Do you look at ingredients?
I have a child with Celiac who was diagnosed in 2017 and personally have been avoiding gluten since 2009 (except when I intentionally give in to cravings). I thought I knew about gluten but when my child was diagnosed 4 years ago I realized that gluten was in so many more places than I realized. It also has hidden names and some items such as maltodexterin you cannot tell the source
I don’t eat processed foods and am now mostly carnivore and the things I eat have few ingredients, so I think I’m good about gluten.
Welcome to the forums!
The first thing is to doublecheck your carbohydrate intake for what we call “hidden carbs.” If you live in the U.S., be aware that manufacturers are allowed to choose serving sizes small enough to disguise the sugar content of their products. Any amount less than 0.5 g/serving can be listed as “0 g,” and any amount less than 1.0 g/serving can be listed as “less than 1 g.” If any form of sugar appears in the list of ingredients, I assume that the amount per serving is either 0.4999999 g or 0.999999 g, as appropriate. And of course, I also multiply that number by the real number of servings I will probably eat. In civilised parts of the world, manufacturers are still allowed to put amounts per serving, but they are also required to put amounts per 100 g of product, which rather puts the kibosh on this kind of shenanigans.
Assuming your doublecheck of carb intake doesn’t reveal any problems, try reducing your protein intake, compensating with a bit of extra fat. Although you say you were never diagnosed as diabetic, it is still possible that you have a certain amount of insulin resistance, and this can cause the liver to over-produce glucose if protein is too abundant. The Dudes recommend protein intake between 1.0 and 1.5 g per kg of lean body mass per day.
Another point to consider is that your body may simply be wired to maintain a higher serum glucose level than other people’s. Dr. Paul Mason, the Australian sports physician, said in a recent interview that as far as he’s concerned, a higher level of serum glucose is not a problem; it’s dramatic rises and falls in the level that he worries about. As long as a patient’s level remains relatively stable, he is happy.
Most of the food I eat I make myself which is why it seems I’m always cooking or washing dishes.
I’ve switched to mostly carnivore now so I’m not getting many carbs there.
I’m a 69 year old senior citizen and when I went on keto a year ago I lost 40 pounds quickly and unfortunately some of that was muscle mass because I wasn’t eating enough protein–something which happens to us old duffers.
I watched Dr. Mason’s videos so it’s good to know that my glucose level, which does not get high, may just be me. I just don’t seem to get those 80-85 blood glucose levels so many brag about.
My HOMA score and other lab work would seem to indicate I’m no longer IR.
For my (what I believe to be) Afib, I was diagnosed with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (my heart was getting bigger for no reason they could discern) in summer, 2013. I had a ton of PVCs and am susceptible to such things, even now.
Using drugs (and a keto diet since 1/1/14, though most cardiologists don’t know about keto), I have a normal size heart.
I have only had two Afib episodes, one many years ago, and one recently. And the reason I think it MAY be related to berberine is that I was taking berberine, and had more palpitations than normal.
As for ketones, more evidence is coming out that ketones are beneficial for the heart. So much that I think anyone with heart failure or certain types of heart attack should be on a keto diet.
As for the “perfect” blood glucose, I also rarely go below about 80, unless I fast multiple days. But my blood sugar is flat:
As for exercise, exercise does cause my blood sugar to increase:
Your own forum discussion, which you link, covers this extensively. Specifically reread the following comments, among many others. As @PaulL notes animal studies should not be dismissed out of hand, but evaluated on their merits. That said, rodent studies are particularly prone to generate irrelevant conclusions for humans. That because it is very difficult to get rats and mice into ketosis and requires a special starvation ration to accomplish. To apply any conclusions to humans eating a nutrional ketogenic diet is iffy to say the least. See this and this and read the study linked.
As always, best wishes.
I have had this bottle of Berberine for over a year probably. Randomly took it during the day sometimes. Maybe it is why I would sometimes get lower BG later in the day? I never connected the dots. I do know it hurt my stomach when I took it on an empty stomach which is why I sort of gave up on it. I will keep taking it at night and see what happens, today could have been a fluke.
Peter Attia has said he would rather take Metformin than Berberine since the mechanism of action is basically the same and at least it is regulated - your Afib experience is a good reminder that we aren’t quite sure what is going on with these herbal supplements.
With respect to my liver, I wasn’t always kind to it. I had fatty liver diagnosed when I was 32 and I wasn’t even very overweight.
@ctviggen - out of curiosity do you wear an Apple Watch or something similar? It sounds like they now can do a reasonably good job of identifying Afib in real time.
I am 69 now but may well have had a fatty liver long ago because having an athletic build I didn’t “appear” to be overweight meaning most people would never look at me and call me fat.
I would not worry. Blood glucose monitors are +/- 30% accurate. Your levels are borderline for normal. Keep keto. I have three BGMs, and they vary as much as 20 mg/dl with the same blood sample.
I do not wear one of those. I was thinking about getting one of these:
The benefit to this is that it might also tell me if my left bundle branch block is acting up. This LBBB is rate-related, meaning it only appears when my heart rate hits a certain amount. I see the cardiologist next week and am going to ask him about this: is the LBBB a bad thing?
When I take my blood pressure, the device I use estimates my heart rate. When I do body weight training, my HR is normal. When I ride my bike (higher HR), the blood pressure machine always tells me I have a higher HR. I think that’s the LBBB.
The device I linked above might be able to confirm that.
So, I’m currently more concerned about LBBB, than Afib, as until recently I didn’t have an Afib issue.
I cannot tell 100% that it was the berberine, but it might be.
Those devices look super interesting. I am excited for all the devices coming out that help us take ownership of our health.
Keep us posted. LBBB certainly doesn’t sound like a good thing. Have you told your cardiologist that you do keto? I’m afraid my doctors response to anything would be to go on the DASH diet or something.
At my yearly physical last January, my dr., a young guy in his 30s, was delighted at the results of my keto diet even though 5 months earlier he wanted to prescribe me a statin when my CAC score was high, but didn’t argue when I said “no”. In fact he said he might even consider keto for himself and since I got off all 4 of my hypertension meds he told me I was Big Pharma’s worst nightmare.
I was listening to an interview with a cardiologist recently where he said that of his 1000 or so patients, all desperately needing to lose weight, and all whom he patiently counseled on doing so, he could count on both hands the number that actually ever lost weight and kept it off for any period of time. So I imagine open minded doctors would be thrilled to learn from patients like you
Try Dihydroberberine, works amazing. Don’t confuse with Berberine HCL, which is what is normally what most people use. Works way better, and it’s no more expensive. Pretty much the results of higher dosed Metformin without the downsides.
If you’re not tracking your dietary intake, then start there. You’ll never figure out stuff like this if you’re not. You have to find the correlations of different days, foods, and what happens and nobody’s gonna pull that off going from memory.
The free version of Cronometer tells you a lot about what you’re taking in down to the micronutrient level, but the paid version allows you to create custom graphs to compare basically anything it tracks, one of them being glucose levels. Fiber can also help (you know, that evil thing we allegedly don’t need), definitely did with my wifes fasting numbers, she couldn’t get below 110 to save her life even after almost 4yrs of keto (former diag’d T2D), she’s usually in the high 80’s to low 90’s now.
I’ll look into Dihydroberberine. I definitely want to get some primo stuff if i’m going to take it every day
Day 2 of the Berberine experiment. FBG of 87 this AM and ketones of 2.3.
The best FBG i ever had in my life was 97 which i achieved twice a long time ago. Generally been stuck 102+ for ages.
FWIW, which ain’t much, my wife had a pre-surgical EKG a few months ago and they noted an LBBB. They told her to see a cardiologist, so she went to mine, and he just kind of waved it off. A figurative and actual “meh.”
I’m hoping that’s the case. But there was “something” that caused my cardiomyopathy. (I think it was SAD + stress + alcohol due to stress + possibly biking way too much, too long.)
LBBB is associated with cardiomyopathy, but whether it’s a cause or an effect is, of course, not known.
For me, it’s rate-related, meaning I have little to none normally. I only get it when I go above a certain heart rate.
I’m just wondering whether I should keep below that level of heart rate. For instance, go walking instead of riding my bike up hills.
But if you’re eating fiber, you’re eating carbs. You’ve changed two variables.
If you think fiber by itself is “good”, only eat fiber itself. I tried potato starch (a fiber) and other starches for months and could find no benefit. Detriments only, like IBS. Back then, I didn’t have a CGM, so blood tracking was hard.
And there’s no evidence that 110 is “bad” for someone on keto. Or at least no studies I can find.
If you think it’s bad, then by all means try to “correct” it. But don’t confuse that with being “better”, since there are no studies of this.
