All cramped up...

I'm not trying to sell this diet, just relate my experiences while trying to follow its main tenets. Everything going well today until about 2:00 in the afternoon when I started feeling, eh, maybe sleepy? I wasn't tired although I felt like I could lie down for a while. Odd feeling, not carbo-sleepy, just uncomfortable. I started to get a hunger pains and drank some V8 juice and it got worse. Then, I kind of noticed it was on the outside of my stomach and now I think it was a cramp in my abdominals. I have been doing a lot of difficult core work lately but I never felt cramps like that. I got up and stretched and they seemed to go away. I ate some blueberries and now I'm feeling fantastic, like I could go for a run. Did the diet cause muscle cramps or was it over-exertion? maybe both? Just a coincidence that I experience cramps in my ab muscles for the first time in my life when I'm fasting during the day? Of course, it's my first week of incorporating floor-wipers into my core workout. Too many variables.

Putting on my cyber-sleuth hat, I did some digging around to possible causes of muscle cramps. I was looking for some kind of nutritional deficiency that I may be unknowingly experiencing. Guess what can cause muscle cramp? Hypoglycemia, or a relative drop in blood sugar (glucose).

As hypoglycemia progresses a variety of symptoms can occur including muscle twitching. Amongst 300 patients in one study (185 female, 115 male) found to have relative hypoglycemia (a drop of 20% or more below the fasting blood sugar level during a 6-hour glucose tolerance test), 23% had muscular twitching or cramps.

I'm not suggesting I have hypoglycemia or that you'll get it, but low blood glucose levels can apparently cause cramps. What confuses the topic is that there's a form of hypoglycemia that's called "fasting hypoglycemia" but it has nothing to do with the cause of the hypoglycemia, only when it occurs, i.e. in the morning before eating. I was thinking that maybe low glucose levels during the day brought this on, especially with the tough workout this morning.

I checked with Dr. Wikipedia and the good doctors mention that "As the duration of fasting is extended, plasma glucose levels can fall further, even in healthy people. In other words, many healthy people can occasionally have glucose levels in the hypoglycemic range without symptoms or disease."

So, intensely performing new exercises in the midst of a 20 hour fast increases the chance of muscle cramps. That's my hypothesis. My solution is to drink more water and have another banana.