i've been suffering from what I think is
reactive hypoglycemia for about two years
now. I've adjusted my diet over the two
years and have improved quite a bit, but I
still suffer from some very bad days and
even weeks. My diet, which I consider
very strict, goes like this:
every hour I eat either: a small portion
of baked lentils, chicken breast, and
nuts, or a salad with red onions and oil
& vinegar or an egg. I get about 160
grams of carbs a day, and about 1900
calories a day.
My questions are:
1) am I just controlling the symptoms, or
curing the condition? Is this condition
completely curable? I don't intend to eat
grains or sugars again, but I hope to be
able to have a larger meal about every
three hours, and an occasional couple of
drinks at night.
2) when I have tested my blood sugar with
a home meter, I have never had a low
reading, even when i've tested it ten
times a day during my worst symptoms. Is
this consistent with reactive
hypoglycemia?
3) my friend, who is type1 diabetic,
claims his sugar is all over the place and
never has symptoms like the ones I
describe. Does this make sense?
Even when my eating is very consistent, my
symptoms are not. I wonder if I don't
have some kind of tumor?
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Stan
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Joined: 01 Jan 2006 Posts: 1664 Location: ,
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Posted: 12-11-06 09:19am
A whole chicken breast and all that every
hour? Are you serious? Or are you
eating small portions? First off,
lentils are fairly high in carbohydrates
and may be causing the main problem. I
know my system is very sensitive
and the smallest thing can give me a few
days of goofiness. I tried eating
lentils once for about six months and
never saw any improvement at all, it just
made me a little better, and then worse
and never got any different. What kind
of lettuce are you eating? Iceberg I
bet, which has nearly no nutritional value
and is generally worthless. No fruit?
You need to be eating some fruit.
Avocados? You may be eating too much too
soon. I always recommend eating no more
than once every two hours. Once every
hour seems pretty dang extreme. Have you
tried spreading it out to this time?
You're most certainly eating too much,
that would be my first guess as to the
problem. How much activity are you doing
through the day? If you're a guy, 1900
is hardly enough. I lift weights and
such and I think i'm getting around 4000
calories a day. You need to probably add
some more fat to your diet and definitely
a bit of fruit, as well as possibly
increasing your protein intake. How much
protein are you eating a day? I'm going
to guess not enough. Now for your
questions:
1. I'd say you're not doing much of
anything. Two years and what seems to be
not enough result is too long for me.
You should see some pretty decent results
in no longer than four months and then
much better health by about a year. If
you're still having runs of bad days and
weeks (!) after two years, you're not
doing something right. I'm under the
opinion that this condition is not
completely curable in the sense that you
won't be able to eat cookies and cake
every day again (maybe once every two or
three weeks), but it is very manageable to
the point where you hardly notice your
symptoms or are able to easily deal with
them when they come on, progressively
getting better and better. You may be
able to have a small glass of wine or
something here and there, but "a couple of
drinks" is probably out of the question.
2. Home readers are useless for low blood
sugar. They only accurately gauge high
sugar readings and don't capture the
levels we need to worry about. What were
the readings you were getting when you
were feeling your worst?
3. Don't bother listening to anything
your friend has to say. Hypoglycemia
differs for everyone. You may only be
having a sugar drop from 80mg to 60mg
every hour or two, which is techinally not
low based on current medical opinion, but
for you that might be disastrous. I know
that my sugar was dropping about that much
every hour, which would set me off pretty
bad. It depends how your body uses
glucose and how easily your brain is
effected by any dropping. Some people
are fine for an hour or two, whereas
others may feel like garbage within only
30 minutes of eating. You can't compare
yourself to anyone else.
The one thing that does kind of concern me
is that you said that your symptoms are
not consistent, even when you're eating
your best. First off, my guess is that
you're not doing something right. When
you say "eating consistent," does this
mean you have days where you go gorge on
general tso's chicken or something? If
so, you're never going to get better doing
that and that's probably the main problem
if you're gorging on badness now and then.
I need to know in detail your total diet
before I tell you what you're doing wrong.
The tumor thing is nothing to be scared
of, if you have it, it would mean you have
some benign lumps on your pancreas that
are causing it to shoot out insulin.
However, if you have this, you will
essentially never have any good days.
Your symptoms will remain constant
regardless of what you eat, and in fact
you can eat anything you want if you have
this. Most people who get this end up
eating a ton of candy throughout the day
until they find out it is a tumor, because
it causes a pretty much continuous release
of insulin. You wouldn't have problems
eating badness if you had this.
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Gymrex
New User, Becoming EHEALTHy
Joined: 10 Dec 2006 Posts: 9 Location: New Jersey
Posted: 12-11-06 14:06pm
I actually do feel much better than I did
about a year and a half ago. I've
improved steadily. I just have these
periods were the symptoms come back for a
few days or weeks - on and off. That’s
why I wonder if i'm just controlling the
symptoms.
I used to eat every two hours or so, and
eating every hour has helped quite a bit.
Lentils have a very low glycemic index and
load, much lower than other beans, and I
only have two or three fork fulls an hour.
The chicken breast I eat is about the
size of a thumb or two. I don't think the
calorie intake is a problem. There are
many studies on restricted calorie diets
that show they increase lifespan and
quality of life.
I used to have a slice or two of
grapefruit and occasionally some
raspberries. Sometimes they gave me
problems, sometimes they didn't. I'll be
trying some avocados though.
What you and other people on this forum
describe sounds exactly like what i've
been dealing with. However, I don't think
this is entirely a low blood sugar problem
but a problem using the sugar. That's why
we are so sensitive to slight drops in
sugar.
Even during my worst symptoms I would get
readings off the sugar meter around 100,
110, 90. My diabetic friend gets much
lower readings at times - in the 40s and
50s. He only gets strange symptoms when
his sugar gets down in the 40 range.
I have to mention that aerobic exercise
makes a big difference, especially
running. I've had to stop running
consistently for the past few months
because of pain i've developed in my feet.
But when I can do two or three miles I
feel great the next day. Back when I was
running a few miles a day consistently I
felt practically cured - no symptoms. I
even got away with a couple of drinks at
night. I've tried other things like
riding my bike and weight lifting, and
nothing compares to running.
|
Stan
Moderator
Joined: 01 Jan 2006 Posts: 1664 Location: ,
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Posted: 12-11-06 20:20pm
So how bad are the symptoms when they
return? The first post seemed to suggest
that you were doing pretty bad at these
points. Glycemic load is not the
importance for hypoglycemia, total
carbohydrate consumption throughout the
day is. That's what I meant. 160g
isn't that much, but getting it from
something like lentils, which stimulates
the pancreas more than green vegetables,
could be causing a problem. But you
don't seem to be eating enough for this to
occur. It sounds like you could possibly
be not balancing out everything enough.
Do you know your total vitamin and
nutrient intake? If you're eating only
about two thumb sizes of chicken per hour,
that would seem to equal out to no more
than 1/2 a breast per day, which is not
enough. Hypoglycemia is quite simply
only a problem with reacting to sugar, it
has nothing to do with using sugar because
everything you eat is converted into
sugar, it's the speed at which it is
converted throughout the day that matters.
If we couldn't use sugar at all or had
problems with this, we'd be having way
more difficulty. About the monitor.
The problem is that you were reading when
you were having the bad symptoms. If you
had taken it before that, you may have
noticed a difference. It's kind of hard
to understand, but basically, your brain
is getting screwed up (as well as your
body) after the drop in sugar.
Thus, you're reading it when it's
beginning to return things to normal but
has yet to readjust. And again, don't
compare yourself to someone else. Sure,
maybe he gets that low, but you may only
go 10mg per hour, but for you that may be
disastrous. That's pretty good you can
run, I can say that generally any exercise
is good. For aerobic I do kung fu, which
is great, moving all four limbs most of
the time and not effecting the joints as
much. Weight lifting balances sugar, so
I usually recommend it. But, yet again,
everyone has different results and
reactions to things. How much activity
are you doing other than running? It
would seem pretty crazy if you can do a
lot more including running a few miles per
day on only 1900 calories. Are you sure
you're eating enough? I guess the main
thing I wanted to know was your basic
day-to-day diet as well as how bad the
symptoms are getting when you get them.
I wouldn't say you're just controlling the
symptoms, simply because you have to
remember that you probably, depending on
your age, have about 20 years or so of bad
food that you need to overcome, and it's
not going to happen in a short amount of
time. But if you're getting a week or so
where you're feeling bad, that seems
strange to me. Every now and then, if I
happen to try a new herb that I find out
later wasn't a good idea, I may feel bad
for three days maximum, but that's it.
Generally i'm fine and i've never had a
run of a week or more of bad symptoms in a
long, long time. So, I need to ask, how
bad is it getting? What symptoms are you
still experiencing?
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Gymrex
New User, Becoming EHEALTHy
Joined: 10 Dec 2006 Posts: 9 Location: New Jersey
Posted: 12-11-06 22:35pm
The main symptoms i've always had are: a
spaced out "brain fog" kind of feeling,
sleepiness, and draining fatigue
throughout my entire body. Sometimes I
get all the symptoms at once, sometimes
separately. Like I said before, the
symptoms have gotten much better over the
past year or so, but I still get periods
of about a few days to two to three weeks
were the symptoms come on for a few hours
during the day. Sometimes it skips days
and I feel fine one day, bad the next,
etc.. It's probably something in my diet
that I don't notice.
There are perfectly healthy people who get
glucose tolerance tests, which show that
they become hypoglycemic after high sugar
intake, but they have no symptoms. This
is part of what makes me think that these
symptoms are more than just a drop in
sugar. Something else is going on.
I went to my doctor today, told him about
how i've been doing, explained to him my
diet, and I asked him if he thought this
was still reactive hypoglycemia. He said
no - something else is going on. I don't
know what, but I plan on getting some more
tests done.
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Stan
Moderator
Joined: 01 Jan 2006 Posts: 1664 Location: ,
Thanks: 1
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Posted: 12-11-06 23:37pm
Well, let us know what happens. I myself
wonder this sometimes, but then again I
was tested for everything under the sun so
I can't think of anything else it could
be. Again, don't base what you're
experiencing on anyone else. I don't
care and you shouldn't care if people have
signs like that. In fact, I read a good
article that proves that that theory is
wrong, but I need to find it if you're
actually interested. It was apparently
some old form of testing they did back in
the day that they thought "proved"
hypoglycemia didn't exist. Here it is, I
believe it's in this one somewhere:
how extreme are these symptoms? Are they
almost dehabilitating? How long do they
usually last? When you say you feel good
one day and then bad the next, or
whatever, how many hours in the bad days
are you feeling bad and how extreme is it?
Post your diet.
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vmiller
New User, Becoming EHEALTHy
Joined: 16 Apr 2007 Posts: 14 Location: New York
Posted: 04-17-07 08:50am
Gymrex
wrote:
Even during my worst symptoms I would get
readings off the sugar meter around 100,
110, 90.
Same here.
I guess I'm not going to pay much
attention to the meter anymore.
I guess I'm not going to pay much
attention to the meter anymore.
