A couple of weeks ago I concluded a 'Coconut Oil and Butter' fast, and shared the post of my experience on Facebook. I had to end the fat fast after only two days due to low blood sugars, a 45 mg/dl, and the trend was pointing lower. This confirmed an earlier coconut oil only experiment that was also concluded early, after four days due to low blood sugars.
1 - The experiments confirmed that a coconut oil fat fast worked amazingly well at reducing my blood sugars. It's also worked great for everyone who employs the strategy in their protocols of weight and blood sugar reduction.
2 - I was however concerned that my body did not adjust and normalize my blood sugars at normal levels. Any blood sugar level over 60 mg/dl or 3.3 mmol/l and I'd be happy.
I received this comment from someone I have long admired, Petrol Dobromylskyj the author of Hyperlipid.
"why do you use coconut oil in your fat fast? ... you are asking for hypoglycaemia [low blood sugar]. I appreciate butter is far from pure palmitic acid but it will be significantly richer in long chain saturates such as palmitate and stearate than the mix of butter and coconut"
"Gimme butter!"
I am leaving out a lot of Petro's comment, I'll include it all in a later post.
The main thing I wanted you to know is... due to the chemical make up of coconut oil, in Peter's opinion coconut oil would naturally and eventually lead to low blood sugars or hypoglycemia.
If you have elevated blood sugars, that's a great thing and would explain my body's inability to stabilize blood sugars above 60 mg/dl.
Does this mean that coconut oil is a better fat for reducing elevated blood sugars?
That's what my current experiment is out to prove.
Butter Only Fast Experiment
No personal blood sugar experiment occurs in a vacuum. There are always variables that can not be controlled as well as variables that can be controlled.
There are many things that can raise blood sugars including carbohydrates, stress, injuries, infections, illnesses, drug interactions, dehydration, and for me excessive protein.
The day before beginning the butter fast I ate 14 ounces of chuck steaks for lunch. Facing what I hoped to be an extended butter only fast, I decided to eat 1.3 pounds of denver steaks at 10 pm ... for a late dinner. That's a total of over two pounds of meat ... which is excessive for me. ;)
Eating that much protein and eating over a pound right before bed, I expected a higher than normal blood sugar and I was not surprised with a 97 mg/dl the morning of the fast. I mention this because below you will see that my blood sugar began this experiment higher than the other experiments. That should give me a little cushion from the start.
Below is a chart of my blood sugars through the first two days. As the legend on the right shows, the longer blue line is the "Coconut Oil Only" fast from 2011. The short red line is this year's "Coconut oil and Butter" fast and lastly the bright green line is the current experiment. I discuss in the notes below the picture.
- Butter only (the green line) is definitely out performing the "Coconut Oil and Butter" fast a couple of weeks ago.
- The green line looks like there are 'wild swings', but in reality that's far from the truth. The highest point is 97 and the lowest is 69. A thirty point margin is hardly WILD in diabetic terms. :)
- My typical fasting blood sugars recently (when not experimenting) have been upper 70's to low 80's. So the 97 I began with, I do blame at least partially on the high protein consumption and especially on the late night gorging. Normally the margin would be 20 points or even less. ;)
Closing
The butter only fast (green line) is definitely performing better than the butter and coconut oil fast (red line).
Will this trend continue?
How much of the results of the first two days are due to the overeating of protein just before the experiment? Time will tell.
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