Hypoglycemia and arrhythmia

As has been mentioned in the past, hypoglycemia (with or without diabetes) can be a trigger for Afib.
While recently helping a person with this aspect of potential triggers, I found this report which supports what
I found to be true in the early stages of my afib saga. While not diabetic, my stress level and adrenal
function was causing hypoglycemia in the middle of the night… anywhere from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m.
My Family Practice MD at the time told me to be sure to eat a protein snack before bed to help prevent
the low blood glucose. That worked and mostly eliminated those events while sleeping.

Had I also focused on supplementing with magnesium and adding more at bedtime, the long-term effects would probably have been different but I didn't find this forum until 7 years later... and, of course, the myriad of doctors I saw up until that point never mentioned magnesium and the role a deficiency plays in arrhythmia.

Unfortunately, it did not blunt the eventual progress of the daytime events as you know from my history, but
hypoglycemia is certainly worth assessment for anyone with afib while sleeping.

Here's the link to the report: [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

Jackie

Hypoglycemia may be indicative of a poor insulin response pattern that can be rectified by lowering carb intake in general. Dr. Joseph Kraft (passed in Feb 2017 at 96) started sampling people with an oral glucose tolerance test - fast, test glucose, give 100g of glucose orally, then sample glucose at 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 hours. He did his with an insulin assay, sampling insulin at the same time as the glucose. Kraft found that ~75% of those with a normal glucose tolerance test had an abnormal insulin response. Of course almost everyone with an abnormal glucose response had an abnormal insulin response. Of course almost everyone with an abnormal glucose response had an abnormal insulin response.

You can see the various insulin response types. Type I is normal (pages 3, 4) <[www.hippokrati.fi] Figures 8B, 9A & 9B show case studies of before and a year later of the improvement after adding a low carb diet.

He also wrote a book: <[www.amazon.com]
Interview (excellent): <[www.thefatemperor.com]

Catherine Crofts from NZ did her PhD thesis on Kraft's ~15,000 sets of tests over a lifetime: [aut.researchgateway.ac.nz]
She suggests an insulin test exactly 2 hours after a 75 g glucose load or your largest & carbiest meal of the day to see the response to the challenge. If <=30 at 2 hours you are good.

My understanding is that fasting insulin represents about half the daily insulin production for the day, with the remainder being the response to meals. Also the insulin after meal elevation is typically 4-7x fasting levels. So someone with a fasting level of 3 would be at 12 - 21 after meals. One with a fasting level of 30 would be at 120-210 after meals.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2017 04:32PM by GeorgeN.

Thanks, George, for including those details and links as it's definitely relevant to look at the insulin response factor.

Appreciate your contribution.

Jackie