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Sugar spike

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SRJennings
SRJennings Posts: 126 Member
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I have been low carb sends February. Generally under 20 a day. The last couple of weeks I had some carb creep. And then went on vacation and pretty much fell off the low-carb wagon. I am completely gluten-free, so falling off the wagon only includes rice, potato and gluten-free potato chips. Unfortunately, immediately after vacation I had to have a doctors appointment which included a blood test. The report for my sugars was terrible. I went from 103 to 120.

Could my misbehavior have caused that much of a jump in the numbers? Did going low carb actually make me more carb sensitive?

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  • Dragonwolf
    Dragonwolf Posts: 5,600 Member
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    Yes and yes, to a degree.

    At the low levels of carbohydrate intake, the body goes into physiological insulin resistance. This is a good (ie - not dysfunctional) kind of insulin resistance, where the rest of the body stops responding to insulin so that the brain and blood cells get the glucose (they get first dibs, because they can't run solely on fatty acids or ketones). This state can be reversed through about three days of eating about 150g carbs per day (this is a known thing, since it's a common cause of low carbers failing the oral glucose tolerance test).

    A couple of questions:

    1. Was that a fasting number? If so, it's likely a result of falling off the wagon. You should recover in a week or so if you reign it in. You can talk to your doctor about retesting to get a more accurate reading if you want.
    2. Did you get your A1C tested? That's arguably a more reliable number, as it's the average of all your blood sugar levels over the past three months and can provide a rough gauge for how much your sugar is spiking (which shouldn't be much, really).
  • SRJennings
    SRJennings Posts: 126 Member
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    It was a fasting number. The doctor takes the blood and then leaves you a voicemail message. it doesn't leave any room for discussion after you get the results. This is always seems counterintuitive to me because because you can't ask any questions without a new appointment. I think I will ask for the A1 C test in December – which is my next appointment time.

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