Going "number Two"

Digestive problems are very common with hypoglycemia. Diarrhea is one of them. This may be one of several things. First, it may just be one of your set of symptoms that you have to deal with when it happens, or you may be eating too much fat if you're following my diet. Look for it on this forum to make sure you're eating right. It says "stan's diet."

Hi stan. Hmm ... Interesting ... I'll look into my fat intake. I've been consuming cheese as a good "on-the-go snack" item, greek-style yogurt, but really not in large quantities ... And I don't cook much, so I know i'm not getting enough protein (so certainly not a whole lot of animal fat)...

You'd think with all the whole grains (7-grain cereal), whole-wheat pasta, ww bread, that i'd have enough fiber to "harden & thicken things up a bit"... ?

But perhaps i'm one of the hypos that should stay away from grains altogether for a while.... I sure hope not ...

This thread has been viewed over 20 times, and you're the only one to chime in - so it sounds like this is a problem only i'm having I guess ....

Thanks stan!

If it's the only problem then rejoice! That means you just need a way to add more fiber to the diet if you're not getting confused, depressed or otherwise insane. If you are, grains may need to be avoided for awhile, and you should find that you actually feel better in the process.

Hahah well I am experiencing all of that .... Depression, dizziness, confusion, night sweats, general malaise .....

But i'll rejoice anyway!

Because at least i'm further on my journey to figuring out why - and finding a solution! :lol:

i'm not sure i've ever understood the need to avoid whole grains in the beginning though. A complex carb is a complex carb, right?

Ugh, well yeah you may need to avoid them. The thing about whole grains is this. First off, they effect the blood sugar different than, say, a cup of romaine lettuce. It's not just the type of carbohydrate, it's the amount of carbohydrates in what you're eating. You should be eating no more than 100g a day at first. So if you have a cup of buckwheat, that's something like 33g, not too bad. But if you have a cup of amaranth, it's like 140g and you just went over. You must be very careful to measure and know what's in everything. In addition, grains effect the blood sugar different and are more quickly absorbed than vegetables. The pancreas not only responds to the level of the sugar, it also responds to the speed at which the sugar rises, even if it's not rising to a dangerous level. So even though a piece of whole grain bread may only raise your sugar to 98, which is fine, the pancreas reads the rise as potentially threatening because it has grown accustomed to a bad diet, so it pumps out the insulin. With vegetables, it's just too slow to notice unless you eat a type you should be avoiding, like carrots. It would take like three cups of eggplant to get the carbohydrates of two carrots, but you would feel full eating only one and it wouldn't matter because that's only 8g. Also, i've heard the pancreas responds to the type of food you eat as it's passing it. This sounds a little crazy, but it makes sense, and I know i've had times when I would eat something like a piece of bread and swear to god it felt like my pancreas knew it even before it was going into my blood and i'd get a drop. Some people say it can actually "smell" what's going past it, but I need to do research on this before I believe it. It doesn't actually smell, what I mean is that it can sense what's going through it, this makes sense because it's the same principal as a food allergy, the body is geared to recognize the culprit, even in ridiculously small amounts.

[re-editing - refresh in a few minutes]

thank you for such a detailed and thoughtful reply stan. Your help is needed and appreciated.


Your mention of the "psychic" pancreas makes a lot of sense to me actually. And I recently read something about this .... I'll try to track down the source. I read recently that just smelling pizza will secrete the digestive enzymes in preperation for consumption .... And considering that I react to my food intake much quicker than most (it seems...? See gtt below) I think my pancreas must be psychic too!

In my case, my 2 hour fasting gtt was:

fasting 94
30 min 95 ---- huge
60 min 63 ---- 30 pt drop!
90 min 65
120 min 90

so a huge drop between 30-60 minutes
a very non-standard curve it seems. Closest to the flat curve I guess.

So, it would seem I have to eat every 30-45 minutes to prevent the drop - which is insane if most don't experience a drop for 2-3 hours. Maybe it's not even hypo... ?

I'm sure there must be other guys out there that aren't cooks that struggle with this (since most protiens need to be prepared). Anyone seen the fast food commercial for carl's jr. That says "without us, some guys would starve" ? That's me!

I was getting drops within an hour, it looks like you have the saw-tooth curve, which is supposedly "rare." yeah right, like everyone on here has it. I wouldn't suggest eating every hour, no more than every two. If you make sure you follow something similar to what I do, or did at least for the first phase, you should be just fine. What you say about smelling is correct, the body begins to prepare for digestion when you smell certain foods.