My only way out was to find a way of actually getting my head down for about ten minutes and wait for my liver to catch up and dump a load of glucose, then top it off with a cup of sweet coffee.

Now I know this is Reactive Hypoglycemia. My pancreas sits there with its fingers in its ears and lets my BG ramp up to near diabetic levels after eating, then suddenly panics and drops a heroic amount of insulin which knocks the BG down rapidly to near-hypo levels, and it’s the rapid change that causes a lot of symptoms, even more than the low at the end. The glucose transporters shut down.

My best breakfast is high protein, moderate fat and low carb, which pretty much eliminates the highs, after which the lows take care of themselves.

Running partly in ketosis and generating most of my glucose from protein, and using small boluses of carbs mixed with fat and more protein to manually adjust BG when required (and handfuls of salad to fill the space the carbs would previously have taken up in my gut) I can produce near-normal BG numbers nearly all the time without these disabling swings.

In recent years I’ve taken to having a siesta in the early evening after eating, then getting up and doing stuff at night without interruptions. That’s probably just age catching up with me though. I can if required do significantly more carbs by evening but I find I prefer not to. Trying to chase away the BG lows with more carbs just sets up a cyclic process where the insulin chases the glucose and never gets caught up.

No more bowls of pasta, pizza or other carb-laden lunches. Now it’s a piece of steak or chicken and a nice salad. And I roll right through the day.

Cheers!