A Few Days Diabetic Windows Period For People Who Were On Ketogenic Diet

Hi guys,

It's been a while since my last article, I couldn't afford to spend much time on researching topics while struggling with my own research that has to be completed by this October. It's tough but right now, I'm just going to hang in there and enjoy as much as I can before graduating from this place. Usually, I enjoyed reading a few articles featured in the Trending and Created section of the "steemstem" tag, but now I've realised the number of authors has decreased significantly along with the Steem prices. Although it is not good for the community, it is understandable.

Nevermind about that, let's discuss something which can make us excited about writing again. All of this bear market and stuffs would affect the rate of articles produced per hour but let's just make sure they were of a high quality. Without further ado, let's talk about one of the most popular diets on the planet, the ketogenic diet. I have to keep my article short and sweet (in the future as well) to ensure I at least produce one article per day; it will be much better if I can stick to that routine.

Most of the articles out there talk about how awesome this diet is. I know, it's pretty awesome. How could it not? A diet which can be used to treat a certain type of diabetes (I've written an article about 5 types of diabetes, not 2) and seizures while providing people with a weight loss perk. Wow! It is wonderful, isn't it? Hold on! There is a paper which has been published a week ago in the Journal of Physiology which stated that, before a ketogenic diet could have given a lot of benefits to you, you can experience a condition similar to insulin-resistance diabetes for a few days. Weird isn't it?

So, why is it significant? Well, people, specifically obese people, have been trying to lose weight in order to look healthy and lean. One of the most common complications of being obese is you will have a higher tendency compared to the general population to develop a condition called as diabetes mellitus. If you didn't know much about the disease, diabetes can be caused by either the body can't produce enough insulin due to a few reasons or cells just become resistant to the action of insulin. Producing inadequate insulin is usually caused by genetics and autoimmune diseases which attack the islet of Langerhans cells in the pancreas making it dysfunctional. No islet cells, no insulin thus diabetes.

Diabetes mellitus type 2, on the other hand, is usually caused by obesity. It is a condition whereby cells become resistant to insulin action, making it difficult for insulin to aid glucose transport into the cell for energy. That's why sometimes, we see people who are obese, eat a lot but easily become tired. They can't use the glucose they eat; having a glucose in the bloodstream for a significant amount of time can cause some damages, that's why it is important for insulin to function normally, in which, it is not. So you were thinking, if the body can't use glucose, then there must some kind of energy backup which would enable them to be used in case of emergency. Well, there are some ketone bodies but it will be a little bit tricky.

As fat utilisation for energy depends largely on the level of insulin in the blood, obese people who consumed lots of carbohydrates might have some sort of difficulties in managing their diet plan and weight. Obviously for the first two weeks, it would be discouraging and there is no amount of things you can apply to make a shortcut towards achieving an ideal weight but getting diabetes symptoms a few days after starting a ketone diet can raise an alarm whether or not this meal plan is suitable for every single individual out there.

Animal Studies

For now, the study which has found the risk of developing diabetes by taking foods which are high in fat was only done in animals. They were making an experiment to investigate the beneficial effect of ketogenic diet on mice but it turns out, those mice get diabetes instead after only three days on that particular diet. All of the subjects seem to have some sort of difficulty in controlling their blood sugar which speculated to be caused by an increased in hepatic insulin resistance. The effect was however temporary and after a few days of assuming diabetic symptoms, things get back to normal again.

It's like what has been illustrated by Rolf Dobelli as the "it-will-get-worse-before-it-gets-better fallacy; things are going to get worse and then better but be extra careful with some of the special cases. Not every single thing would turn out good after a few days of bad experiences. I can give a few examples but I'm sure all of you have your own examples in your mind right now. This kind of fallacy can be seen most commonly in medicine and the stock market.

Things can get pretty bad before it gets better. Steem price, for example, can shoot up to 10 bucks overnight, we can predict something like this to happen but can't really confirm it. Now, the price of Steem can be perceived as bad but will it shoot up again? Even though most of us (including me) believe that it can, but there must a tiny possibility that things going to get a hell-lots of worse and never recover; that's why you should only invest an amount that you can afford to lose.

Some theories suggested the surge in the level of glucose which leads to uncontrollable blood glucose can stem from the fact that the ketogenic diet can be quite restrictive. We have to pay attention to everything we put into our mouth to ensure that we will never phase out from ketosis. This can lead to a surge of a hormone called cortisol from the adrenal gland. Of all the physiological effects provided by cortisol, one of them is to increase the level of glucose in the system. This is because this hormone is usually associated with a "fight-or-flight" situation, people would need extra energy to be extremely aware of the surrounding and maybe to whack a few butts on the way. The good news is after a few days, the hormone would stabilise and eventually, your body would get used to the fact that you favoured ketone over glucose as an energy source.

The animal study was conducted by a team of scientists from Switzerland and they were expecting to conduct a further investigation of the associated anomaly so that a valid and affirm finding could be presented.

Ketone Diet And Diabetes

I remember when I was a kid, my aunt used to say that I should have reduced fatty foods so that I wouldn't suffer from heart diseases like her in the future. Well, I believe that! Who wouldn't have if you are an 11 years old kid who just started to mingle with a new friend named science? Little that I know regarding benefits I could have gotten from switching to a high-fat diet from a high-carb diet. My cholesterol level has stabilised, I'm leaner than I was 5 years ago and I've never felt so energetic.

According to a systematic review journal written by Ajala O et al in 2013, various kind of low-carbohydrate diets has been proven effective compared to a control group who practised a standard high-carbohydrate diet. People seem to be rewarded by multiple benefits which include a good blood glucose control, reduced chances of developing cardiovascular diseases and of course, the thing that matters to most people, weight loss.

Scientists all over the world have investigated by doing quite a number of research to find the best macronutrient to be taken by people with diabetes in order to achieve weight loss and curb down energy restriction. Carbohydrates, proteins and fats, all of them were tested and it was found that fats might have been the best macronutrient among the three to be considered for people with diabetes. Of course, some people will opt with a high protein, low carb and low-fat diet but the weight loss achieved is quite minimal. The only things that it seems to affect are how long people will feel full after a single meal.

It should be noted that obesity is quite complicated and some people are not simply obese because they eat more than they were supposed to. Some are genetically predisposed although this constitutes only a small population (approximately 9%) out of billion (trillion maybe?) people in the whole world. Although I would like to say that we don't need glucose, that's not absolutely true as we have red blood cells which don't have a proper organelle to process ketones; they still need glucose for god sake.

People with diabetes should have practised a low carb diet (not necessarily ketogenic diet) to keep blood glucose level to the minimum. It will be quite devastating if glucose were to interact with circulating proteins in a harmful process which would increase the level of glycosylated proteins. It's harmful and usually associated with the ageing process. People seem to be quite concern about how to stay young all the time, I would say, eat right, exercise and get enough sleep and you are done. You don't need to buy some expensive supplements to achieve that, you are going to create an expensive urine just by consuming all kind of multivitamins supplements.

References: [1], [2], [3], [4]

All images were taken from Pixabay

Images Sources: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]