carb/keto. Most (all?) have to keep taking insulin, though.
Some caveats: protein does affect most of them. In other words, eat a high protein meal now, and at some point (hours) later, you have to increase insulin. And I think a lot of them figure out this is what will happen, so they can dose appropriate in advance.
As for your main questions, those are tricky. You should still be able to make glucose via GNG, but I don’t know enough about that in terms of T1 diabetics. For instance, I have “high” blood sugar (over 100, usually) every morning, even while eating zero carbs. But I’m not T2 or T1, so I can’t give someone who is advice.
Have you looked at Dr. Bernstein’s book?
PaulL
(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?)
#3
The experience of most Type I diabetics is that their daily dose of insulin is sufficient, and there is no need for a bolus dose at all. You might want to check out Mark Cucuzella’s and Troy Stapleton’s lectures on the Low Carb Down Under YouTube channel.
The human body cannot do without insulin altogether. Experience shows that in the absence of insulin, patients literally starve to death, regardless of how much food they eat. The problem, from the perspective of standard dietary advice, is that excessive carbohydrate elevates serum glucose to the point of causing damage, and the resulting elevated serum insulin response (in those with functional pancreases) also causes damage. You should be able to find a daily dose of insulin that works for your needs, and then by eating a ketogenic diet not need to worry about insulin further. The risk of hypos is a lot less when you are not trying to jigger insulin and carb intake to balance each other.
According to research done on mice and rats, the problem with runaway glucose on a high-carbohydrate diet occurs when the β-cells of the pancreas are destroyed but not the α-cells. The α-cells secrete the glucagon that stimulates gluconeogenesis in the liver. Without β-cells to secrete the insulin to inhibit gluconeogenesis, serum glucose rises inordinately on a high-carbohydrate diet. Interestingly, in the mice and rats studied who lacked both α- and β-cells, their serum glucose was perfectly regulated.
While there are of course risks in extrapolating from animal models to the human response, it is at least suggestive that problems appear to arise more from an imbalance between glucagon and insulin than from the absolute amount of them in the system. So it is likely that your erythrocytes will be fed, but that your serum glucose will remain in a healthy range, because you are not loading your bloodstream with all that glucose from a high carbohydrate intake.
I was listening to one podcast, where they were theorizing that they thought the body was really supposed to control blood sugar with glucagon. That is, the body is more concerned with raising blood sugar than lowering it.
But since we have an environment where we have too much blood sugar basically all the time, that’s where things go awry.
