Hey everyone
I am finding that I have paradoxical low glucose symptoms (tired and always wanting sugar, feeling much better when I eat it) yet bad dysbiosis and candida troubles. The bugs that I have in abundance are the types that eat sugar and produce d-lactate. So how do we get glucose if we can't eat any sugar because of the bad bugs? Can you inject it?
Liz
Hi, Liz.
The liver (and to a lesser extent, the kidney) is able carry out a process called gluconeogenesis (i.e. the generation of new glucose). They make it from other substrates, including amino acids from protein and glycerol from fat. When glucose goes too low in the blood, the adrenals and the pancreas normally secrete cortisol and glucagon, respectively, and they stimulate gluconeogenesis. In CFS, cortisol production is frequently found to be deficient because of dysfunction of the HPA axis (sometimes referred to as adrenal fatigue, but usually not a problem with the adrenals themselves), and that makes the control of blood glucose more difficult. Hypoglycemia is therefore common in CFS. If glucose gets too low, the sympathetic nervous system kicks in by causing the adrenals to put out adrenaline (epineprhine) to save the brain. This unfortunately can result in panic attacks, particularly unpleasant when one is awakened from sleep by one of them!
Sometimes I think the Devil himself devised CFS, because there are so many exquisite combinations of problems that interact with each other to increase the misery. This is a case in point: Glutathione depletion cuts down stomach acid production. This allows yeasts and bacteria that come in with the food to survive to reach the gut. Other CFS-related problems do other things to the gut, including slowing its motility. This gives the yeasts and unfriendly bacteria lots of access to the food coming in. They burn the sugars. Meanwhile, because of the HPA axis dysfunction, which I suspect is caused by glutathione depletion in the hypothalamus and pituitary, the sugar level in the blood goes down. This gives the person a craving for sugar. If they consume sugar, it feeds the yeasts and bacteria. If they don't, they can't relieve the hypoglycemia, and their brain doesn't function very well, because glucose is normally the main food for the brain. See what I mean about the Devil?
-)
One thing that might help the brain in this situation is coconut oil. It can feed the brain via ketones, which is the fallback food for the brain when there isn't enough glucose.
In the long run, the solution has to be to fix the gut problems and lift the partial methylation cycle block. Getting there is not always so simple and straightforward though, unfortunately.
Best regards,
Rich