Ketones produced by a strict low-carb diet can be healthy, but ketones produced by insufficient insulin can be lethal.
What distinguishes nutritional ketosis from diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA)? One is a life-threatening situation, whereas the other is not.
It’s simple to mix up the two because ketones are a term that is becoming increasingly popular in both mainstream media and mainstream dieting. And given how dangerous diabetic ketoacidosis is, it’s very common to wonder if a ketogenic diet is healthy for someone with diabetes.
Let’s look more closely.
How do ketones work?
In a nutshell, ketones are an acid that the body creates when it burns adipose tissue and transforms it into fatty acids and amino acids for use as fuel.
How to gauge ketone levels
Ketones can be detected in the blood or in the urine using ketone strips. Because a blood ketone metre monitors your ketones in real-time, it is, of course, more accurate. Because your ketone levels are currently being evacuated through your urine, urine ketone strips offer a more hazy measurement of what they were two or three hours earlier.
Conditions that lead to the body’s production of ketones
The body will truly create ketones under four different conditions.
- Nutritional ketosis: Your body can start burning body fat predominantly for energy, resulting in the synthesis of ketone acids, when you consume less than 20 grammes of “net” carbohydrates per day.
- Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA): When the body lacks enough insulin (most commonly in those with type 1 diabetes), it must burn body fat because it is unable to use the bloodstream’s glucose for energy. (Severe drunkenness can also cause “ketoacidosis,” which is similar to DKA but not directly related to insulin production.)
- Your body can make trace levels of ketones when it switches to using body fat for energy if you haven’t had a meal in a significant amount of time; for most people, that’s between 10 and 12 hours. These ketones are referred to as “starvation ketones.” This happens frequently during intermittent fasting and, as long as you ultimately consume a meal, is usually just as safe as nutritional ketosis.
- Sickness-induced ketones: When you have a serious cold, stomach virus, infection, or flu, for instance, the stress, lack of nourishment, infection, and work your body is doing to fight the sickness might lead to “illness-induced ketones.” With the assistance of your medical team, you should handle this in a diabetic patient by raising your insulin dosages to get rid of the ketones.
Nutritional ketosis vs. diabetic ketoacidosis
The amount of ketones in your blood or urine is the primary indicator of whether they are harmful or healthy.
Although ketones in and of themselves are not harmful, the function of insulin and glucose in a healthy body is to stop them from building up.
Ketone levels typically rise to very low levels between 1 and 3 mmol/L during a ketogenic diet (less than 20 grammes of carbs per day). The closer to 3 mmol/L a person could achieve, the fewer carbohydrates they ingested. But other people can exit ketosis by consuming just a meal of carbohydrates, even a large dish of broccoli.
It is possible to follow a ketogenic diet if you have type 1 or type 2 diabetes. However, as usual, it’s crucial to make sure you’re receiving enough insulin and maintaining good blood sugar levels.
Due to the high fat intake, some people discover that they require much more insulin when following a ketogenic diet. look at this article. This method of eating for weight loss may not be suitable for everyone.
Ketone levels build up in diabetic ketoacidosis either gradually (in a person with early-onset diabetes) or incredibly quickly (in a person with type 1 diabetes who isn’t getting enough insulin or is very ill).
Ketone accumulation can reach 20 mmol/L when there is insufficient insulin to inhibit the creation of ketones, which is exceedingly poisonous to the human body and quickly lethal if ignored.
Diabetic ketoacidosis symptoms include:
- Vomiting Nausea
- Increased need to urinate due to extreme thirst
- Continent pain
- Breathing difficulty
- Breath that smells like sour fruit
- Weariness and confusion
Treatment for diabetic ketoacidosis: If you are having nausea and vomiting, you must go to the emergency department right away to obtain IV fluids and higher insulin doses to stabilise.
Ketone levels can rise dangerously high and cause DKA in people with type 1 diabetes who are extremely ill (due to the flu, a stomach illness that causes vomiting, or an infection). The typical course of action for the first stages of these ketones is to increase your baseline insulin levels and drink lots of fluids.
Even though your blood sugar levels may seem normal, the additional insulin will get rid of the ketones without causing a spike in your blood sugar, allowing your body to continue fighting the disease or infection.
Due to stress and malnutrition, people with type 1 diabetes who participate in marathons and triathlons may have ketones similar to these. Again, they’ll probably discover that they can raise their insulin during the strenuous exercise to get rid of the ketones without causing their blood sugar to plummet.
Always talk to your medical team before changing your insulin dosage, especially if you have DKA symptoms or other symptoms brought on by an illness.
