Hi!
**Please skip to the last paragraph if you’re like my husband, the type of person who wants someone to get to the point quickly. 😂
So, I’ve been working on building up my fasting muscles and have stepped it up since September. I’ve mostly stuck to a 2 or 3 hour eating window during the weekdays and an 8 hour window during the weekend or when my husband had the day off. They have weird holidays here. We had Monday off a while back for exercise day. 😆 Anyway, I’ve not been on a good schedule since maybe December 21 or so, but I’ve tried to fast when I can. My husband and kids had 10 days off, so...it was a challenge. I’m wanting to do longer fasts of 36-42 hours, but eating with my family seems pretty important. We eat together every night. I’m trying to see if there’s a way that would work with my family. Maybe just have tea and sit at the table.... 🤔 Explain the benefits of fasting as an adult? But I eat approximately 9 meals a week, I guess. I know Dr. Fung recommends alternate day fasting, but I find this works for my schedule and it seems the weekend resets me or something.
But I have a question. I went for my monthly thyroid appointment and my doctor told me she wants to do comprehensive blood work next month when I go back. She’s supposed to be testing my thyroid levels every 6 months but I know it’s been close to two years. She will check my cholesterol, which has always been fantastic. She’ll do their equivalent of the A1C, which is a test that measures blood sugar control over the past 6 weeks, I think. It was 4.9 and then 5.0 the next time. So, I’m not worried, necessarily. I had mentioned that I would like a glucose meter and was hoping she would prescribe one for me, basically making it free for me. She told me that while she understood why I would want to do that, she believes it would stress me out. That even a little bit of stress or lack of sleep raises the blood sugar levels. She thinks I’m making great progress, more than 50 pounds in the past two years, 30 of that had been since September. So, the fasting has really helped me. But now I regret asking about the meter because that reminded her that we haven’t checked my blood in a while.
So...I’m afraid of freaking her out with crazy ketone levels (even though she is part of a rare group of doctors here who endorse a low carb (and lowish fat if you have excess weight to lose) diet. Will fasting falsely elevate my cholesterol? I’m scared of giving off a strange number that I know is completely harmless, but out of the normal range or much higher than previous blood work. If that happens, I promise you, she’ll be making an appointment for a heart specialist or something like that. And here, you can’t say no to the doctor. You can’t, and it would take ages for me to explain the cultural reasons why this is true. When I went in for this appointment, I was in the middle of my monthly migraine. I get one almost every month when I ovulate and have off and on for decades. I asked her for something stronger than Tylenol and she gave me something (not a narcotic because they save them for terminally ill people only—-something, something sodium) but she told me she will be referring me to a neurologist. That’s just how it is here. 🙄 The headache medicine worked so well that I can’t complain, if it guarantees that I can get relief from the pain.
So, I guess the point of my babbling post is to ask what I can do to make sure I don’t set off any false alarms in my blood work. 😂
Editing to add the medication I was prescribed.
http://www.rad-ar.or.jp/siori/english/print.cgi?n=1944