PaleoHackers, I need your input on my next Paleo project.


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After several months of very-low carb, I've discovered that whenever I cheat with, say, a scoop of ice-cream or a bar of chocolate, aka a sugar bolus, aka a layman's version of the oral glucose tolerance test, I very quickly start showing symptoms of a massive allergy attack or common cold -- my eyes water, my nose runs, I sneeze. I feel like my parasympathetic nervous system is being massively overstimulated.

Does this happen to anybody else?

If you've regained insulin sensitivity, how do you react to an overdose of sugar?

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6 Answers

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If you are very insulin sensitive you would probably not experience a negative reaction to sugar.

What is more likely is that months of very low carb eating has made your body quite resistant to insulin, this enables the smaller amounts of glucose created by your liver to be directed to your brain where it is most needed.

Peter at Hyperlipid has some interesting posts about this, he calls it physiological insulin resistance.

http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2007/10/physiological-insulin-resistance.html

http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2008/08/physiological-insulin-resistance.html

If your body has become insulin resistant, when you eat a concentrated source of sugar like ice cream the sugar has nowhere to go causing a higher than normal peak of blood glucose. The glucose will be cleared from your blood if you are not diabetic but the delay in this could cause your symptoms. If your had the opportunity you could try testing your blood sugar levels after eating some sugar to see if this is happening. Of course there is individual variation in how people respond to any diet.

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Congratulations! Your insulin sensitivity has returned! That's exciting!

Yes, this describes how I react too. Sneezing, exhaustion, welling up of the sinuses. I never actually get sick, but I can tell that my body is unhappy with me for cheating. Why I keep doing it, I have no idea.

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I've had this before, but only after quite long periods of almost zero carb. I found fasting for a day made the symptoms go away - suggest you try that.

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When doing very low carb I noticed that even a cup of berries could make me feel a whole body huge sugar rush. I think part of what you are experiencing could be related to that since I've seen ice cream be 25+g of sugar in a cup. Probably a lot more but I haven't looked at a label recently.

That being said, after eliminating most sugar from my diet (exceptions on berries and some choccolate) I have found that doses of sugar even over 5g at once immediately make me feel sick. I get many common cold type symptoms almost immediately. I basically recommend removing sugar and keeping it that way.

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I originally wanted to just add a comment to Matthew's excellent post, but I think a new answer might be in order, because there is something about Peter's discussions that I have just now come to understand, and hopefully can explain clearly. It is specifically Peter's second post that addresses this thought that I always had about so-called physiological insulin resistance: "Well, so what if my elevated FBG is due to insulin resistance in the muscles that I acquired from healthy high-fat eating. Elevated FBG is still elevated FBG, right? And all that glucose in my blood would still be doing damage . . ." But there's a difference, and the key is that the average BG level over the day will still be much lower in a paleo eater than in a true pre-diabetic. And it's also the case that the pre-diabetic will have much higher peaks.

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Ugh. Yes. I had a glass of "punch" at a wedding yesterday and felt woozy and stupid more or less immediately. (This wasn't an alcohol effect.)

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