This person supposedly eats <10g of carbs per day:
From Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/comments/1bzxgpa/sibionic_ckm_14_days_10g_carbs_per_day/
So much for all of those tests testing what happens if you eat protein or fat, if your ketones look like that. I have no idea what is causing that amount of variability.
I’ve been considering finally getting a BGM. I’m scared of finger pricks cuz - ouchy. Lol So what would be a good recommendation that doesn’t feel like a razor blade jab?
You mean a pin prick glucose monitor or ketone monitor?
The problem with the pin-prick glucose monitors is that they are allowed to be something like 95% correct, where “correct” is plus or minus 15% from the actual value. So, if your blood sugar is 100, a reading anywhere between 85 and 115 is “correct”, 95% of the time (5% of the time will be outside that range).
I have found the continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) to be a lot better in this regard. In other words, when you wake up, instead of getting 105 one day and 130+ the next day with pin-prick meters (actual values of mine), the CGMs have basically the same value in the morning. Now, some argue that the value might be wrong, but I only tested my CGM versus an actual blood draw once, and it was correct.
If you want accuracy, try a search for “tests of glucose monitors” or something like that. At one time, there was a clear winner. I’m not sure about now.
If you want a “generic” meter for both glucose and ketones, the Keto Mojo is okay. The blood sugar is all over the map, but it provides at least an estimate of what’s going on, and you can also test ketones.
As for the continuous ketone meters, they aren’t in the US yet. Not sure when they will come here.
I can tell you with a CKM I would be testing acetone (BRace) all the time to find the correlations. But honestly this could make sense. The OP does say he trains a great deal ( cardio/weights IDK) but in my experience ketones seem to decrease over time. That is my body no longer makes wild speculations as to what energy requirements will be and makes the appropriate amount plus a tad more. DO recall that BoHB is a measure of excess we have, not what we are using. In my mind that should fluctuate.
If I take mine more frequently I can trigger an uptick with a good meal and a down tick with a long bike ride. However an hour after the ride my whole GKI gets into therapeutic zones. <3.0
I think Richard Morris pointed this out around 2018 or so when he began to notice his were perenially under 0.5
BUT MY QUESTION: How would the CKM/CGM register Audacious or similar exogenous ketones and would we see the supposedl health benefit?
Thanks for the detailed information! I’m new to these kinds of monitors so I may not know the proper terms to be using when asking questions.
While it would be cool to see my ketone levels, I don’t particularly think it’s helpful in any real way on a daily basis. As long as I’m in ketosis I’m fine.
I was more intrigued by the idea that we can see how a particular food impacts our insulin or blood sugar, and know if it is a real concern for our own body composition or not. Like with erythritol. The heated debates all over the place about it are frustrating to me because it doesn’t appear to impact my diet and never really triggers me. I just wanted to know for certain because if I’m one of the lucky ones that can freely use erythritol then I want to continue without all these concerns. Basically I can just tune out the noise. But I want to know for certain first. I’m not a fan of any other sugar substitute, and I refuse to regularly use a sweetener that is higher than a 1 on the GI. Erythritol always gets swept in the bucket along with all the other sugar alcohols, many of which are pretty high on the GI and have significant side effects. Yet it’s vastly different. Anyway, all the conflicting info about it has caused me to want to test myself and see if it’s of any concern to my system when it comes to my blood sugar, etc.
Then I also became interested in how modified starches affect me. For instance, we only make whole grain rice or potatoes a day ahead and chill or freeze them for a minimum of 24 hours before reheating to eat because it changes the starches. I don’t eat it much by that’s how my husband and son eat it. I was curious about the few occasions here and there that I eat it and what impact it could be having.
Those are just a couple examples that have caused me to wonder if these monitors would show me anything useful.
@marklifestyle Like you, my ketones have gone down over time. Went keto on 1/1/14, here’s what happened:
I’m still around the lower levels for ketones, though I rarely take them anymore. (Don’t really tell me much.)
For you and I, it might not be beneficial. But if you’re “new” to keto and using it for a mental disease, for instance, it could be benefit.
@Just_Juju I think CGMs are useful. For instance, I’ve found that exercise always increases my blood sugar; popcorn causes no blood sugar rise; “clean” (no rice, etc.) soup from an Asian restaurant caused very high blood sugar (probably from corn starch); protein caused no discernible blood sugar rise; etc.
A CGM would be helpful for what you want. They are still too expensive, though. But if you get one, I’d take at least a few days to get a baseline before any testing. For instance, this is three days of mine:
The higher blood sugar on 9 Apr is from a work out. I always had higher blood sugar in the morning and lower at night. And, yes, I ate two meals a day during this time.
Word on the street in Vegas was summer OTC release at 79. That is a considerable price reduction. Obviously wanting to make up in through volume of sales
If it finger stick hurts, it’s set at the wrong depth or the blade is dull, you should barely even feel it.
See, that makes perfect sense to me, most things in our body are all over the place, all the time. Don’t see why Ketones would be any different. Think of things that piss you off, stub your toe, struggle on a lift at the gym, boss makes you mad, worry about something coming up in life, almost rear end the car in front of you, BP, Heart Rate, Stress Hormones etc are all over the place. Snapshots in time, when you see it all at once, it’s just a mess.
I enjoyed experimenting with different foods when I wore a CGM for 10 days.
I purposely went off plan to get the data. Fried rice spiked the highest but came down the quickest also. Chicken and dumplings didn’t rise as much as I expected. I had more chicken and broth than dumplings and it had some fat in it from the chicken thighs.
I quit eating keto ice cream bars when I saw a small glucose rise. I rarely ate them anyway - mostly for my hubby. Sugar alcohols, I guess.
Won’t matter. I think Dexcom Stello.
Once one gets it they will all get it, driving down price. When we first started doing BHB at home Freestyle Libre was about the only choice. It was expensive and the strips were outrageous. With KetoMojo everything changed.
@Just_Juju The ones I used (Free Style Libre) use a disc with a small needle. You use a special applicator to push it into your upper arm. It’s not much of a pinch at all.
There’s a seal that goes around the outside of the disc. I have had this seal fail multiple times. I used both a European model and a US model, and the US one failed more often like this. The US model also took a while to stabilize, meaning that I ignored the numbers for a day. The European one seemed to be immediately accurate.
I used a reader for the disc, which stores only 8 hours of data. (So you need to read it every 8 hours, which means you’ll sometimes lose data overnight.)
@lfod14 I agree with you about the body being continuously variable. I do find it strange though that my ketones seem to be pretty well “fixed”: low (0.1-0.3) in the morning and higher at night (0.5-0.7 maybe). But until I wear one of these CKMs, I won’t really know what my ketones look like.
I think they’re developing a dual monitor, both glucose and ketones. That would be useful, though probably too expensive.
The next thing that would help is a pin-prick insulin monitor. I bet that’s also all over the place and different people would get different results for the same food.
Nick Mailer and I talked with Dorian ( Keto-Mojo) about this as far back as 2019. He had a unit designed but it was the size of a toaster and thus not protable and the amount of blood draw was also problematic. The requiremtn is roughly 1 mL.
Nick and I both said we would buy one but Dorian hedged. I still think people would love to see insulin responses throughout the day
I’m using keto mojo and buy glucose and ketones strips. I find it pretty good. I’m a nurse in the uk and we were told to always go by finger prick reading for the diabetics not CGM.
I never had a continued monitor as too expensive for me. But even finger blood are different from finger to finger. But after stabbing myself for almost 3 months three times a day I have a pretty good idea which foods affect me. I just don’t know how accurate they are as ketone levels of 7.4 are pretty high, other finger 6.6 this is fasting 48 hours. Saying that I feel fine no adverse effects but it makes me wonder about accuracy.
@marklifestyle I think others had a smaller version, but I don’t know what happened to it.
I’d love to know what happens for morning insulin depending one when you eat. For instance, eat 8, 10, 12, and 14 hours before taking a morning insulin reading (take reading at same time each morning, same food each day for 4 days in a row). I theorize that insulin would be highest with 8 hours and lowest with 14, but don’t know.
@Mon1 The ketone monitors aren’t that accurate. I have a picture somewhere with 3 meters using the same blood and I got 0.2, 0.4 and 0.8 mmol/l, which is a large variation. The highest I ever saw was a bit above 4 mmol/l, but that was a few years after I started keto. At that time, ketone strips were $5/each, although you get closer to $3/strip if you went to Ebay. 6-7 is pretty high. Are your blood sugars low?
My blood sugars jump all over but for April I have been 5.3 mmol but sincew September 2023 they are averaging 5.6 A1C about 5.5. Uric Acid about a 4.7. BHB .6 for the month and .7 since September. I swtill have a Libre Freestyle and will check Mojo to it and to my wife’s mojo if things seem off. Overall I live according to trends and NEVER a particular reading…on any blood test.
I think Ivor and Gabor’s unit was substantially smaller than Dorian’s model. However he never released it. Instead he became part of Meterbolic and they run a Kraft Array at home in Europe. 500 plus Euros
Yes blood sugar was actually bellow 3 !! But I feel ok but maybe thinking of break the fast. I always chicken out. !
