Keto Flu Symptoms, Prevention and Cures

Do you have the KETO FLU? (And 5 Ways To Cure It and PREVENT It in the First Place)

In this video, I’ll show you how to recognize the symptoms of keto flu (carb withdrawal) and I share my simple, actionable tips and remedies to have you feeling great again in no time.

These strategies are ideal whether you are just starting a Ketogenic (low-carb diet) or even if you have been on keto for a bit longer but you’re feeling tired and fatigued.

SEE below for the full transcript.

 

 

FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, everyone, it’s Anna Mazlin, certified ketogenic diet coach and founder of appetiteforenergy.com.

One of the questions that I see coming up a lot from people when they start out on a keto diet is how to deal with the keto flu, especially in that first week of starting a keto diet. This video is going to be all about the keto flu, what is it, have you got it, and what can you do to get rid of it. I have got five amazing keto flu remedies today for you that are fantastic actionable easy tips that you can go away and put into place right now and get rid of that keto flu, and get back to feeling absolutely amazing and losing weight, and feeling great, and all that sort of stuff.

Just a quick note around the fact that I’m not a doctor, so I can’t diagnose any medical conditions that you do have. It’s important that you see your doctor if you are concerned that you have got a genuine medical concern. If you think you have the influenza virus, if you have a raging fever, you really need to go and see a doctor. That’s out of the way.

First up, what is the keto flu and have you got it? When you’re first start out on keto, this is something that can really come up in the first three to four days, the first week, even potentially later. You might feel you’ve got a bit of a headache, you just feel drained or tired. You can have some unusual symptoms. Generally, you don’t feel good. You’re desperately craving carbohydrates. It’s not a good feeling. I’ve been there quite a few times.

What is the keto flu? Essentially, it is your body detoxifying from sugar and from carbs, and basically withdrawing from those. It’s flushing out all that stored glucose from the body and going through this process of switching over to burning fat as a fuel. Our bodies are really not used to using fat as a fuel. It can take quite a while for this process to get fired up.

Sometimes you’ll hear of a keto flu called low carb fatigue, carb withdrawal, or keto headache. Your body has to build a lot of new cellular machinery to process fats as a primary source of fuel instead of carbs. That’s quite a big process. Think about it. You’ve been using carbs or glucose as your main source of energy probably for your whole life. Now, we’re asking our bodies to use fat as a primary fuel source. That’s just going to take a bit of time for the body to create the ability to do that. Later in this video, I will take you through my top five tips for beating the keto flu.

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF KETO FLU?

A racing heart can be one of them, feeling just generally weak, feeling fatigued and tired.

Having a headache is a common one.

Actually, getting pins and needles can be one, too.

Feeling brain fog, difficulty in concentrating, just general feeling terrible.

Having a little bit of a cough or even a bit of sniffle.

Some irritability, maybe even nausea.

I would say that having a full-blown head cold, being unable to breath through sinuses is probably not a symptom. Again, use your own judgment as to whether you think you have the keto flu. They’re the main symptoms.

People really want to know, “Anna, how long am I going to have to deal with this for?” There’s no simple answer, of course. Typically, you see keto flu resolving within two to seven days, so within a week. With some of the remedies that I have for you later in the video, you can resolve some of these symptoms almost immediately. Some of them are really, really simple fixes. Stay tuned for that.

There are two factors that are really behind the keto flu. It’s just useful to understand what’s causing the feelings that you’re having. First of all, your brain is craving carbohydrates. This leads to headaches and brain fog because your brain is really looking for that glucose that it’s been used to to having to fuel it. That’s causing your whole head to feel a bit screwed up.

The second thing that’s happening in your body is that it’s dropping insulin caused by the carbohydrate reduction, is causing havoc in your body. You’ve got reduction in insulin, reduction in carbohydrates. This is causing water to be leeched out of your body. Your body releases water, it also then loses sodium in this process and other electrolytes. Electrolytes being lost is really the big thing for keto flu. Electrolytes are magnesium, sodium, sodium which is salt, and potassium. Those three electrolytes are critical in getting your body back in balance.

Just to recap on that one, the two things in combination that are causing the keto flu symptoms are, number one, that your brain is not receiving the glucose that it’s used to to fuel it, so it’s causing headaches and things, and then your body is basically lacking in electrolytes as a result of this water release that takes place when you’re in ketogenic state. Water release means that electrolytes are also lost. That gives you a bit of a clue as to what some of these remedies are going to be and how we’re going to get over the keto flu.

THE TOP 5 KETO FLU REMEDIES

Now, the part you’ve all been waiting for, the five keto flu remedies.

Number one is to increase sodium or salt in your diet. This is the number one thing to do when you start a keto diet. You should be doing this from day one, certainly not waiting for the keto flu to hit. You can even potentially avoid some of these symptoms altogether if you’re doing some of these things, particularly, this adding sodium back to your diet. It’s just so important because you are losing sodium every day through water loss. You can’t just replace water in your diet. It’s just not enough. You need to be replacing the sodium as well.

What I like to do and what I would suggest you start trying is certainly adding just more salt back into your diet. You can add some sea salt, whether it’s Himalayan or regular sea salt into your water. I often sprinkle a little bit into my water as I just go through the day. Even from a quarter of a teaspoon up to half a teaspoon throughout the day is great. Plus, you might like to add additional salt into the food that you’re cooking. I always add much more salt now than I used to to my cooking.

You can drink up to six cups of bone broth a day. You can also drink pickle juice, which is quite popular, I believe, in the United States. Where I’m from in Australia, I’d have never seen this. Let me know below if you’ve ever been able to find pickle juice. That sounds great. I’d like to get my hands on some. Just check if you’re going to try the pickle juice that there’s no sugar added. Just check the ingredients to make sure there’s no sugar or anything strange added there.

I know some of you will be thinking– You’re very concerned about adding more salt into your diet. We’ve been educated over the years that salt is bad for you and you should buy low sodium everything. It’s interesting when we typically in the past have been eating quite a high processed diet, we’ve actually been getting an enormous amount of salt in your diets through the processed foods that we all have eaten.

In actually changing over to a low carb keto diet with a lot of whole foods, we’re actually possibly eating a lot less salt because of the lack of processed foods. In fact, adding salt back in is probably unlikely to be really meaning that you are eating a lot of sodium or a lot of salt. If you’re concerned about it, if you have high blood pressure, you may want to– You should, in fact, talk to your doctor about it. That’s just something to think about.

Keto flu remedy number two is to supplement the electrolytes magnesium and potassium. If you have a magnesium deficiency, you can experience an abnormally fast heartbeat which is known as heart arrhythmia. You can also experience leg cramps particularly at night or even during exercise, it’s quite common. You can experience constipation, you can experience headaches, fatigue, and even insomnia.

What you can do is you can supplement your diet with magnesium. You can eat more food with magnesium or you can also take the supplement which is very easy to do. Actually, magnesium deficiency is actually very common. It’s actually believed that about 56% of the US population is in fact magnesium-deficient. Part of that reason is that our soils have become depleted from magnesium due to all the farming which has taken place. As a result, the vegetables that are grown are not absorbing the magnesium that they have in the past. We’re all lacking in magnesium in our diets, so supplementing is a good idea.

The other reason that we are low in magnesium is the large number of processed foods that people eat mean that they’re eating less whole food which do have the magnesium in them. If you want to increase magnesium through your diet, you would want to eat more dark green leafy vegetables like spinach, like kale. Also, almonds have good magnesium in them. In terms of supplementation, you would be wanting to look at taking between 300 and 500 milligrams per day. You can take that at bedtime. It’s quite a relaxing thing to take before bed.

Potassium is another one that’s leeched out of the body with the fluid loss, so you need to either eat more or take a supplement. You’ll find that you’ll feel quite lethargic and tired if you’re not getting enough potassium. Another interesting side effect is loss of lean muscle mass. Of course, nobody wants to lose lean muscle mass when we’re trying to lose weight or at any time really. You want to keep your muscle strong because it helps you to burn more energy and burn more fat. I would definitely look to get more potassium out of your diet as well as potentially supplementing.

Foods that contain potassium are avocados, which is a good one. We’re all probably eating a lot of those. Spinach, almonds. Sesame seeds is another one. Mushrooms, kale and walnuts. Also, tuna, broccoli and beef. If you want to supplement above that, in total you need about two grams of potassium per day. If you’re not getting that from food, depending on how many avocados you’re eating, you can take a supplement to top that up.

All right, number three. Number three keto flu remedy is water. You’ve really got to drink a lot of water in keto. We’ve talked about electrolytes and sodium. Water is really the key other piece to this puzzle. If you’re not getting enough water, you’ll get headaches and fatigue. Most of us has probably experienced that on hot days when you get dehydrated, it definitely gives you those headachy feelings. Look to drink between two and three liters per day. Take notice of how you’re feeling, whether you might need less or more. Probably not less than two liters a day would probably be advised.

I love this one because drinking more water is just a really easy fix and can actually hugely change how you feel if you’re getting a bit of keto flu. It’s really easy to drink more water. You should, again, do it from day one. I even suggest if you can, keep track of how much water you are drinking. I find that for myself that it’s the only way I can really make sure I’m drinking enough water. Otherwise, I do tend to forget. What I have is I’ve got myself a special bottle of water which is just something I’ve picked up actually at a supermarket, just a one-off purchase. I just fill it up with water each day at home. Then I know when I finish that bottle of water, that I’ve drunk that amount. I find that a helpful way to measure.

The other thing I would suggest is making sure you take water with you when you go out. In your bags, the bag that you’ve got, take your own water bottle with you. I always have a water bottle with me. You just feel a lot more thirsty on the keto diet. You just do. You’re going to probably need to go to the toilet a little bit more as well, so be prepared for that.

Keto flu remedy number four, drink coffee or tea with MCT oil or coconut oil. This is really butter coffee or bulletproof coffee, which you’ve probably heard of. It’s pretty common in keto circles and there’s a reason for it. You put medium-chain triglycerides, which is the MCT oil into your coffee. The reason why it’s popular is it boosts your ketone levels at a time when your body is not yet producing them. It’s putting the ketones into your body and it actually provides a source of energy for the brain. You brain can use ketones as a fuel. It’s not given the glucose it wants, it’s withdrawing from carbohydrates. By giving it the MCT oil in the form of the MCT oil or coconut oil, it’s actually giving your brain a fuel source. This can really help to stop headaches and brain fog. It’s a handy little tip actually to try.

MCT oil certainly has a much stronger effect than coconut oil. If can do the MCT oil, it is really beneficial. Most people drink this first thing in the morning and they might have one of those in the morning. That’s all you’ll need. It’s a really delicious coffee if you haven’t tried it before. Essentially, what it is and how you make it is– Quickly, it’s bulletproof coffee. You have your brewed coffee. Now of course, you can use tea if you’re not a coffee drinker, so you can do the same recipe with tea. Then, you add in up to one tablespoon of butter and one tablespoon of the MCT oil or coconut oil.

You blend it in a blender so it becomes nice and frothy, and all that butter’s blended into it and you don’t get that oiliness to it. It’s actually really quite lovely. Definitely try that out. I will just give you a bit of a warning if you are using MCT oil for the first time. Don’t use too much. Don’t go straight to the one tablespoon. Start with just a teaspoon of MCT oil in your bulletproof coffee and work up to the tablespoon over a few days when you see as your body gets used to digesting it. Initially, you can experience digestive upset, tummy aches, and even diarrhea. Just take that one slow.

My final keto flu remedy tip today is exercise. Exercise can actually help to induce ketosis. This is a good one. If you can actually get yourself out there and continue on with your regular exercise program, then you should absolutely do that. It actually helps everything to move along and definitely can help to get ketosis going. If you can only handle maybe something light, go for a walk or try and do your yoga class. Don’t give up on your exercise during this period because it actually can be really helpful. I know typically when you’re feeling rubbish, you don’t feel like exercising, but try to do it. Try to power through it. It’s really beneficial.

I hope you found this video helpful and that you now know how to stop keto flu in its tracks no matter when it strikes, whether it’s right at the beginning of your keto diet or sometime down the track. Now, I’d love to know from you what symptoms of keto flu have you personally experienced. Are they the sames, the ones I’ve mentioned or maybe something different?

Also, I’d love to know what remedies worked for you. This is great information so everybody can help each other to get through this. Post it in the comments below. I’d love to know. I read all your comments and love hearing from you guys.

I’m Anna Mazlin, certified ketogenic diet coach, founder of appetiteforenergy.com. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you soon.

[00:17:57] [END OF AUDIO]

 

 

FOLLOW US on FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM and PINTEREST for more delicious 30-minute low-carb recipes!

101 Easy Low Carb Snacks FREE Cheat Sheet

Get my FREE printable cheatsheet with no less than 101 of my GO-TO keto-approved snacks. Print or download to your phone for easy access!



You'll also receive FREE 30-minute keto recipes, inspiration and our latest posts straight to your inbox…

Success! Check your email to download your cheat sheet.

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

First Name

Email Address

We use this field to detect spam bots. If you fill this in, you will be marked as a spammer.

If you would also like to receive FREE low-carb guides and recipes, check the box.

DOWNLOAD NOW! Your privacy is important to us. The information you provide on this form will only be used to provide you with updates from Appetite For Energy. Unsubscribe at any time. Powered by ConvertKit

---

This post may contain affiliate links which means I may receive a small commission if you purchase some items. Ordering through my site will not change the price you pay. Small commissions like this help to support this blog and my bulletproof coffee habit...