Dragonwolf wrote: »

Actually, properly executed, nutritional ketosis is not inherently dangerous. In fact, low carb, high fat diets were historically the way to treat diabetes, before the fat-phobia era and the increase in emphasis on drugs over meaningful lifestyle changes for management.

There is a dangerous state known as ketoacidosis, which can happen among Type 1 or very late stage Type 2 Diabetics, who can no longer produce insulin. There is also a dangerous state that Type 2 Diabetics are susceptible to called Hyperosmolar Syndrome, which is a state of elevated glucose and sodium in the blood, as the person gets increasingly dehydrated. Either of these can happen on any diet, due to the interaction of various hormones and foods on the body. However, they only happen in people who are already diabetic (and tend to be more common among those who are undiagnosed or aren't controlling their diabetes). HS also has a number of other factors that can cause/trigger it (again, regardless of diet).

From Dr. Peter Attia:

What is diabetic ketoacidosis? When a diabetic (usually a Type I diabetic, but sometimes this occurs in very late-stage, insulin-dependent, Type II diabetics) fails to receive enough insulin, they go into an effective state of starvation. While they may have all the glucose in the world in their bloodstream, without insulin, they can’t get any into their cells. Hence, they are effectively going into starvation. The body does what it would do in anyone – it starts to make ketones out of fat and proteins. Here’s the problem: the diabetic patient in this case can’t produce any insulin, so there is no feedback loop and they continue to produce more and more ketones without stopping. By the time ketone levels (specifically, beta-hydroxybutyrate) approach 15 to 25 mM, the resulting pH imbalance leads to profound metabolic derangement and the patient is critically ill.

But this state of metabolic derangement is not actually possible in a person who can produce insulin, even in small amounts. The reason is that a feedback loop prevents the ketone level from getting high enough to cause the change in pH that leads to the cascade of bad problems. A person who is said to be “keto-adapted,” or in a state of nutritional ketosis, generally has beta-hydroxybutyrate levels between about 0.5 and 3.0 mM. This is far less than the levels required to cause harm through acid-base abnormalities.

If your sugar went that high, then there was something else going on that you're not telling us (ie - undiagnosed or uncontrolled diabetes), as that's extraordinarily high even by diabetic standards. (For those that don't use the mmol/L unit the OP described, 56 mmol/L is almost 1010 mg/dL. For perspective, the usual readings in mg/dL for blood glucose are in the 60-120 range, with "high" being anything above 120-140, depending on who's measuring and what research they're going by.)

Also, if you (general) already know you have diabetes and you're not already testing your blood sugar before and after every meal, and when you first get up in the morning, then you're just asking for trouble, regardless of your diet, medications, or lifestyle.

Now, while I am in full agreement that people should not dive head first into a ketogenic diet without doing their homework, please don't say that it's a "dangerous diet" and provide a vague story about how your blood sugar went up with no other information surrounding the circumstances by which it happened. Doing so is little more than scaremongering, and unfairly drives away people who could turn their health around with a properly executed ketogenic diet.