Diabetes: MCTs can cause certain chemicals called ketones to build up in the body. This can be a problem for people with diabetes. Avoid using MCTs if you have diabetes.
This came from webmd and found similar verbiage elsewhere. Ketons are no good for us. Does anyone experienced it while on coconut oil. Just trying to get more educated on the topic before I start with it.
The people who said this are confused. Specifically, they have confused a healthy state called "ketosis" with a dangerous and potentially lethal state common mainly among type one diabetics called "diabetic ketoacidosis".
Although they share one attribute - the presence of ketones in the blood, they have little else in common and are rather like OPPOSITE conditions which come out of opposite precursors and have opposite health effects. It is easy enough to google those two terms and find more educated people explaining the vast differences between the two.
Ketosis (the healthy one) comes about when dietary carbs are restricted. This depletes the glycogen stores in the liver and means very, very little glucose is coming from the digestive tract. With glucose no longer available (from either the digestive tract real-time or from the glycogen stores), most of the cells in the body SWITCH to using with FFAs or ketones as their primary energy source instead of glucose.
This includes very important cells like the heart, muscles and brain which actually function better on ketones then they do on glucose (especially the heart). It also alleviates the early stages of Alzheimer's disease where it is now widely believed that the cause of brain-nerve deterioration is glucose-starvation similar to other body cells with insulin resistance (a different "insulin resistance" on the part of these critical nerve cells). Since these critical cells ARE able to switch to ketones (which unlike FFAs are able to cross the blood/brain barrier), they remain fueled and healthy. This is very important to me with both a parent and a grandparent who died of Alzheimer's.
DKA, quite the contrary, comes about under conditions of very low insulin along with extremely high blood sugar. The most common cause is un-diagnosed T1 or T1s cut off from their insulin. It can also happen with extremely poorly controlled T2s. It never happens when blood sugar is normal except for a rare anomalous case involving extreme starvation. Aside from that, if your blood sugars are not very high (at least over 220, but mostly over 300), there is no chance of entering DKA, ketones or no ketones.
I live with ample ketones in my blood at all times. They are an alternative to glucose for 95% of my body's cells allowing me to simply circumvent my insulin resistance instead of fighting with it. This keeps me very healthy and my BG completely normal without any need for medications or insulin. Also, the maximum levels of ketones which can be formed using carb restriction are WAY below the dangerous levels found in DKA. In other words, YOU CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE.
Far from being "dangerous", ketones under these conditions are a veritable life-saver and really make BG control easy.