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I got email along the lines of "I can reduce the hypoglycemic-type
symptoms by eating more protein".

I found my "hypoglycemia" disappeared completely after eliminating foods
I was intolerant to.  I've been tormented since I was 12 by floods of
anxiety; irritability; hostility; hunger and appetite after eating
high-glycemic carbs.  Now, I can eat a cup of tapioca starch sweetened
with maple syrup and I just feel like I want to go running or biking.

I'd read in various hypoglycemia websites that some people found their
"hypoglycemia" went away on an elimination diet; also Brostoff and
Gamlin's "Food allergies and food intolerance" says that some doctors
think food intolerance is the main cause for "hypoglycemic" type symptoms.

Eating more protein or fat is just a symptom fix, and it may leave subtle
symptoms un-fixed;  it never fixed the symptoms completely for me.

Having hidden food intolerances causes generalized inflammation in your
body.  I couldn't run much before finding these 30/100 hidden food
intolerances, because my knee would hurt (my knee had major surgery on
it years ago).  Now, I can run.  After more than about 5 miles my knee does
still hurt, but it's a lot better than it was.  I had a sprained finger
that didn't heal for months and months; I saw the swelling in it increase,
and my knee stiffen up, when I had food reactions.

One person emailed me that he'd been on a high-protein diet for
"hypoglycemia" for years - on the advice of doctors! - and now he has
osteoporosis and heart disease, and gingivitis (gum inflammation).

Osteoporosis is a consequence of celiac disease, CD interferes with
absorption of Calcium.  But eating a high-protein diet also contributes to
osteoporosis.

And, a high-protein diet is usually a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet;
high in saturated fat if you're getting the protein from meat.
The advertising is misleading - you might think 95% fat free beef had 5% of
its calories from fat?  but no, it is 5% fat by weight; it has 30% of its
calories from fat.  Eating a high-fat diet will tend to cause heart disease.
I didn't especially fix "hypoglycemia" symptoms by eating a
lot of protein, what I mostly did was to eat a lot of fat.  I learned a
long time ago that putting a lot of marg or olive oil on starchy meals
would help with the symptoms.

He made an interesting possible connection between CD and heart disease -
inflammation is involved in atherosclerosis and maybe other kinds of
heart disease.  Just like you may have read that gingivitis has been
connected with heart disease - food intolerance might be too!  Not just
people's reaction to gluten - but the other food intolerances that are
caused by gluten intolerance.  I've been gluten free for a couple of years
but my chronic knee inflammation didn't go away until eliminating all
these other foods I was intolerant to.

CD is so underdiagnosed that statistics on the correlation between CD and
other illnesses are dubious.  People who are gluten intolerant but
undiagnosed would be counted against such a correlation, while really they
should be counted for it.  It would be interesting if they had gathered
all sorts of general health information, like how clogged people's
arteries are, in those large scale epidemiological studies of CD.

So there are two very good reasons not to fix "hypoglycemic" symptoms by
eating more protein and fat.  "Hypoglycemia" points to possible hidden
food intolerances, which cause chronic inflammation in the body - which is bad
for your long-term health.  And, eating more protein and fat, while it
helps with the symptoms, seems to cause serious problems over decades -
problems that are invisible until they become serious.

I put "hypoglycemia" in quotes because it's well-known that people with
symptoms like mine rarely have truly low blood glucose.  Maybe it goes
down slightly, but not seriously low.  There are people who do get
actually hypoglycemic, but that's a different problem.

to our health,
Laura

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