Comment · Thu, July 30, 2020 · ND Owner
Can Berberine Cause Hypoglycemia?
Original post in this thread
Experienced8 · 12 points
I usually only take berberine before a carb-containing meal, however, today I took some upon waking and then ate a steak.
The whole morning I felt like I could fall asleep at any second. Brain fog. Weak muscles. Absolutely CRAVING food and sugar. Seemed like hypoglycemia.
Can this happen to someone like me who is NOT diabetic, in shape, eats clean, sleeps well?
What they were answering
Experienced8 · 5 points
Appreciate the response! The more I learn in this field the farther away I feel of find what's actually causing my problems haha
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
So the craving food part is from ghrelin. That's the hormone your body uses to signal hunger. If you take a ghrelin mimetic, like MK-66, you will feel hungrier than you have ever been. You also feel weak and brain foggy, too. It's a shitty feeling. The thing is that ghrelin isn't bad! It's a good hormone. The issue are your ghrelin receptors. It's ghrelin binding too much to its receptors that makes the hunger unbearable.
So you can see from that study that it is actually ghrelin mediating the neuroprotective effects from calorie restriction. It does that through AMPK signaling. So it is the binding of ghrelin to the ghrelin receptor is the thing that makes you hungry. The weird thing in your case is that high protein breakfasts usually DECREASE ghrelin.
Effect of a high-protein breakfast on the postprandial ghrelin response
So would berberine affect this? Not really at normal doses. High doses will also decrease ghrelin.
Berberine Attenuates Intestinal Mucosal Barrier Dysfunction in Type 2 Diabetic Rats
So all indications would be that a high protein breakfast with berberine would not increase ghrelin, but decrease it. You seem to have had it increase, which is odd. Were you taking anything else?