Iodine and Potassium Iodide

[John G]

The heart rate naturally lowers with exercise thanks to improved metabolic efficiency, and I've also heard of people's heart rates being in the low 40s. But a check up is a good idea to make sure there's not something else going on.

What is also implicated in muscle cramps and spasms along with potassium is magnesium, sodium, and dehydration. So what might help with the cramping is drinking some Real Salt water before exercise with plenty of water during exercise.

As for the weight gain after upping the calories, that's pretty normal after coming off of a caloric restricted diet. The body adapts to the lower caloric consumption by down regulating a lot of different processes, and so once an excess is encountered the body wants to immediately shuttle it into the fat cells because it thinks it's in a famine and is trying to preserve itself. It can take up to a few weeks for the body to adapt to a higher caloric intake, and some of the initial weight gain can be just water as you suspected.

Hope this helps!

She does take 400 mg magnesium a day. Night is where she mostly has her cramps/almost cramps (like last night). I think they show up more as the nights start getting cooler. Hydration could be a problem. She doesn't like to drink a lot since she wakes up three or so times a night to use the bathroom and can use it once or twice during a health club visit too. We may try to make the off the diet period longer or add back in even more calories when off the diet.

 

[John G]

Nexium might exacerbate the heartburn and there are other side effects to using it regularly.
Just be careful to not go quickly off of it because the stomach may overproduce acid in readjusting.
http://www.maryvancenc.com/why-antacids-are-not-the-solution-for-reflux/

Conventional medicine has a knack for treating the symptoms without uncovering the underlying cause of what causes the reflux. In cases of chronic heartburn, it’s actually LOW stomach acid, not too much stomach acid, believe it or not... If you have chronic heartburn, GERD, or ulcers, chances are very good that you have h pylori, a nasty bacteria that causes ulcers, gastritis, and systemic inflammation that can lead to cancer and heart disease. The 2005 Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to 2 scientists for “the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease.”Antacids make the heartburn worse because they lower stomach acid further, making it easier for h pylori to thrive and making it harder for you to digest food. That’s why reflux worsens over time. No purple pill will kill h pylori – it will only exacerbate it over time.

Those drugs are really bad news:

Proton Pump Inhibitors: So dangerous that prescriptions border on being criminal
https://www.sott.net/article/320501-Proton-Pump-Inhibitors-So-dangerous-that-prescriptions-border-on-being-criminal

Yikes that's worse than I thought. I remember reading that low stomach acid was the problem for acid reflux and I remember trying out vinegar in some recipes but we never did it to the point of thinking about getting off the Nexium. I should have kept looking into that. Nexium was originally a prescribed medication for my wife but it's over the counter now so gradually getting off of it sounds good once we get the low heart rate checked out.

 

[Gaby]

Yikes that's worse than I thought. I remember reading that low stomach acid was the problem for acid reflux and I remember trying out vinegar in some recipes but we never did it to the point of thinking about getting off the Nexium. I should have kept looking into that. Nexium was originally a prescribed medication for my wife but it's over the counter now so gradually getting off of it sounds good once we get the low heart rate checked out.

That is complete negligence. These drugs should be left only for hospital use or for very specific pathologies. Most people taking it have no reason to do it. There are many remedies that work much better. Here are a few ideas:

https://www.sott.net/article/304689-Five-natural-and-easy-ways-to-get-rid-of-heartburn

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/04/28/acid-reflux-ulcer-treatment.aspx

The dose needs to be reduced gradually while using alternative remedies.

Drugs like nexium can literally break people's health.

 

[Laura]

Did you already list the foods she eats and amounts? I may have missed it.

 

[John G]

That is complete negligence. These drugs should be left only for hospital use or for very specific pathologies. Most people taking it have no reason to do it. There are many remedies that work much better. Here are a few ideas:

https://www.sott.net/article/304689-Five-natural-and-easy-ways-to-get-rid-of-heartburn

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/04/28/acid-reflux-ulcer-treatment.aspx

The dose needs to be reduced gradually while using alternative remedies.

Drugs like nexium can literally break people's health.

Did you already list the foods she eats and amounts? I may have missed it.

Yeah she started every other day with the Nexium and is doing her own research about how exactly she wants to reduce gradually. What she found so far was people actually do the vinegar and HCL/bitters while getting off of it which somewhat surprised me since you really do have excess acid getting off of it unlike with the previous acid reflux before nexium. We had L-carnatine and HCL/pepsin/bitters when first Keto-adapting with this forum's normal calorie version and perhaps we should kept that up even when seemingly keto-adapted especially for our local doctor's low calorie version.

Funny thing is that this low-cal diet doesn't even advertise being ketogenic. The first time my wife heard about ketosis at her doctor visit was when they said congratulations you are in ketosis. We obviously knew it was ketogenic as soon as we saw the menu. She had heard about it from someone at work and they both went on it together. She had stagnated at about a 20 pound loss on the normal calorie ketogenic diet and went back up about ten between diets and then lost 60 more on the low-cal version which I suspect is too low for my wife. We added back in real sausage instead of the one slice of turkey bacon (which is quite low-fat) and we upped the pecan snack (and make sure not to skip the snack which was sometimes cucumbers which is just like skipping it). Might add back in blueberries which were allowed twice a week once in ketosis.

We suspect my wife's light-headedness at the health club may be hypoglycemia. She was before we met (we've been married 20 years) diagnosed as hypoglycemic but they just told her to drink some juice if needed, She didn't check her blood sugar until she got gestational diabetes with our son 18 years ago. We bought a meter and her lowest levels are after coming home from the health club (low to mid 80s); she's in the 90s with the morning fasting check. She got light-headed/blurred vision and flushed in the face at work between lunch and dinner too which sounds like maybe this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_hypoglycemia

The above even mentions h. pylori (that nexium makes worse) and hypothyroidism (my wife is on the minimum Synthroid dose, she never actually tested as hypothyroid just on the low end and the doctor prescribed it saying it could help with weight loss too; this was the same doctor who at the same time 20-some years ago said my wife-to-be was hypoglycemic). She had fainted at school where she was a teacher and she had just had a very stressful meeting with parents who were suspected of abuse.

The low-cal diet is 2 eggs scrambled with 1/4th onion, one slice of turkey bacon for breakfast; the previously mentioned snack (cucumbers or 2/3rds cup blueberries or 8 pecan halves); 6 oz (raw) 93% lean ground turkey with salsa or a 160 calorie protein drink for lunch (yeah we started working on eliminating that quick option, the local doctor is anti-bread but not anti-dairy other than for calories); dinner is 6 to 8 oz meat with added mayo (for chicken/tuna/salmon salads with celery) and we do a Costco bought rotisserie chicken where my wife eats the white meat (we figure the cooked with oil is like the mayo). There's a roast beef salad with lettuce-tomato-cucumbers which only has 4 oz meat but it has pecans too and lettuce-tomato-mustard on ground turkey burgers (4 oz each for 2 patties) and salmon patties (two 4 oz each) with a horseradish sauce.

Breakfast was originally allowed to be cooked only with spray olive oil but I switched to a little regular olive oil at some point (don't need much since it's a ceramic non-stick pan but it's useful for the onion). Last for a later snack, half of a 60 calorie sugar free pudding (yes we could do better here than the recommended pudding that my daughter used to eat the other half of before becoming smarter than her parents and I now eat the other half). We do oolong and green tea with lemon juice and occasionally unfortuneately go back to coffee (like right now; coffee oddly does not raise my wife's pulse or keep her from sleeping, she just checked again and it went up a whole one beat per minute which she blamed on talking). We had recently gone months without coffee.

 

[Divide by Zero]

What kind of gym workout does she do? If it's aerobics, that also could cause problems.
On sott a while back I remember reading an article how strength training is better than aerobics to raise and stabilize metabolism.
Heavy weights are not required and might be detrimental to joints.
Just do what is comfortable to lift and done SLOWLY in order to work all the muscle fibers (both the quick twitch and the slow muscle fibers).

One problem I see with the low calorie diet. Saturated fat has a lot of calories, but it is not bad like carb calories which spike the blood sugar.
I had a co worker that had type 1 diabetes and an insulin pump. He had a chart of dosage depending on food and calories/weight of the food. I asked him how does fatty food compare to lean meats, etc. He was surprised to see that fatty meats required less insulin, despite his doctor telling him to avoid it!

So maybe the lean meats like turkey, etc, should be replaced with fattier meats? Same for the oils, lard/pork fat instead of olive oil for frying. Olive oil, being a polyunsaturated fat ends up being oxidized and easy to turn into trans fats when exposed to high temperatures!

 

[SeekinTruth]

Yeah, good points to consider by Divide by Zero. (By the way, olive oil is a monounsaturated fat, with mixed info on whether it's appropriate for cooking or not, but saturated fats are definitely much more stable and high heat resistant). Quite a bit of what you listed are questionable quality foods and/or possibly inflammatory. Seems only calories are being considered and not much else. Something to consider is that inflammation and obesity / overweight are connected, plus inflammation is bad new all-around, anyway. Just some more points to think about.

 

[Laura]

From my experience, that diet plan has a lot wrong with it. It's not really a ketogenic diet and it could be dangerous to be in ketosis without good fats to replace the energy supply of carbs.

Nuts probably should be eliminated for a bit because a lot of people react to them; eggs too.

I generally eat three small fatty sausage patties for breakfast. We have them made up by our butcher. We grind the herbs/spices and take them to him, he grinds the meat and extra fat and puts it all together. Half of it he gives us as patty meat, the other half goes into casings for link sausages.

No eggs to that breakfast.

Tea with butter helps to add more fat which is needed.

Fatty pork chop for lunch instead of low fat meats. If you eat turkey, have a big slice of butter with it. A small salad on the side. Might want to avoid onions unless you check out food sensitivities and find they are okay.

NO dairy at all other than pure butter. Some people even have to give up butter.

Years ago, I had bad reflux and doctor wanted me to get on a bunch of meds. Instead, I just gave up carbs and the reflux went away.

Most often, I find that taking a couple of betaine capsules just before starting to eat helps a lot. Don't eat later than 5 PM if you go to bed at 11.

Nuts will give me reflux. Dairy is really, really bad. Not only gives reflux, it produces tons of phlegm.

But, all of this is discussed in detail in the ketogenic diet thread. You probably should check it out and maybe pick up the several books recommended there.

 

[SeekinTruth]

From my experience, that diet plan has a lot wrong with it. It's not really a ketogenic diet and it could be dangerous to be in ketosis without good fats to replace the energy supply of carbs.

<snip>

That's a really important point. It seems the main thing is a huge calorie restriction in this diet. It can put one into ketosis just from that, but then the body will need healthy (mostly saturated animal fats from the best source one can find) fats. Some things to keep in mind; if the body doesn't have enough healthy fats in ketosis, it will start burning the fat stores of the body, right? But there could be lots of toxic fats from years of eating anything and everything (processed foods, etc.) in her system. Also other (pretty much all) environmental toxins are stored (preferentially in a lot of cases) in fat. So a whole lot of toxins will be mobilized/released into the system.

You also have to consider (besides what else was brought up already being wrong with this diet) that being in ketosis in-and-of-itself is not necessarily beneficial to health, e.g. being in long-term starvation, uncontrolled ketoacidosis resulting, etc. A smart and well-informed/formulated ketogenic diet has many all-around benefits, but the devil, as always, is in the details. I hope you can make some (hopefully easy for you adjustments from the suggestions and other info on the forum) changes to make the diet a lot better generally and still continue to deal with your wife's weight and other issues.

 

[Gaby]

You also have to consider (besides what else was brought up already being wrong with this diet) that being in ketosis in-and-of-itself is not necessarily beneficial to health, e.g. being in long-term starvation, uncontrolled ketoacidosis resulting, etc. A smart and well-informed/formulated ketogenic diet has many all-around benefits, but the devil, as always, is in the details. I hope you can make some (hopefully easy for you adjustments from the suggestions and other info on the forum) changes to make the diet a lot better generally and still continue to deal with your wife's weight and other issues.

It reminds how a few years ago, I was not getting enough fats into my keto diet. I checked my blood ketones with a ketone meter. To my surprise, I was in the limit of ketoacidosis. I was producing ketones like crazy despite having normal insulin levels. I was working out back then too.

 

[John G]

Yeah if my wife did not get stuck at 285 while I was dropping from 200 to 160 with lots of sausage, bacon, and butter we would still be on the Ketogenic diet with plenty of fats. We didn't do veggies; actually we didn't do veggies much on this low calorie diet other than celery until recently. She has even with the low calories got stuck at 240 so we were thinking of working in salads/veggies/cheaper fish more (we used to just do shrimp as one fish a week). The tomatoes, onion, lettuce, salmon patties, canned tuna/salmon are within the last month. Bad ideas. The nuts, sugar free pudding, and protein drink have been bad ideas all along on this low cal diet but being stuck at 285 didn't seem good either.

Would be tough to give up eggs (they are less than $3 per 60 at Costco) and mayo since it's a big part of the current diet but yeah I don't really see mayo as that much lower in calories than butter. Eggs though are about the only thing that's never been eliminated and something is getting my wife stuck at 285 on a normal calorie ketogenic diet (where I got to 160 on). It's probably starvation getting her stuck at 240 on the low-cal version. Hopefully there's something that can get her under 240. For most of this diet we didn't cook the eggs in anything (after I got the ceramic pans). I added about a teaspoon to cook the onion when we added it a month or so ago. It's the non-virgin olive oil which I thought was OK for low temp cooking (little less than medium).

 

[John G]

Forgot to mention the exercise at the health club. We do 2.5 miles per hour (a medium paced walk) on the treadmill for about a half hour. For the weights it's 20 medium to fast ones or 10 exaggeratedly slow ones at a weight that's challenging but not too challenging for that number of reps. My wife does the 20 medium ones and I recently switched from 20 fast to 10 exaggeratedly slow ones.

 

[Divide by Zero]

I'm not sure on egg sensitivities since I don't seem to have any but Puck told me that egg whites could be the issue due to the protein matching up with foreign protein that some of us got in vaccines.
(Interesting, perhaps the different vaccinations as a baby in eastern europe explains the difference?)

As eggs are cheap, I tend to not eat the whites and this could help you stay in your budget. Sometimes some things get really expensive fast, like organic or free range in the US! Those cases lead to compromise as long as you aren't having issues.

It may be a while for her on iodine before her metabolism kicks in again. From what we've read, some people have so much thyroid issues that doctors think it's dead only to find out that iodine supplementation wakes up the sleeping (tiny) giant!

 

[Laura]

Bluelamp, you very much need to read Gary Taubes book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" and the book "Big Fat Lies" by somebody or other.

 

[Glenn]

Just a quick note. We make our own Mayo. Along with all salad dressings and such. I noticed the ubiquitous Disodium EDTA in most prepared sauces and things, and decided to go the route of making our own. Is quite easy and fun too...