Post-Low-Carb Meal 5-Hour Glucose Tolerance Test Produces Rather Odd Results

Hmm- is it possible that a little bit of carbs now and then might actually allow your body to better process insulin? The kind of results people like mark sisson are getting on a 20-25% protein, 20-25% carb, and 60-65% fat are starting to show up all over the net. Low blood sugar doesn’t mean much if your insulin is going out of hand everytime you eat. Also, certain saturated fat foods have been shown to increase insulin secretions over foods high in monounsaturated fats- you may want to watch your ratios (and rememeber, i’m not sayign saturated fats are bad- just watch the ratios). You may just need to consume some more nuts like macadamias, almonds, hazelnuts! You lose the most weight insulin output and sensitivity in stablized.
GOOD LUCK!

Your blood sugar curve matches that of some obese children in Dr. Lutz’s book ‘Life w/o Bread’. That is they had a flat glucose curve and a bit of hypoglycemia at 2 hours compared with a normal glucose response curve which is bell shaped and never shows hypoglycemia at 2 hours. The flat response is high insulin levels according to Dr. Lutz.

Since most charts of blood glucose don’t show insulin I am assuming 3x is pretty high. Do you happen to know what a normal insulin level would be at these time markers? Just curious.

Since you have already lost a ton of weight and you weight lift (reducing insulin resistance) I just wonder what else you can do other than limit the protein and add fat as you are doing. Cutting protein is one of Dr. Bernstein’s recommendations to lose weight.

Jimmy, I went through this last fall. I basically switched from Atkins to Groves, which is basically what you are doing now – higher fat ratios and controlling protein. It did NOT help me at all. In fact, I gained weight (on INDUCTION).

I’ll let Charles speak for himself (and I know he will), but I recall him saying on your old discussion board that the body does not continually convert protein through gluconeogenesis, but just enough to meet its daily needs.

Having said that, I hope this works out for you. I’m not convinced this is the problem though. You’re a substantial man who works out with weights. You also ate lots of whole eggs fried in coconut oil (yuk!), cheese, sausages, and other foods that had sufficient fat to protein. Considering who you are and what your diet has been, I’m not so sure this particular tweak is the one that will make a difference.

I do applaud you for sharing this journey. Before you point it out, I DID take note that you said you will have to make your tweaks one at a time until you figure this thing out.

Several days ago, on your menus blog, you mentioned that a former Atkins Nutritionals employee had told you to add more fibrous carbs to keep your body from overproducing glucose through gluconeogenesis. I never understood the reasoning behind that – you didn’t explain the principle behind her recommendation – but maybe it ties into what Aaron said.

Now that I think of it . . . Maybe the Atkins employee said to eat a few more fibrous carbs to keep your body from manufacturing glucose at all, since you can’t control how much your body produces? I dunno . . .

Other than the whacky theory above, I have another thought. Maybe zero carb is the answer. I REALLY do NOT want to go there, but Charles has said repeatedly that weight loss problems are hormonal, and further, that if low carb doesn’t solve them, then zero carb might be what’s necessary.

I’m going in for my yearly checkup soon, and I will be discussing these things with my doctor, b/c I suspect I am also having a problem similar to yours. I’ve had all the benefits of low carbing EXCEPT weight loss.

Off to the net to do some research. However, it IS good to have the problem clarified, isn’t it?

Have you thought of trying a fat fast?

That would be 40-50 grams of protein and all the rest of your calories from fat.

I assume you are familiar with the HyperLipid blog but here’s the link anyway:
http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/

Hi Jimmy!

Was just wondering why they did not do the standard OGTT?
I had one in May..thats where they determined I was insulin resistant.

All of this is foreign to me. I’m reading Dr. B’s book, staying on extended induction (I’ve lost 40# so far), walking a couple miles every day. and YOU have really brought me out of some pretty low times when I felt like throwing in the towel. So thanks so very much for all you do for me and others also.
God made someone special when he made you!

Jimmy, Mike Eades says that on a good low-carb diet you can’t gain weight, but sometimes you can’t lose weight unless you have a caloric deficit. For this reason I would say don’t overdo it on the fat increase. Cut your protein (and your total intake) and don’t go out of your way to replace it calorically. This works for me when I have difficulty losing. Sometimes I can achieve this by eating breakfast and a late lunch/dinner – two meals a day. I know it sounds onerous to others, but I get used to it. I’m not hungry doing this.

THANKS Gary! Dr. Westman was the first to bring up the “c” word and I’m looking at that, too. First things first is getting my protein reduced while keeping my fat up. If I can master that, then I can pay attention to calories a little.

I appreciate it, Lauren. I’m tempted to try the fat fast now, but Dr. Westman said to take things one at a time so you know what’s working and what isn’t. If you do it all at once, you’ll never know. He is a great doctor and I’m listing more of them at m new low-carb doctors blog.

I thought of that, too, JD. That’s why you’ll notice my menus contain LESS meals than before.

I’m tinkering with it little by little, Aaron! THANKS for sharing your thoughts. I’m curious what kind of carbs you think would be helpful to enhance insulin sensitivity. What’s been your experience?

It’s curious to me that even though millions of people get their blood tested, there’s no clear way to know what it means.

Eric Westman gives you high marks cause you don’t hardly have any small ldl, Dr. Solis (?) that you interviewed this week thinks the ratio between total cholesterol and hdl is what matters, in which case you better not go to the blood marker championships in Beijing, save your money on those plane tickets. Then there’s the guy that you interviewed that thinks it’s all about triglycerides and hdl, maybe better get those tickets after all, thouh Ornish that you interviewed said triglycerides aren’t reliable, in fact he thinks markers in general aren’t reliable, and Taubes agrees with Ornish on that (though not that much else). Wish these docs would get it figured out. Meanwhile I guess we should each trust whoever says we’re healthy.

I would remember the experimental pizza meal after you first discovered the hypoglycemia you get after eating a low-carb meal. You didn’t get a headache after the pizza, you felt fine. Yes, you responded when I mentioned this, but what about the weight gain? But your body, especially as you have been building up your muscles, wants to restore glycogen, and restoring glycogen causes a temporary weight gain as the muscles take up water along with the carbohydrate. You have achieved good health with potentially good carbohydrate metabolism, so that periodically, while eating low-carb for most meals, you can have a large meal of starch and some sugar to restore glycogen. And it will go to glycogen, not fat, because you have corrected your carbohydrate intolerances. This is the cyclical ketogenic diet that so many of us have found optimal. We have tried strict low-carb for a long time and have come to the conclusion that glycogen restoration is not incompatible with the other health benefits of low-carb–although it is incompatible with the strict low-carb ideology.

Thanks,

Jim Jozwiak

Maybe do that high carb meal post workout. Not sure what in the high carb meal but not junk carbs. I’m interested in hearing more about restoring insulin sensitivity with the occasional high carb meal. Does everyone need to do this after been a low-carber for ages??

I’ll do one step better…I’ll see if Dr. Volek will come on my podcast show to talk about it.

THANKS Barry. My average blood glucose according to the A1c test was 92. I’m not eating too many carbs, so perhaps the cellular level explanation is accurate and causing some insulin resistance. I’ve often wondered if all of those years of eating poorly would catch up to me despite my healthy eating in recent years. One of the last options we discussed was having me take metformin since it basically stops gluconeogenesis from happening. I’d make an exception to my “no drugs” rule with that one if I had to. I’d love to work with Dr. Bernstein on getting this under control. THANKS for your comments!

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the problem fixes itself before you figure out what the problem is.
Lee in Nashville

Now, don’t freak out or anything, but your insulin resistance/reactive hypoglycemia combination strongly reminds me of PCOS (which I have). There has been some talk in the PCOS community about a “male” version of PCOS, but no hard data I can point you to. At ant rate, maybe it’s time for a full endocrine workup, with testosterone and related hormones, plus the more detailed thyroid stuff, T3, reverse T3, etc.?

As well, I have also heard that insulin resistance increases with age, and the only way to fight that is with exercise and antioxidants.

And I can see why you would want to put in some more fats, but have you tried an olive oil/vinegar combo instead of butter? The olive oil has lots of good stuff as I’m sure you know, and the vinegar is supposed to slow down the digestive process somewhat, so as to moderate the insulin reaction. Good luck.

I am surprised that in 32 comments thus far, no one has mentioned insulinotrophic foods as a possible cause. Milk consumption causes a greater spike in insulin output than is expected by its carb and protein content, not only at the meal consumed but at the next meal, too. A number of high protein and carb foods are insulinotrophic alone and in combination with certain other foods. There is one excellent research study listing the insulinotrophic effects of more than 100 different foods. The researcher was an Australian who was unable to do follow-up studies because of a lack of funding. She believes that looking at insulin levels, not just glucose levels, is key to understanding health and disease. Alas, I do not have a link.

I’ll have to get the numbers from Dr. Westman.

Jimmy, do you have any follow up results to this?

I’m having some weird things going on with my blood glucose lately. I was like you, very low BG all the time. Sometimes even hypoglycemic low. Now out of no where they’ve shot up about 20 points and are constantly kind of highish.

I eat a mostly-paleo diet. No dairy products, no grains, limited fruits and stay quite low carb for the most part. It’s hard to eat 80% fat when you’re not eating dairy products.

Anyway, I’m eagerly following your story to see if I can find help with my own.

THANKS Nancy! Since this blog post, I’ve been some personal experimenting to see if I can lessen the impact of this from happening by doing various things, including more exercise, for example. I’m having some dizziness–an indication that my BS is dropping–so I’m not sure what is happening with my insulin. I can only assume it’s still going up. We’re still trying to figure it out, so keep reading for an update. THANK YOU for following up on this.

–Jimmy