Why I had to STOP KETO after 2 years :(

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(bulkbiker) #61

You seem to have missed the bit where he tells of people being given insulin intravenously when in ketosis with no ill effects and the guy who asked the question saying he had seen Blood Sugar at 2.5 mmol/l when fasting. I think I must have found the study somewhere that did in fact say that the patients bloods were sub 2 when being given the insulin but I’m afraid I didn’t keep a link to it.
But anyway the gist of it is that lower blood sugars seem less of a problem when in ketosis so your 3.8 mmol/l shouldn’t concern you which was kind of my point from the start (not sure what your wife would say though! :grinning:)

(Cathy) #62

I am sorry I have not read through all the responses and likely repeat something. I think you are misinformed that keto cannot be a long term woe. I now have 12 yrs. under my belt… the last 9 are continuous. It is not hard. I did not suddenly grow a bunch of ‘will power’. Admittedly there are some things that can make it difficult like under eating/ excess exercise etc. So if doing those things, be warned, it will make keto more difficult.

Best wishes on your new path.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #63

By all accounts, the brain is perfectly happy to live on β-hydroxybutyrate. Dr. Bikman, in an interview I recently watched, says there is actually no evidence for the contention that the brain absolutely needs a certain amount of glucose. That surprised me, because I hadn’t worked out the implication of this video.

Did you listen to Dr. Phinney’s description of the study on the fasting patients who were brought to extremely low levels of blood glucose, levels associated with coma and death, but were completely fine (their ketone levels were nice and high, which was probably relevant)? I loved his comment that “the only people in the room experiencing palpitations were the experimenters”!

(Michael Heffez) #64

So despite low BG levels, if Ketone levels are high, then those coma-death scenarios would be of no concern? Then perhaps it would be more exercise related then…? It’s a very interesting comment because the next day when I went right back on the keto trail I was fine. There’s something called “exercised induced hypoglycemia” which I’ve been researching…

(Michael Heffez) #65

I didn’t have any hunger nor sweating but some intense dizziness and drowsiness. Also, I couldn’t move and my heart was racing- very scary stuff. I’m following advice by a professional nutritionist who advised me the same- to eat more frequent meals spread across the day and it has been helping. Also, I’ve been including complex carbs which apparently helps to stabilize BG levels. It has been helping but I still felt overall better on keto- maybe will revisit down the line but for now, I don’t have a choice but to do things this way.

(Michael Heffez) #66

How do you deal with never being hungry on the diet? Do you force yourself to eat several times per day to avoid going into starvation mode? Seems like everyone has a varied approach but some feedback will prevent me from entering pitfalls when I resume keto…thanks in advance,

(Ellie) #67

It’s not true that you need to eat several times a day to avoid starvation mode. The key is eating enough when you do eat. I think your original problem came from cutting cals whilst increasing exercise. If you do that then you can’t really blame keto for the issues that followed and nothing in keto recommends doing that as far as I know.

(Michael Heffez) #68

I was for nearly 2 years an plan to go back on it once I receive medical clearance and/ or BG are stabilized. It’s more of a raising awareness (if you will) to those that are in deep Keto and exercising. It’s a personal account versus science backed research. Apologies if it came across this way. And no I’m not nor planning to be Vegan…lol. Felt the best I’ve ever had on keto.

(Michael Heffez) #69

Well, it does seem to suppress appetite in most people. If you’re doing SKD then it’s very hard for me to see or understand how people are eating 3-4 times/ day…unless they’re just forcing themselves to do that.

(Terence Dean) #70

Yes I did see that part but it was the Aussie guy who said that his blood sugars had gotten pretty low, not Phinney but he didn’t seem to contradict or correct him at all. Yes that study from the late 60’s sounds like they proved something along those lines but Phinney did say that his experiments never went below 3.5, just saying. Has he done anymore of these experiments since, I know you said you’ve been lower and survived. :wink: What I wanted to know too was if Ketones are high does that actually make your blood [sugar] drop? That’s what the question was, he didn’t exactly answer it, someone asked the other day whether there was a relationship between ketones and blood sugar, if the answer is yes then I wouldn’t be so worried.

(Terence Dean) #71

Yes I did Paul, that study was amazingly unethical and they wouldn’t get away with it today but it does seem incredible that what would normally kill or comatose somebody didn’t have any adverse effects on the guinea pigs. Yeah we’ve read about the benefits of ketones but when it comes to putting it to the test I wonder if anyone would be prepared to drop their blood sugars that low to prove it works today. I’m quite sure I wouldn’t.

(Banting & Yudkin & Atkins & Eadeses & Cordain & Taubes & Volek & Naiman & Bikman ) #72

Uhm… I’m sure someone has pointed this out, but your experience constitutes an N=1 experience. Not everyone will fantasize about a pizza restaurant. Not everyone will fall prey to excess cortisol, if that’s in fact what actually happened. It’s funny that your solution to your weight gain was to cut calories more and to exercise more. Things that would increase cortisol. It never dawned on you to ensure you got a good amount of restorative sleep, or gave yourself a break from the working out, for recovery. Keto and exercise is a fine mix. Exercising with a brain, and not just going hard all the time, that’s the problem.

You don’t have to constantly worry about things. YOU did, but not everyone must. I take a day off keto whenever I feel like it. I plan my return before I do the departure. It’s not willpower. It’s planning for success.

The entirety of your post reads like anti-keto propaganda. I’m the first to admit that this is an echo chamber, but still, many people have experiences going 2+ years that suggest yours is due to problems not with the ketogenic diet, but your implementation of the ketogenic diet.

(Terence Dean) #73

I don’t think she’s going to go against the medical model any time soon, hell if she started telling patients that they don’t need to worry about BGLs dropping to 2.0 mmol/L or less just eat more fat she’d get sacked real fast!

But I do see the reasoning behind the claims, that guy in the video did say that he was getting dizzy though, and decided to end the fast. So clearly you can get symptoms at those levels.

(Ellie) #74

It does indeed suppress appetite but there is nothing to say you should eat 3-4 times a day. In fact most people only eat 1-2 times a day and snacking as actively discouraged as you want to minimise the number of times insulin is released. That way when you do eat you have an appetite and then you should eat a good sized meal, with plenty of fat to satiety so that you aren’t consciously calorie restricting.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #75

The relationship is not direct, it’s through the quantity of carbohydrate in the diet. If carbohydrate is high, blood glucose will be high, and insulin will rise in order to bring the glucose back down, which means there will be no ketones produced. If dietary carbohydrate is low, then blood glucose will be low, and except after meals insulin will therefore also be low, and the liver will produce ketones. In fact, Benjamin Bikman says that under such conditions, eating more protein can actually cause ketone production to increase, because under low-carbohydrate conditions, eating more protein has no effect on the ratio of insulin to glucagon (whereas it does when we eat high-carb).

My takeaway from all this is that (some of) the rules are different when we eat ketogenically. Just as we have no need of vitamin C, because of the effect of β-hydroxybutyrate on the genes that regulate the body’s built-in antioxidant mechanisms, so too (perhaps) we don’t need very much glucose in the bloodstream when in nutritional ketosis. It’s a thought, anyway.

#76

Sorry to hear about your troubles. It sounds like you were very unhappy in ketosis and I think the more you’re unhappy with yourself the greater the likelihood of developing depression and falling into a cyclical negative outlook. It’s important to take care of your mind as much as you do your body.

Cravings do come about but it’s important (personally) to leave room for it. I think if you live with the constant feeling of being deprived, you’re not fully in ketosis - mind, body and soul - no matter what kind of readings you get on what kind of test you take.

I hope you won’t feel too bad now that you’ve made your decision and you move on and find what makes you happy.

(Roy D Rushing Jr ) #77

I don’t think it has to be that stressful. I’m not really stressed about it. I like to exercise too, and since the keto flu passed, my workouts have been better than ever. My strength gains have been phenomenal as has my apparent muscle growth since starting. While I can’t really rule out having to quit one day for some physiological reason, I see no signs of it now. I certainly don’t feel deprived or dissatisfied with my athletic performance while on it.

I’m also not averse to letting myself have some carbs occasionally if the urge grows strong enough. In my mind, I’m am perfectly able to do anything I want to do with my diet at any time I want to do it. If I know what the consequences are for eating something and I do it anyway, well how is that any different from a lapse in willpower while on any other diet or WOE? At least this way I’m not experiencing near uncontrollable cravings that I can’t satisfy with any kind of food because I hit my daily calorie limit.

The primary thing we all contend with when trying to stay healthy is temptation. It’s always going to be there. All we can do is take steps to somehow control our response to it. Some of that is willpower. Willpower is what gets people through a year or two of CICO style dieting and lets them lose a bunch of weight that way. Willpower has this way of eroding though. The temptations of the world beat against it constantly until finally it’s battered down, and then we gain all that weight back. The answer isn’t just more willpower. The most herculean reserves of willpower in the world would eventually succumb.

If, on the other hand, we can change ourselves so that we don’t need nearly as much willpower to stay healthy, then we can win. That’s why keto works.

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #78

The only reason this strikes a chord with me is that I’m 2 years in and I’ve been steadily gaining weight for the last 8 months. I’ve mentioned this numerous times on the forums, and to doctors, and nobody knows why. This despite plenty of McGuff protocol single set to failure training, and no substantial change in my diet. Stress isn’t, imho, the issue. Something else is and I don’t know what.

I consider cycling, but from my understanding of the science, I don’t see the point of eating starches. How is it going to help me to eat grains or sweet potatoes? I don’t crave them, I’m happy with LCHF foods, I PREFER low carb pizza, quite happy with Miracle noodles.

Wish someone had an answer for me. The endocrinologist prescribed an appetite suppressant, though for the life of me I can’t see that being a great solution.

(Cathy) #79

Have you had a proper thyroid test done, including reverse t3?

(Michael Heffez) #80

checking into that, I have an appointment with an endocrinologist to get to the bottom of this…could be adrenal, thyroid related, or a combo of both…