Hi there!
In the past days I’ve been reading a lot about ketogenic nutrition and its controversial discussion related to diabetes type 1.
What I understand is that zero carb nutrition will make the body to burn fat since there is nearly no other source to get energy from. In my understanding, on a keto diet you try to eat nearly zero carbs, so that no insulin was needed and thus no insulin is beeing released.
Now I’m wondering why this would work for diabetics type 1 using insulin. Because you have to get any basal or bolus insulin in order to compensate glucose production by the liver or protein intace. But if keto diet aims to prevent insulin from beeing released, every insulin injection would destroy that effect then, right?
Maybe anyone could help me what I am getting wrong?
You may be reading about T2 on keto. A T1 will always need basal and bolus.
Keto can be 50g net carbs, Protein at 1.25-2g/kg lean body weight, about 120-150g a day. Fats as needed to bring up the calorie intake needed.
You may need to bolus for protein, up to 50% per gram of what your I:C ratio is.
It’s good that you are asking. I would do more reading before doing keto. It can be very good and with little downside.
I’ve been doing Keto for the past two months and it has really helped manage my blood sugar. I stuck to a diet of under 25g of carbs a day. I wear an omnipod and found that the only insulin I needed was my basal, it wasn’t necessary to bolus at meals as there weren’t enough carbs to need to bolus for, especially when you factor in the higher fat intake under Keto that delays the sugar absorption.
My dexcom has showed an average glucose reading of 102 over the last 60 days with a standard deviation of 17.
A keto diet aims to lower the amount of insulin being released but not to eliminate it completely - that is not physically possible. The small amount of insulin still being produced in those on a keto diet is similar to the basal insulin you take.
