Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Reactive Hypoglycemia

  Reactive hypoglycemia is a condition, in which blood sugar level drops briefly after a meal. The process works like this. After meal, sugar level, shoots up rapidly. Then crashes rapidly, because of insulin, then again shoots up. This yo-yo of sugar level, puts a kind of strain, more particularly to brain. Brain goes into a kind of mildly frozen state. They call it brain-fog. This happens 30 minutes after meal and becomes normal after 1 1/2 hour.

  I did a GTT. GTT also revealed a yo-yo pattern. Infact GTT was difficult. I kind of felt like crashing. 75gm of Glucose was huge glycemic load for me then.

Introduction

In this blog, I will post information about the diet and lifestyle changes, that worked for me. Before getting into details, I will give a brief idea of how these changes are very effective for me. I was over-weight, slightly obese. 89 Kg for a person of height 5 1/2 feet. My lipid profile (cholestrol) was near the max . That was in 2006.

   I started these changes in May 2009. I started losing 1 kg per month. Now, in Dec 2010, I am 69 kg. I lost 20 kg. My lipid profile is very good. The only thing I was religiously adopting  since 2001, is aerobic activity , walking or cycling as part of my life. I, on an average, cycled or walked, 3 hours per week. I think, because of this, I did not become very obese and my blood sugar was also in normal range.

  I did not start these diet changes for reducing weight. I started for a different reason. I was surprised to find, I started to lose weight. I did not have a name for that diet. Later, I found the closest name for that diet is - "Glycemic Load Diet". I did not feel like being being on diet. I did not restrict my calories or food intake.

  I had some kind brain fog, kind of fatigue. I did not know, I was having this because it has been that way for nearly 10 years. I thought it was because of normal exertion of activities. I do not want to go into details of it. But later, I realised, my condition resembled in some way, chronic fatigue syndrome . Some internet research suggested cutting down on sugars and sugar added foods.

  I experimented with no sugar for 3 days. I was feeling very energetic and was surprised by the energy I was feeling at the end of the day. I found I was having some similarity to condition called reactive hypoglycemia and started a diet for that. That started a cascade of changes which I did not anticipate and was a kind of blessing. I will detail that diet details in subsequent posts.