Why carb flu? : LC Research/Media Forum : Active Low-Carber Forums

#1 ^

Sun, Jun-23-13, 17:00

Nancy LC

Experimenter

Posts: 25,866

Plan: DDF
Stats: 202/185.4/179 Female 67

BF:
Progress: 72%

Location: San Diego, CA

Why carb flu?

This is WAY over my head, but I think they're saying that you lose the ability to run off fat and lose mitochrondria from hyperglycemia.
http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot....-play-with.html

It sounds like this is the basis for feeling hypoglycemia at normal glucose levels like so many do.

Quote:

Dumping your mitochondria seems to be fine so long as you have continuous access to hyperglycaemic levels of glucose and can run on glycolysis. OK, I'll rephrase that: Dumping your mitochondria is an utter total complete disaster which is survivable, at a cost, so long as glucose is available in excess. Hyperglycaemia makes you hyperglycaemia dependent. If you really are running your nerve cells (and the rest of your body) on hyperglycaemia facilitated glycolysis then there appear to be a few follow on speculations available:

Quote:

You get hungry if you lose your hyperglycaemia. I can remember being desperately hungry, in pre LC days, and being disappointed to see a blood glucose of 4.7mmol/l on the hand held glucometer at work. Hardly a low enough level to explain the driving hunger which I used to feel so commonly in those days...

Acute normalisation of glucose levels is going to make you feel utterly CRAP. This takes me back to the concept of "Atkins Flu" and J Stanton's musing as to its origin. The Crabtree effect is whole body, not limited to neurons. A dependence on hyperglycaemic glycolysis makes sudden onset normoglycaemia quite a shock. It's correctable, more rapidly in some people than others.

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#2 ^

Sun, Jun-23-13, 18:12

teaser

Senior Member

Posts: 15,075

Plan: mostly milkfat
Stats: 190/152.4/154 Male 67inches

BF:
Progress: 104%

Location: Ontario

Sort of helps explain intermittent fasting, too--every other day, the body is forced to remember how to run off of fat. Doesn't always help weight-loss, but often good for metabolic flexibility.

The absolute blood glucose number needs to be left out of the discussion of appetite and hypoglycemia. What matters is whether cells are well-nourished--this can fail at a blood sugar of 60. Or it could fail at a blood sugar of a hundred. The number doesn't say anything about how much glucose is actually travelling through the blood and being taken up by individual cells.