Tremor and weakness after low carbs - help!

[John B]

At 52 years of age I was the healthiest guy I knew. Fit, muscular, tons of energy. My wife was struggling with weight issues and wanted to try low carb, so I decided to provide moral support and do it with her. She didn't lose much weight, so stopped after about 4 months.

I, on the other hand, felt great on low carbs, so continued for about 8 months. At that point I noticed a reduction in strength during heavy workouts, and shortly after I noticed that I had developed a fine whole-body tremor. I also started waking up at 3 am with my heart racing.
I decided that I should increase my carbs, but found that I had become very carb-intolerant. If I ate more than 20 or 30g at a time I would get shaky, my heart would race, and the tremor would get painfully intense. This was making it difficult to get back to my previous regimen of 150 to 200g of carbs a day.

A few months later I started experiencing "brownouts" in which my energy level would drop through the floor. These brownouts were debilitating, and interestingly enough often seemed to last five days or so, after which my energy would come back to almost normal for a week or two or maybe three before browning out again.

I kept a detailed food and activity log for several months to try and determine triggers. In general it seemed that brownouts would often be triggered by physical exertion (like a workout, but even yard work would often do it). As well, eating high GI foods like a lot of potatoes , bananas, etc seemed to bring on a brownout.

So I'm in a Catch 22. I feel like my liver glycogen stores are low enough after my low carb experience that even modest exertion causes my metabolism to drop into "hibernation" mode for a few days. But if I eat too many carbs in an effort to build up glycogen, I trigger another brownout. Either way, the tremor is always there in the background, sometimes almost unnoticeable, but quite intense during brownouts and after eating more than 30g of carbs.

Any other former low-carbers experienced anything like this? Any idea what the mechanism is? Suggestions? The best I can come up with is to very slowly increase my fruit consumption week by week and month by month and hope my carb intolerance improves enough to allow me to store up some glycogen.

 

[DaveFoster]

Anything that reduces power output of a muscle does not seem optimal. You made yourself pre-diabetic by depriving your body of glucose for so long, which resulted in elevated FFA, cortisol, and a shift towards fatty acids in the Randle Cycle.

If you experienced "brownouts," this seems to be a recovery from the elevated stress hormones, so such a regimen seems unsustainable for your body. Physical exertion would be a trigger due to the increase in cortisol added to your already high cortisol levels. When you get tired after consuming a concentrated source of glucose, this says that you must have caused a sudden decrease in sympathetic nervous system activity, which exposed the underlying lack of a parasympathetic activity.

I went from eating no carbs for about six months to eating up to a kilogram, (yes 1000 g), of sugars per day. You're quite a bit older than me, but with the right supplementation, you should be able to accomplish something similar. For starters, do not exercise for say, a month, and consume plenty of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. The proteins should be non-muscle meat sources, such as milk or cheese; the fats should be highly saturated; and lastly the carbohydrates should be sugars and not starches.

Supplements you should use include niacinamide, aspirin, caffeine, thiamine, and biotin. If caffeine stresses you, look into l-theanine as well.

 

[tara]

John B
Tough situation.
I have never gone low carb (at least not for more than a day or two at a time), so I can't say anything from experience.
I've been finding I get knocked back by physical exertion that I seemed to be able to recover from before - still trying to figure this out.

Wanna tell what you are eating?
Do you have a taste or cravings for carbs?
Any blood sugar testing?

When there is lots of fat in the system, this can suppress sugar burning. There are some stories around of people who improved their ability to use carbohydrates by cutting their fat intake fairly low and increasing their carb intake significantly. But not everyone, and no guarantee. Looks like Dave above made the switch without going low fat.

Have you run your diet through cronometer or similar to see what minerals and vitamins you are getting? There are a bunch of micros needed to use sugars well.

Have you read Peat's articles on sugars and fats on his website?