today we're going to talk about hypoglycemia there's several different types of hypoglycemia
so let's talk about all of them let's start with discussing hypoglycemia without symptoms
so let's say for example you notice your blood sugars very low but you feel fine there's no
symptoms this usually occurs when you're doing the ketogenic diet or you're doing fasting
now the way they define hypoglycemia if you're a diabetic is blood sugars less than 70. that would
be milligrams per deciliter not that you need to know that but that's what it is if you're
not a diabetic if you have blood sugars less than 54 they consider you having hypoglycemia
but when you start a ketogenic plan and you're not consuming large amounts of carbs anymore
your body is going to burn ketones and fat and no longer depend on glucose the amount of glucose
that you need your liver makes and so your blood sugars are going to go pretty low they can go
below 54. they can even go 45 and so the question is is that dangerous well it really depends on if
you truly have hypoglycemia and one simple way to figure that out is just do you have these
symptoms do you have trouble talking confusion irritable are you hungry you crave carbs do you
have sweating shaking weakness fainting you have vision problems like difficulty seeing when you
notice that your blood sugars are low do you get a headache so many people have low blood glucose and
they have absolutely none of these symptoms like they did before before they started the ketogenic
plan so the reason why the blood sugar is low is because you're not consuming any more sugar so
the body's running off of a different fuel and the amount of sugar in the blood is low because you're
not using that much sugar anymore now let's take another scenario let's say you have hypoglycemic
symptoms but without having low blood sugars okay so now you have all these symptoms right here
but you check your blood sugars and they're normal what's up with that well that's not a
true hypoglycemic condition they call it either pseudohypoglycemia which is kind of like a false
hypoglycemia or they another word for it would be idiopathic postprandial syndrome which is a fancy
term for having your blood sugars drop after you eat about two to four hours after you eat
and they don't know what caused it so they call it idiopathic which means unknown cause so you
do have some of these symptoms but your blood sugars are normal and the reason why this occurs
is because there is a problem with your insulin receptors something called insulin resistance
so over the years when you consume a lot of carbs and you constantly have a stimulation of insulin
over and over and over again the receptors for insulin start to become downgraded so they don't
work anymore so then your body makes more insulin more insulin so we have a situation where we have
hyper insulin anemia that means too much insulin in the blood which normally is supposed to push
the blood sugars down but the receptor is blocking it so it's not really connecting
into the cell so we have a situation we have dysfunctional insulin so we have the symptoms
yet we have normal blood glucose so in one part of the body we might have high levels of insulin
another part it might be low so it can really give you a false picture of what's really happening
with insulin in general now just as a side note when you get insulin resistance you can either
have two things happen you can have symptoms of low blood sugar without having your blood sugars
drop or you could have your blood sugars drop because there's too much insulin and it's pushing
it down with these associated symptoms so it is a little bit confusing and you have to look at the
whole picture of what's happening but the cool thing is the solution is is just the same which
i'm going to get to in a second now there's also something called reactive hypoglycemia
now the difference between this and regular hypoglycemia which is actually called spontaneous
hypoglycemia really has to do with this is related to after you eat and the other one relates to
when you're fasting and again just to make this complex topic very very simple if you just got off
your carbs by doing healthy keto and you included intermittent fasting very gradually getting your
body to adapt to fat so it's no longer dependent on blood sugars so your insulin levels come down
and you're correcting insulin resistance you will no longer have hypoglycemia
now if you look up what to do for hypoglycemia in a medical textbook it may tell you
different things based on if you're not a diabetic or you're diabetic in merck's manual it actually
suggested to consume more protein and a low-carb diet which i agree that would be a good solution
it may not fully resolve unless you continue this and you maybe have moderate protein low carb and
then you also do fasting but it's going to greatly help you because part of the breakdown of protein
does turn into glucose so it can greatly help your blood sugars but if you're diabetic one of the
most common causes of hypoglycemia is when you're taking too much insulin or other medications that
increase insulin because insulin will push your blood sugars low so basically you just took too
much insulin it drops you down into a hypoglycemic reaction and so the medical recommendation would
be frequent eating or keep some candy in your pocket to quickly raise your blood sugars
my suggestion for both of these situations which again check with your doctor before doing this
in addition to these other types of hypoglycemia is simply to get on a ketogenic diet because the
main problem with hypoglycemia which is low blood glucose is the high insulin that's pushing it
down and if you can connect the dots that the biggest trigger for this insulin is consuming
carbs then it makes obvious sense to go in a low carb diet why would you do anything else than that
the other thing to do is eat less frequent meals it's called intermittent fasting because
eating will also stimulate insulin but if you actually can get your insulin into a healthy level
you won't have hypoglycemia and when you start the ketogenic plan
just realize that your blood glucose will come down because you're no longer living on sugar but
the cool thing is you won't have these symptoms if you do it tells me you're not out of the woods
yet and you need to do this more gradually but eventually your body will adapt it'll burn more
fat fuel and less sugar fuel and you won't have these symptoms but you will have low blood glucose
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