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I am already not posting on here as much as I would like! Grr!

Carb loading when on a low-carb diet is an odd concept, after all everything is driven by the ketones obtained from fats right? Well in theory yes but in practice this doesn’t seem to work for all of us and doctors have indicated that I may be getting hypoglycemic when running hard over distances longer than 10km. I can see that this might happen if I am pushing, when pushing my body may well be reverting to using glucose and either I don’t eat enough carbs to fill up my glycogen stores or my body is rubbish at accessing them. Whatever the cause when running hard and long I have had the symptoms of hypoglycemia for around 6 months now and having recently bought I blood glucose monitor I seemed to have confirm this diagnosis with my blood sugar levels considered low when having the symptoms and improving once taking on some carbs.

I was wondering how to get round this as I was not keen on the doctor's suggestion of oats and bananas. The bananas in particular are likely to spike my insulin levels and therefore could cause a drop out of ketosis. So we decided to increase some of the other fruits in my diet, mainly pears and apples. The choice was tough but there are readily available and not too high in carbs, especially when taking into account fibre content, but they do have a higher fructose content than I would like.

Since starting to regularly eat one or two pieces of fruit a day I have not had the symptoms of hypoglycemia nor have I had a low blood sugar reading, to be honest though my miles have also increased so I haven’t been able to push hard. If I still get problems when pushing hard then I am going to have to considering making my own kind of gels as the ones that I have seen recommended but Ben Greenfield are not available in the UK and the nut butter pouches cause your mouth to stick together which is not much fun when you are also slightly dehydrated.

It will be interesting to see how things continue. When I was writing this I was reminded by a comment from my GP that runners have lower life expectancy than (healthy?) non-runners and I am wondering whether this is down to things like carb loading where they stuff their faces with sugar. 

Also for my Ledderhose blog I have been looking at the impact of low carb on inflammation etc. and it is proving to be interesting.