Skip to main content

Adventures in Adrenaline

Jim said he didn't want no more damned adventures. -The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

 Getting a shot of epinephrine once again made me feel tired and gave me palpitations. At least this time I knew to pop magnesium pills (good ones ending in -ate) like candy. I now carry three magnesium pills with me in case of emergency--they don't have any at hospitals.

The second part of my root canal was Wednesday. Thursday was a major deadline at work, and when a code enforcement officer called me about some overgrown weeds in my front yard, I was all out of nice. Between the mostly cold weather, a dental infection and shots of the dreaded epinephrine, I hadn't felt up to anything but going to work and being bothered by a bureaucrat over some weeds was too much.

But by Saturday, I felt well enough to weed the front yard, prune the tree there and clean the house. Today (Sunday), I found I felt better if I moved around--I spaded up part of the back yard to plant more grass, since part of the lawn died last year when I was helping take care of my parents. I weeded the back yard, fertilized the roses, ironed my clothes and went to a meetup. I also walked around the neighborhood taking photos of yards that really do look bad in case I hear from Code Enforcement again.

Part of my reaction to epinephrine might have been from a low-carb diet. Ten years ago, Michael Eades quoted a 1992 paper from the American Journal of Physiology regarding both fasting and a low-carb diet:

Plasma insulin, a potent inhibitor of lipolysis, declines; plasma epinephrine, a potent lipolytic agent, increases. In addition, adipose tissue sensitivity to insulin is decreased, whereas sensitivity of epinephrine is enhanced...

Peter over at Hyperlipid has also mentioned people getting palpitations on very low carb diets from their own adrenaline.

The first paper which had me thinking was this one.  
"Both the pre-and post-exercise levels of adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol were enhanced." 
This is the sort of thing I file as interesting. That is, until the anecdotes trickle in about people who have gone to extreme ketogenic diets and have developed abnormal cardiac rhythms.

Anyway. It's Sunday night, and I'm off to tear up the dance floor.
Labels:

Comments

tess said…
:-D yeah, TEAR UP that floor, girl!
May 03, 2015
Galina L. said…
I insist on not using epinephrine on me, the success rate of my efforts at least 90 %.
May 03, 2015
Lori Miller said…
Maybe I should have a no-epinephrine policy.

Ah, it feels good to have energy again. I don't even feel like I lost any muscle tone; maybe it was all those Quest bars I ate. (True story--I craved Quest bars and nacho cheese while my tooth was infected. A cashier at the convenience store in my building also had an infected tooth and craved the exact same things.)
May 04, 2015
Galina L. said…
Probably, cravings for a junk could be a symptom of something going wrong, like abnormal interest in food is often the symptom of a metabolic condition. It could be even worse. Younger ladies who were recovering after hysterectomy due to a cancer told me they were craving sweets and pastry to a truly abnormal level before the diagnose, but didn't get fat. Older people in the same hospital ward didn't have such story to tell, but they were diabetics.
May 04, 2015
Lori Miller said…
The glucose form the pastries might have been eaten up by cancer cells instead of their fat cells. In diabetics, nothing is eating it up--it's just staying in their blood.

There's not much carbohydrate in Quest bars or nacho cheese. Maybe it's just protein and fat that doesn't have to be prepared.
May 04, 2015
Galina L. said…
It is often reported that many people crave cheese and nuts, even though not many carbs are there. May be for a person who eats a LC diet nuts and cheeses(and Quest bars) are the equivalents of cakes and candies (a dainty foods) for a person who eats so-called balanced diet? I noticed children when they are sick , they don't want to eat , but they seek for a food-pleasing options.
May 04, 2015
Lori Miller said…
When I was a kid, I craved salty snack when I was sick.

I still like Quest bars, but I haven't thought much about nacho cheese in the past week.
May 04, 2015
Lowcarb team member said…
Hope you danced the night away and the new week has started well for you.

All the best Jan
May 04, 2015
Lori Miller said…
I had a fun night. And the work deadline is over, the weeds are pulled, I'm feeling better...life is good again.
May 04, 2015
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fasting blood sugar & insulin have crept up!

It's pretty bad when even conventional medicine thinks your blood sugar is high. I had lab tests done last week, as I do every year, and saw things were going in the wrong direction. Photo from Pixabay . Uh-oh.  Ideal blood sugar is about 70-90. Your blood sugar can be high because you're stressed or ill, but I felt OK. I can't blame it on cortisol, which was smack in the middle of the normal range. And my A1c, which reflects blood sugar over the past few months, shows that whatever is going on has been happening for a while. My insulin is more than double what it should be. Oddly, my triglycerides, which typically indicate carb consumption, were good.  I don't have an explanation for the triglycerides. I should have suspected something was wrong, though. I've felt very tired and a little sad for the past few months. Unlike many people with higher than ideal blood sugar and insulin, I had only gained about three pounds.  Regardless of my good weight and triglyceride...
2 comments
Read more

Infrared Light: How much is too much?

It's the sort of thing that sounds like quackery: a pad with tiny red LED lights and a few buttons that's supposed to help you heal, just $30 on ebay. I never would have bought it, but Dr. Davis gave a presentation on infrared light late in 2024. Since I was still suffering from achilles tendonitis after being floxxed , I decided to try it.  I wrapped it around my ankle and turned it on the lowest setting for five minutes. Nothing seemed to happen, but the next day, I wrote,  My tendonitis is GONE after one 5-minute treatment! I didn’t feel it doing anything, I didn’t think it was going to do anything (at least not that quickly), but for the first time in several months, I’ve gotten out of bed and started walking normally and didn’t have any pain reaching with my left arm. I'd been shuffling around like an 80-year-old woman after getting out of bed in the morning. The tendonitis returned, but it was improved. I eventually had physical therapy for it, and now, apart from a l...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gym Influencer Doubles Down and Should Have Regretted It

Jennifer Picone isn't the most abusive gym influencer--far from it--but she may be the most annoying. In a video she posted that went viral, she was working out in a gym when another member appeared in the background by the free weights. The member was minding her own business, not looking in Picone's direction, when Picone got up and told her to move. After filming, Picone edited the video with a note about "Gym etiquette lesson #47" and accused the other gym member of "[doing] that 💩 on purpose."  Shaming other gym members has gotten to be such a big genre that Joey Swoll has a YouTube channel, with half a million subscribers, dedicated to calling out these content creators. Just for Picone, he took a break from his vacation to tell her to mind her own business. This may be the first time that Joey Swoll has taken one of his followers to task. The fact that she follows him and still doesn't know better than to treat the gym like her personal studio sh...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food

Here's a funny AMV(1) on what it's like to be depressed, apathetic and overly sensitive. Note: explicit (but funny) lyrics in the video. Hearing this song brought a startling realization: I used to be emo, but with normal clothes. Sulking, sobbing and writing poetry were my hobbies. When I was a kid, my mother said that she wouldn't know what to do to punish me if I had done something wrong. And yet things got worse. Over a two-week period in 1996, my best friend moved away, I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend. I lost my appetite and lived on a daily bagel, cream cheese and a Coke for the next few months. I had tried counseling, and didn't find it helpful; in fact, I found reviving painful memories was pointless. Not thinking about them, on the other hand, worked wonders. Later on, so did studying philosophy and learning to think through emotions instead of just riding through them. But what's blown away all the techniques is diet. Since I s...
6 comments
Read more

Stay in your car!

If there's ever a lunatic outside your vehicle, do not engage. Stay in your vehicle. Drive away or call the police. Drive over the curb, lawn or median if necessary; just avoid putting innocent bystanders at risk.*  Save yourself from lunatics like a boss. Screen grab from video by Fredrik Sørlie on Youtube . That advice might have saved a 69-year-old delivery driver from being attacked by former NFL player Mark Sanchez, who for unknown reasons was in an alley after midnight in downtown Indianapolis and decided to pick a fight over a parking space. I say might have because I haven't seen any video of the attack. But other incidents over the years bear out the safety of staying in your car. A neighbor was assaulted and robbed after she got out of her car after someone followed her home and blocked her driveway. And remember Reginald Denny from the LA riots? The victim maced and stabbed Sanchez, but suffered a bad cut to his face and tongue and looks like he was badly beaten. Bo...
Post a Comment
Read more