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I have an interesting physiological condition that I would like to relate and see if anyone else has experienced the same. Of all the boards I visit, the members here have by far the highest protein intake and I want to see if this is more common than previously thought.
The situation:
When I ingest too much protein in one sitting or too much in a set time frame (like over several hours), I experience a heart arrhythmia. Soon after eating a large quantity of protein, I feel jittery. When I bend over for instance, my body might twitch imperceptively. As the post-prandial hypoglycemia sets in, I first get tired and lay down to rest. Right before falling to sleep, my heart beats once really strongly and my body jumps a little. In bad cases this would happen several times over and over again. I am then wide awake and no longer have the hypoglycemia. Doesn't happen again until bedtime no matter what I ingest afterwards. Rather, I feel like it is buffered after that incident.
Upon falling asleep, I have noticed it similarly. Sometimes they were very forceful arrhythmias, sometimes mild, almost imperceptible. Sort of just like a tiny pulse feeling at some varying location in my body.
I never experienced this prior to starting bodybuilding in August/September of 2002. Nor did I ever continually ingest protein at in such high amounts. Until this past spring, I just figured it was a typical hypoglycemic response, accept that it had never happened before. So far as I can tell it depends on/is exascerbated by the following things:
1) It improves with hypocaloric dieting and gets worse when hypercaloric
2) At protein intakes below say 200g (I am guessing here) I pretty much notice no symptoms at all.
3) Protein powders, specifically whey make the condition much, much worse (can't stress enough, severity of arrythmia is bad). I believe this is due to the fast digestion rate, too much protein in a short timeframe, but I am not 100% certain.
To combat the problem:
1) I don't eat more than about 30g protein at one setting and eat many tiny meals each day. This has nearly eliminated the hypoglycemic response as well as the arrythmia and jitters that I feel when ingesting more protein at one time.
2) I am careful as evening approaches not to ingest that much protein total as it will trigger the response when I lay down to sleep. I go with even smaller servings spread out.
3) Lately I have switched to all whole food proteins as a precautionary measure and I have had very little trouble at all (not even noticeable hardly).
A couple more interesting things to note. I don't really get hypoglycemic at all when just ingesting large numbers of carbs. Or if I really go overboard and do, I don't get the arrhythmia. So I have pretty much nailed it down to being a protein issue in essence. When I used to use N-large or whey+ dextrose, good golly the problem was terrible post workout.
Medical diagnosis is benign arrythmia, but I know it is not normal and it was something I had to find out how to control, so I did. I am working my way up in protein intake and have been able to maintain 2g/lb for quite a while now with little issue as long as I remember to follow the rules I set for myself.
Anyway that is my story. I am curious what your thoughts about it are and also if any of you guys have experienced this before. My main hope is that by posting this, other people that may be experiencing the same thing can be made aware of it and take actions to minimize potential problems. Perhaps this can shed some light on how to effectively combat hypoglycemia also for people that have problems with it at very high levels of caloric intake.
-Cardinal "shit that was long-winded"
The situation:
When I ingest too much protein in one sitting or too much in a set time frame (like over several hours), I experience a heart arrhythmia. Soon after eating a large quantity of protein, I feel jittery. When I bend over for instance, my body might twitch imperceptively. As the post-prandial hypoglycemia sets in, I first get tired and lay down to rest. Right before falling to sleep, my heart beats once really strongly and my body jumps a little. In bad cases this would happen several times over and over again. I am then wide awake and no longer have the hypoglycemia. Doesn't happen again until bedtime no matter what I ingest afterwards. Rather, I feel like it is buffered after that incident.
Upon falling asleep, I have noticed it similarly. Sometimes they were very forceful arrhythmias, sometimes mild, almost imperceptible. Sort of just like a tiny pulse feeling at some varying location in my body.
I never experienced this prior to starting bodybuilding in August/September of 2002. Nor did I ever continually ingest protein at in such high amounts. Until this past spring, I just figured it was a typical hypoglycemic response, accept that it had never happened before. So far as I can tell it depends on/is exascerbated by the following things:
1) It improves with hypocaloric dieting and gets worse when hypercaloric
2) At protein intakes below say 200g (I am guessing here) I pretty much notice no symptoms at all.
3) Protein powders, specifically whey make the condition much, much worse (can't stress enough, severity of arrythmia is bad). I believe this is due to the fast digestion rate, too much protein in a short timeframe, but I am not 100% certain.
To combat the problem:
1) I don't eat more than about 30g protein at one setting and eat many tiny meals each day. This has nearly eliminated the hypoglycemic response as well as the arrythmia and jitters that I feel when ingesting more protein at one time.
2) I am careful as evening approaches not to ingest that much protein total as it will trigger the response when I lay down to sleep. I go with even smaller servings spread out.
3) Lately I have switched to all whole food proteins as a precautionary measure and I have had very little trouble at all (not even noticeable hardly).
A couple more interesting things to note. I don't really get hypoglycemic at all when just ingesting large numbers of carbs. Or if I really go overboard and do, I don't get the arrhythmia. So I have pretty much nailed it down to being a protein issue in essence. When I used to use N-large or whey+ dextrose, good golly the problem was terrible post workout.
Medical diagnosis is benign arrythmia, but I know it is not normal and it was something I had to find out how to control, so I did. I am working my way up in protein intake and have been able to maintain 2g/lb for quite a while now with little issue as long as I remember to follow the rules I set for myself.
Anyway that is my story. I am curious what your thoughts about it are and also if any of you guys have experienced this before. My main hope is that by posting this, other people that may be experiencing the same thing can be made aware of it and take actions to minimize potential problems. Perhaps this can shed some light on how to effectively combat hypoglycemia also for people that have problems with it at very high levels of caloric intake.
-Cardinal "shit that was long-winded"
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