Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, today I'm going to share a short story. Let's begin:
I use keto to manage Type I Diabetes. I'm not ultra strict with the carb limits because I don't require weight loss. The basic principals of the diet work great for helping me manage my blood sugar levels though, so I've been adhering to and refining this... diet/lifestyle/way of eating/etc. for about 6 months.
Recently I noticed that I was getting tingling in my extremities. I had lab work done around the same time for other reasons, and all the numbers (barring cholesterol) came back with good results. My blood pressure tends to run a bit on the low side, and I attributed the tingling to that. My doc concurred. I make 32 oz of diet lemonade to drink daily, along with my coffee, and started spiking it with ~2 tsp. of Morton Lite Salt.
I'd finish my drink over the course of the day, and I generally felt better. The tingling sensations only occurred when sitting cross-legged or on the throne... generally positions that restrict blood flow and are easily explained away. On days that I found it more pronounced I would also find some relief after consuming some of the Lite Salt. I thought the Lite Salt was helping with the blood pressure a bit, so I continued happily on...
This past Tuesday I had a late breakfast and was still famished by lunch. I didn't want to eat another meal and spike my blood sugar, and I had a decent container of chicken stock in the fridge--one of the big yogurt containers from the grocery store (poor man's Rubbermaid). These work out to roughly 4 cups of fluid. I warmed up the stock and added Lite Salt. How much Lite Salt? I dunno. Enough for me to think, "Eh, it's a bit salty, but not terrible. It's drinkable." Yeah, not so much.
I was nauseous... for a while. I figured it hit me funny, after all I just pounded a LOT of hot broth in short order. I ignored the discomfort and drove to a pharmacy nearby to make a call about a potential job, seeing as how my reception sucks at home. I got off the phone call (which went pretty well) and felt tingly. Like... REALLY tingly, which I thought was kind of strange. I was sitting in an air conditioned car with cushy seats that shouldn't make me tingly. And it was traveling. I thought on it for a minute, considered my blood pressure, and jaunted into the pharmacy to use their free blood pressure machine. BP was good, pulse slightly elevated at 105bpm, but I figured it was adrenaline from the phone call. I left the store and met my friend to do some brief grocery shopping nearby.
Still tingly, still getting worse, started feeling some gait imbalance. We were quick in the store, went back to my house to put the groceries away, and I noticed during the drive my face was starting to go numb. Yeah... not good. Really not good. I'm beginning to think that it was the Lite Salt. We got home, and I told my friend to bring me to the ER.
I checked in, explained to the grumpy lady behind the counter that I thought I had an electrolyte imbalance, gave my symptoms, and waited to be seen. In the meantime I looked up "Potassium OD" using the wonders of Google and my cellphone, and lo-and-behold, I had classic markers.
They brought me in, I said potassium OD to the nurse, and they admitted me in short order. By this time I was having some real trouble walking, had to put my arms out to maintain my balance, head was all fuzzy, considered that it might have been a stroke at one point, but I was in the right place if my self-diagnosis was incorrect...
It wasn't. I had hyperkalemia. So what's hyperkalemia look like exactly? It looks like this and this. I should be dead. The doctor said he's glad that I'm smart, because a stupid or prideful person avoiding the ER wouldn't have made it. My heart would have given out. For reference, my serum potassium concentration clocked in at 8.1 mEq/L.
Levels higher than 7 mEq/L can lead to significant hemodynamic and neurologic consequences. Levels exceeding 8.5 mEq/L can cause respiratory paralysis or cardiac arrest and can quickly be fatal.
I've been diabetic for 33 years. Some would think that you'd get over your discomfort with needles after thousands upon thousands of injections, right? Wrong. I'm home now, and I feel like an over-tenderized piece of beef. I've been stabbed so many times over the past two days that I'm afraid when I drink water it'll come pouring out of all the holes like a fucked-up, real-life Loony Tunes short.
So boys and girls, let my obscenely ridiculous blunder be a lesson to you. Feel free to laugh at my fighter pilot pic and discharge papers. Chide me for my hubris. But above all else, use your mind, listen to your body, and don't try to replace balance with shortcuts. I believe that you can eat a ketogenic diet and be healthy--as long as you seek balance. Supplementation does not override proper food sources of nutrients. As for me, I'm feeling much better, the Morton Lite Salt is in the bin, and the Spinach and Broccoli are in the fridge awaiting consumption.
tl;dr - Potentially save a life and read the damn thing.
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