Low Carb and Ammonia Smell

[kakno]

Kerley: you’re probably on a low carb diet, correct? I’m once again guessing acetone, do what ALX did and learn how it smells.

Reading this could be interesting: Ketone bodies - Wikipedia

When your body breaks down fatty acids to a way higher extent than glucose, ketone bodies will be synthesized. One of these is acetone, which is transported in the blood to your lungs and gives you bad breath, which, for obvious reasons, will be hard to get rid of. The other two ketone bodies are transported from your liver and kidneys to muscles and the brain (among others), where they are used as energy. It’s perfectly normal and not dangerous, but it’s maybe not that pleasant. I don’t know the pros and cons of a ketogenic diet for muscle preservation or your goals, but it’s normal, I can tell you that much.

[Kerley]

[quote]kakno wrote:
Kerley: you’re probably on a low carb diet, correct? I’m once again guessing acetone, do what ALX did and learn how it smells.

Reading this could be interesting: Ketone bodies - Wikipedia

When your body breaks down fatty acids to a way higher extent than glucose, ketone bodies will be synthesized. One of these is acetone, which is transported in the blood to your lungs and gives you bad breath, which, for obvious reasons, will be hard to get rid of. The other two ketone bodies are transported from your liver and kidneys to muscles and the brain (among others), where they are used as energy. It’s perfectly normal and not dangerous, but it’s maybe not that pleasant. I don’t know the pros and cons of a ketogenic diet for muscle preservation or your goals, but it’s normal, I can tell you that much.

[/quote]

yes low carb diet, cool thanks for explaining it, it doesnt bother me as long as it isn’t a bad sign of to low cals or something like that.

[MAF14]

this morning i did fasted cardio and i started smelling like ammonia. the odd thing is i’ve been eating 60 grams of carbs per day. all carbs have been coming from oat meal lately and they’ve been giving me really bad (horribly foul) gas. so that makes me think im not breaking down the carbs for energy… any one got any thoughts?

[kakno]

[quote]MAF14 wrote:
this morning i did fasted cardio and i started smelling like ammonia. the odd thing is i’ve been eating 60 grams of carbs per day. all carbs have been coming from oat meal lately and they’ve been giving me really bad (horribly foul) gas. so that makes me think im not breaking down the carbs for energy… any one got any thoughts?[/quote]

I’m getting good at this diagnostics stuff.

1. Do you know the difference between ammonia and acetone?

2. Where did the smell come from? (Your lungs/nose/mouth or some other place, like the sweat, for instance.)

New block:

Have you ever had problems with oatmeal before?

[MAF14]

[quote]kakno wrote:

[quote]MAF14 wrote:
this morning i did fasted cardio and i started smelling like ammonia. the odd thing is i’ve been eating 60 grams of carbs per day. all carbs have been coming from oat meal lately and they’ve been giving me really bad (horribly foul) gas. so that makes me think im not breaking down the carbs for energy… any one got any thoughts?[/quote]

I’m getting good at this diagnostics stuff.

1. Do you know the difference between ammonia and acetone?

2. Where did the smell come from? (Your lungs/nose/mouth or some other place, like the sweat, for instance.)

New block:

Have you ever had problems with oatmeal before?
[/quote]

1. yes it is ammonia. i asked other people to smell my clothes and they agreed it was ammonia.

2. sweat.

no, i dont even remember oatmeal giving me gas before. i was low-carb for about 4 months prior to this if that makes any difference…

my cardio is incline walking keeping my heart rate at 130 BPM but since i started getting the ammonia smell i lowered it to about 120 BPM and still got the smell although it was much less pronounced. tomorrow im gonna go down to 110 BPM and see how it goes…

[kakno]

This is different. I don’t know what’s “wrong”, but I don’t think it’s anything serious.

If you’re worried, see if you can get sweaty without it smelling like ammonia.

My sweat has been kinda pungent for a few years now and I’m pretty sure I don’t have excess ammonia in my blood.

It would of course, at least in theory, be possible that your body breaks down protein very quickly when you exert yourself physically, leading to more ammonia than your body can dispose of, but it seems unlikely.

Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.

[MAF14]

[quote]kakno wrote:
This is different. I don’t know what’s “wrong”, but I don’t think it’s anything serious.

If you’re worried, see if you can get sweaty without it smelling like ammonia.

My sweat has been kinda pungent for a few years now and I’m pretty sure I don’t have excess ammonia in my blood.

It would of course, at least in theory, be possible that your body breaks down protein very quickly when you exert yourself physically, leading to more ammonia than your body can dispose of, but it seems unlikely.

Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.[/quote]

i can get sweaty/lift heavy without getting the ammonia smell… its only when i do fasted cardio and it tend to start to be noticeable anywhere from 30-35 minutes into the session (HR from 130-120)

its really weird to me though because about 2 months ago i was running every morning (fasted) with my heart rate hitting the 180 mark from intervals with no ammonia smell

[kakno]

Then it sure seems like you’re breaking down protein very quickly. And this protein seems to be coming from your muscles (since it’s fasted cardio in the morning). And your body has already been breaking down protein from your muscles all night, so this behaviour seems pretty catabolic.

I don’t know what kind of results you are getting, but you might want to substitute fasted cardio for something else, knowing that what you’re doing now breaks down your muscles. (I think there are a lot of good options and that you could get as good or even better results)

How has your diet and training changed in that time period?

[MAF14]

well shelby starnes is doing my diet as of now… we started with carb cycling (2 high, 3 mod, 2 low) but i guess i wasnt making as much progress as i should have so im low-carb 7 days a week. last week i was at 60 and now im at 30. it started a couple days ago but i wasnt sure what to think ofit until i saw this thread.

i thought it was just stale sweat and the bacteria or whatever gave off the smell… i told him and he suggested bumping my cardio down to 110 BPM from 130… i just emailed him bc he thought going down to 110 BPM would stop it

[kakno]

If it’s excess ammonia being sweated out, lower intensity should help. (The last few posts are speculation) Lacking glycogen, your body should burn fat during cardio, but at a certain point, the fat isn’t enough and it starts breaking down protein for energy, the protein coming from muscles.

So if lower intensity helps, the “muscle catabolism theory” could very well be true. Otherwise, I wouldn’t worry too much.

[reddevil7nine]

I had this same thing happen to me a few months ago. relatively low carb diet (~100g), M-W-F train, Tu-Th-S cardio, ~2k total calories, pretty sound diet, fruits, veg, good fats, PWO shakes, etc. i modeled the diet similar to the V-diet just with…you know…food

about 2-3 weeks into the diet i started noticing the smell inside my nose. i was concerned and did some research and found some articles that basically said, “don’t worry about it, just eat some carbs after exercise.”

needless to say, 5 weeks into the diet i was in the emergency room. one night, I had passed out 4 times in ~10 minutes then once more in the waiting room. dr. said my BP was really low (it’s pretty low normally anyway) and i was severely dehydrated.

that day, i had only had about 30 carbs before cardio which was late in the afternoon and it was hot as balls.

i won’t get into the reasons for the dehydration, i just mention it so no one panics and thinks they are on the verge of going to the hospital. in the end, i think it was several things that led to the feinting.

now that i’ve read the posts here and people are saying it’s a sign of being catabolic and you’re burning muscle (which, might i add, where was this f’ing information when i did my research? i need to find the douche of a personal trainer that said it’s nothing to worry about) i thought i would mention this as well.

after it was all said and done, i took a week or so off and since coming back, my bench dropped ~40 lbs, squat ~35 lbs. so needless to say, i’m pretty upset these days…nothing like the feeling of starting over.