Can a Zero-Carb Diet Raise Your Blood Sugar? (Part 2)

(This is Part 2 of a two-part series. If you didn't read Part 1, you can find it here. This post was originally published at my Sharing the Magic of Low-Carb Living blog. I'm moving it here because the information is important and I have other plans for that blog now.)

Once I realized that the zero-carb folks didn't understand biology, I stopped posting to that particular forum. I didn't know if I was hurting myself by being there. However, I was enjoying the thread on Frankenfoods, and I couldn't read and participate in that thread unless I was a member of the forum.

So I just kept silently reading. In addition to the forum, I read everything about biochemistry that I could find on education websites. I read everything on the Bloodsugar 101 website. And I read everything on the "Over 50s" thread at the zero-carb forum as well. That thread began to reveal a lot of things that I was going through. From the gain of belly fat, to the rise in blood sugars, I wasn't the only one having trouble with zero carbs.

Retesting My Blood Glucose Levels

During this time, I'd tried to get my hands on some more blood sugar strips, but our local Walmart was out of them. They had a crazy policy where they didn't order what they were out of. The distribution center just shipped them when they were available or whenever they wanted to. So I wasn't able to see what was going on for another 2 weeks.

When I finally got my hands on some testing strips, I'd been eating a few more carbs daily, which had helped but not stopped the heart palpitations and Neuropathy, because I was trying to get the heart palpitations under control. Plus, the Neuropathy had spread from my feet up my legs. That meant I was doing serious damage to myself by staying on a Zero-Carb Diet.

My early morning fasting Blood Sugar: a whopping 120!

I ate meat and eggs for breakfast, and meat for lunch

Just before eating dinner that day, my blood sugar was: 103

One hour after a 12-ounce steak, my blood sugar was: 155

Since damage begins when your blood sugar is over 140 at one hour or 120 at two hours after a meal, I called a PERMANENT halt to the very low-carb challenge and zero-carb way of eating. Regardless of the forum's claim that you need to stay the course for months, and sometimes years, to give your body time to adapt to that way of eating, it wasn't worth losing one or both of my legs over.

So I walked away from a zero-carb diet.

Returning to Atkins Induction

I returned to Atkins Induction but continued to read at the zero-carb forum because I wanted to keep up with the over 50's thread there. I'm glad that I continued reading because someone posted a link to a journal at the raw paleo forum. Apparently, someone was having pretty much the same problem I was. They were gaining fat around the belly, and had higher than normal blood sugars, though not anywhere near as drastic as mine were.

Finding Someone Else With the Same Problem

I read the entire journal because I wanted to figure out what was wrong with me. I wanted to learn how to help myself. What this person found out was that sometimes it's a problem about eating too much fat. Sometimes, it's a problem with eating too much protein. And sometimes, it's a problem with eating too much food in general.

Okay. I'd already played around with the low-fat thing, and if fat was the problem, I guessed I was just going to have to stay obese. I am not interested in starving the fat off of me. That isn't sustainable. As soon as your motivation dies, so does you weight loss.

Cutting Protein and Raising the Carbs

Unfortunately, just switching to Atkins Induction didn't correct my blood glucose issues. They continued to stay high. A typical blood glucose reading two hours after a standard low-carb meal of baked chicken legs, a cup of broccoli, and a small salad was 175. As the days went by, that number continued to grow. When it reached over 200 at one hour after a meal, I knew I had to do something -- and FAST.

So the next thing I tried was cutting down on my protein and drastically raising my carbohydrates. I cut my protein by 50% because I wanted to clearly see, real quick like, if excess protein really was converted into glucose as they say. I also upped my carbohydrates for the same reason. I wanted to get my blood glucose levels under control as quickly as I could.

On the day of the test, I ate a normal low-carb breakfast of a hot Italian sausage link and a couple of fried eggs. I ate about 24 starchy carbs for lunch, rather than protein. And then I had a mixed dinner of a 4-ounce hamburger patty and another 24 starchy carbs.

My bloodsugar before dinner was: 93

My bloodsugar one hour after dinner was: 103

My bloodsugar two hours after dinner was: 92

My bloodsugar three hours after dinner was: 91

Even though my basal glucose levels were what very low-carb people refer to as normal levels, the real problem I was having with Atkins was after-meal glucose readings. That is what this test improved.

I can't say from these figures alone that excess protein is converted into glucose, since I'd changed two variables in my diet: lower protein and much higher carbs. But I find it interesting that 48 starchy carbohydrates had a much lower glucose effect on me than protein did. That told me that protein takes far more insulin to metabolize than most low-carb dieters suspect.

I also woke up in the middle of the night, about 3 a.m., extremely hungry. I'm guessing that was because my total protein for the day was only 7 ounces, plus two eggs -- about 58 grams of protein. Fifty-eight grams is what a lot of people are eating today on a Nutritional Ketosis plan, but that's a lot lower than the 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass you need to protect and maintain that mass on a low-carb diet.

What Type 1 Diabetics Say About Protein

Around this time, I ran into an interesting post at Dr. Bernstein's diabetic forum by someone who has Type 1 Diabetes. She said she has to inject 8 units of insulin to cover a typical 12-ounce steak. Yet, she only has to inject 3 units of insulin to cover a meal of 45 carbs.

Now that caught my attention, because that's exactly what I've found in myself. Apparently, protein raises insulin HIGHER than carbs do!!!! Which is definitely something that the low-carb gurus and the low-carb physicians are NOT discussing. They are all saying that protein only barely raises your blood glucose, just enough to help usher the amino acids into your cells.

Now whether the game has different rules because I have pre-diabetes and am also post-menopause, or whether that is true for everyone, I simply don't know. What I do know is that for me, carbs are not the bad guy. They affect my blood sugars less than protein does.

Who Does Very-Low Carb Work For Then?

Apparently, you need a healthy insulin response in order to do a very low-carb or zero-carb diet successfully. That's why results are so varied. Most of the people that I've seen succeed on zero carb or very-low carb for any length of time are younger. If you have insulin resistance, not eating enough carbohydrates could get you into trouble. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but Dr. Atkins designed his diet to be progressive in carbs for a good reason. Most people ignore a low-carb diet's original structure.

In my case, dropping down to zero carbs caused the liver to initiate runaway gluconeogenesis, which didn't correct itself until I returned about 60 grams of carbohydrate to my diet on a daily basis. Now, I'm not saying that's how many carbs you have to eat to prevent the problem, but that is how many carbs it took for me to correct it.

Where I'm At Today

The above article was written several years ago, so research today might help to add some additional light to what's going on. However, in my own case, today, a simple Atkins Induction for two weeks will do exactly the same thing to me. It causes my blood glucose levels to rise into dangerous territory and results in a Neuropathy flare-up.

My hypothesis is that the body remembers what I put it through by eating zero carbs before, so it interprets a low-carb diet to be a famine situation, and therefore, an emergency.

What I've learned since I went through this experience is that a lack of carbs causes your body to secrete cortisol, a stress hormone that encourages the liver to dump it's glycogen stores into the bloodstream whenever the mind perceives an emergency situation. Cortisol is a part of our "fight or flight" response. It's secreted whenever the body is under internal or environmental stress.

It's job is to provide the energy one needs to fight an immediate physical danger or run away, so it temporarily lowers insulin levels in order to do that. When glycogen stores are low, cortisol's presence commands the liver to use gluconeogenesis to fuel the emergency. This is a normal response, but if that state of emergency continues, cortisol levels will stay elevated and gluconeogenesis will never shut off.

Without enough insulin to process all of that excess glucose you can find yourself in a very dangerous situation. It doesn't matter that the emergency isn't real. The liver will react as if your life is in danger and keep producing glucose. The liver doesn't read your blood sugar level. It uses signals, such as elevated cortisol to determine the amount of energy you need.

Personally, I think the way that Dr. Atkins originally set up his diet is the best way to go, but for some people, that type of diet won't work. A good alternative would be to implement a low-carb diet backwards. Or you could simply move to a well-balanced diet of 120 grams of carbs per day, cut down on the amount of food you are eating, and see how you do. The important thing to remember is that the higher in carbs you go, the lower in fat your diet needs to be.