[kate58]

I am not diabetic, but my partner is, although he is now off all drugs since being on Atkins. He had some hypo issues at the begining, which we read a lot about at the time, and while I don't know if it's relevant to you, the following is what we figured out.

Because hypoglycemia occurs as a response to insulin, this is more to do with getting control over insulin than it is anything else. Anyone on who is hypersensitive to insulin and starts Atkins, will for a time still have insulin, whether produced naturally in the body or as a result of medication, but not much for it to work on. It takes time for this to settle.

Another issue is that it's very difficult to predict when you are on drugs what drugs exactly you still need. It's hard for a diabetic to start skipping drugs, but if you don't and are not eating much carbs, the drugs are just pushing you into hypo states. I think that almost all the issues he had were related to taking too much medication at the begining - he genuinely was afraid about cutting doses. He did so very gradually and that worked out in the end.

Another thing that helped a lot was eating frequently - he never went more than 3 hours without at a least a small snack. Actually that pretty much sorted things out once he started that.

Dealing with the hypoglycemia was another thing. He was used to reaching for a banana if he had a problem. However he found quite quickly that something that was a good mix of protein and fat was a great help - in his case a olives in oil or some cheese, maybe with mayo, did the trick.

One last thing was interesting. If he ate anything with artificial sweetener in it - even splenda - his glucose dipped significantly. It seemed like they made his body expect sugar and act accordingly, producing insulin. That does not happen any more, but it was amazing at the start. I think his body needed retraining, which it has had now.