Low carb diet, blood analysis and physiological testing

[NU_nutrition_TS]

Does he know about your exercise/training (I am assuming you exercise regularly)? This may affect cortisol levels in a transitory manner immediately around training (depends how soon blood was taken after your last workout). It is also possible that a very low carbohydrate diet (sub 30g/day) may lead to slightly elevated cortisol levels as cortisol is one of the many hormones that stimulate endogenous glucose production (via glycogenolysis and gluconeogenesis) and fat tissue breakdown. Increasing intake by ~50g/day (still well within low-carb parameters) may help somewhat, so it will be interesting to see the next set of blood test results.

Not too sure how low vitamin D levels figure in all of this but, again, it will be interesting to see if the supplementation addresses it, In my own case it did not, to any significant degree, so I gave up on supplementation and stopped worrying about my levels, as I seem to be perfectly healthy otherwise.

[chris21]

He does know about my high level of physical activity but he did not ask about my diet at all. I am aware of the potential impact on cortisol levels of a low carb diet especially with my activity levels so I will be interested in the impact of the addition of some additional carbs pre-exercise. My carb levels for the 3 months prior to the last test were very low -- probably sub 30g -- and my performance did dip at these levels and for the first time ever I started to gain weight (72kg to 76kg in 3 months) but there are so many other confounding factors that it is difficult to be definitive about cause and effect. Plan now is to experiment with additional carbs and then re-assess