Does the Ketogenic Diet live up to the hype?
The pros, the cons, and the facts about this not-so-new diet craze.
If you believe the buzz, ketosis—whether via the almost-zero-carb ketogenic diet or via ketone supplements—can curb appetite, enhance performance, and cure nearly any health problem that ails you. Sound too good to be true? It probably is.
“I’m doing this for my health,” you could purr virtuously, as you topped your delectably marbled, medium-rare steak with a fried egg.
Well, many advocates of the ketogenic diet argue exactly that: By eating a lot of fat and close to zero carbohydrates you too can enjoy enhanced health, quality of life, performance, brain function, and abs you can grate that cheese on.
So, in this article, we’ll explore:
Aside from being an incredibly helpful and friendly voice on the other end of the phone, Lindsay is also a tireless advocate for a health condition that has shaped her life in many ways: epilepsy.
Epilepsy is an ancient brain phenomenon, known to medicine thousands of years ago. To manage it, our Neolithic ancestors drilled holes in one another’s skulls, perhaps trying to let the bad stuff out—a practice known as trepanation.
Around 400 BCE, the ancient Greek doctor Hippocrates observed a man who had seizures for five days. On the sixth day, he noted, as the patient “abstained from everything, both gruel and drink, there were no further seizures.”
About 1,400 years later, in 1000 CE, the famous Persian physician Avicenna—who coined the term “epilepsy”, from the ancient Greek verb epilambanein (to seize or attack, as the neurological condition caused seizures), speculated that “overfeeding” might be a risk factor for epilepsy.
By 1911, a pair of Parisian doctors were trying fasting as a treatment for children with epilepsy, and in the United States, physical culturist Bernarr McFadden was claiming that fasting for three days to three weeks could cure anything.
Despite not having the tools and insight of modern neuroscience, these and other people who explored fasting and dietary prescriptions for neurological disorders were on to something.
We now know that there may be a dietary connection—not just between epilepsy and what we eat (or don’t), but also with many other brain disorders.
Unfortunately, fasting isn’t fun. We evolved with a pretty strong aversion to starvation, and our brains and GI tracts have lots of ways to make sure we eat enough.
Which raises the question:
Could we get the health benefits of fasting another way?
In other words:
One: Endocrinology researcher Rollin Woodyatt noted that the same chemical environment happened with both starvation and a diet that was very low in carbohydrates and very high in fat.
Two: Dr. Russell Wilder wondered:
Could a person get the health benefits of fasting without actually fasting?
He and other doctors at the Mayo Clinic experimented with what Wilder called the “ketogenic diet” during the early 1920s. Not only did children with epilepsy seem to improve overall with this type of diet, they seemed to think and behave better as well.
Proven by several notable medical authorities, a ketogenic diet as a treatment for childhood epilepsy found its way into medical textbooks by around 1940, and stayed there throughout the 20th century.
Nowadays, aging, contact sports, and modern warfare present us with new populations of people whose brains might benefit from a ketogenic diet:
These folks weren’t too concerned about brain health or longevity. They wanted to be ripped.
The ketogenic diet seemed like a magic bullet: a way to eat butter, bacon and cream, and still get abs.
It depends. (Don’t you hate that? But it’s true.)
To understand why, we’ll look at:
To give you a better idea of the ketogenic diet in real life, here’s a comparison: Protein Carb Fat PN Mixed Meal ~30% ~40% ~30% Paleo Meal ~40% ~20% ~40% Low-Carb Meal ~40% ~10% ~50% Ketogenic Meal ~20% ~5% ~75%
And here’s what that might look like translated into meals.
Notice a few things.
Ketogenic diets, on the other hand, include less protein—usually closer to 10 or 20 percent of total daily intake.
The Paleo plate may contain slightly fewer carbohydrates (early human diets often had plenty of them), but eliminates the grains and beans / legumes.
The “low carb” plate will have fewer carbohydrates than the first two, but still have a small amount, likely from vegetables.
The ketogenic meal shoots for near-zero carbs. Most estimates suggest around 10-15 grams of carbs a day. To give you an idea of what this looks like, that’s about one fist-sized portion of cooked carrots, or about 10-15 grapes. For the whole day.
The Paleo and low-carb plates may be roughly similar, with a little variation.
We might call all three of these “moderate fat”. Indeed, some indigenous diets (aka variations on the “Paleo” concept) are often quite low in fat, especially saturated fat.
The ketogenic meal, on the other hand, is high fat—even up to 90 percent of total energy intake. That means if you’re eating a 500-calorie spinach and mushroom salad, you get about 2 thumb-sized pieces of chicken breast on top, and then pour about 3-4 glugs of olive oil on top… Yum yum!
A small amount of protein, such as:
Ketogenic menus:
Well, for particular groups of people, ketosis may indeed be helpful.
(For other people, of course, it may not be helpful… and it may be actively harmful. We’ll talk more about that in a moment.)
To understand why this is true, let’s look at how ketosis actually works.
The term “ketone” was actually coined around 1850 by German chemist Leopold Gmelin, along with the term “ester”. (See? Not as new as you’d think!)
We can use two types of ketones as energy sources, acetoacetate and D-β-hydroxybutyrate. (The β sign means “beta”.)
Our body can make ketones through a complex biochemical pathway.
The shape and orientation of molecules is important.
Stereoisomers are molecules with the same chemical makeup, but different shapes and configurations. You can imagine your right hand as a “stereoisomer” of your left: they both share the same components, just arranged differently.
Shape and orientation matter to molecules and their actions, just like having right-handed and left-handed gloves or shoes matters.
The ketone D-β-hydroxybutyrate is not the same as its stereoisomer L-β-hydroxybutyrate.
This difference in molecular configuration matters for several parts of the conversion process.
For instance, when D-β-hydroxybutyrate is converted back to acetyl-CoA, its intermediate form D-β-hydroxybutyrate-CoA isn’t the same thing as L-β-hydroxybutyrate-CoA (an intermediate of β- oxidation).
Each stereoisomer uses different enzymes for conversion, much like each lock has its own unique key.
This difference also matters for ketone supplementation (see below).
You want to supplement the right stereoisomer, rather than a random pile of ketone types. Usually in test tube chemistry, you get a mix of stereoisomers (often around half one type, and half another type), unlike our body, which only uses and makes one version.
Ketosis happens when blood ketones are higher than normal either through dietary changes (which lead to very low blood glucose) or through supplementation (independent of blood glucose concentrations).
Some people like to think of ketone bodies as the fourth energy source for humans (in addition to carbohydrates, fats and proteins).
That’s technically true, but the alcohol in booze (aka ethanol) can also be used for energy. Just because we can metabolize something doesn’t always mean we should.
Let’s take an even deeper look
Ketosis, which just means having more ketone bodies than normal, should not be confused with ketoacidosis, which is a potentially dangerous metabolic situation of uncontrolled ketosis.
Normally, our body is very good at self-regulating.
If it senses acid levels rising (as happens in ketosis), it responds by buffering with more alkaline molecules (such as bicarbonate), changing blood levels of CO2, absorbing hydrogen ions, or telling the kidneys to excrete more dihydrogen phosphate and ammonium ions.
However, if for some reason our body can’t compensate, and blood pH drops below about 7.35 (in other words, becoming more acidic), we’re in trouble.
This usually happens in diabetics and alcoholics, since their normal metabolic mechanisms may not work properly.
For the average healthy person, dietary ketosis or even brief fasting is generally safe.
Our ancestors kicked off ketogenesis the good old fashioned way: by starving. About 72 hours into starvation, ketogenesis is happening and you’re in ketosis. Congratulations!
Ketosis is essentially an effect of fasting. This means that many of the health effects of fasting may be due to ketosis itself, rather than something like energy restriction.
Let’s take an even deeper look
Interestingly, how quickly ketosis happens varies by age and species.
Other mammals don’t seem to go into ketosis nearly as quickly as humans (your friendly neighborhood hibernating bear or squirrel who doesn’t eat for weeks to months at a time? No ketosis.)
Babies, on the other hand, go into ketosis within a few hours of not eating.
This may have to do with our energy-hungry human brains. About 20 percent of our overall energy intake is devoted to feeding our brains. Although bears and squirrels are clever enough to get into the garbage, they don’t have brains as large as we do.
It seems that ketogenesis is a human backup system that provides enough energy (via ketone bodies) to the ol’ noggin in times of starvation.
And it may be this particular evolutionary adaptation—which perhaps began as a way to keep the thinking factory upstairs working when food was scarce—that also enables the brain-benefiting effects of the ketogenic diet.
Stored glucose (our sugar-based fuel) is actually rather heavy. We don’t carry around much of it. Our body prefers to store most of our excess energy as body fat.
When we eat normally, our brain gets enough energy from glucose that can easily pass the blood-brain barrier.
When we stop eating, we run out of stored glucose (as glycogen) within 2-3 days (faster if we’re active), and have to find some other fuel source.
By the way, the relative heaviness of stored glycogen is why many people report fast weight loss on a ketogenic or low-carb diet: their body has dumped a little extra weight in the form of glycogen and water (which tags along with glycogen in a 3 parts water to 1 part glycogen ratio). Unfortunately, this water and glycogen comes right back once we start eating normally again.
By cutting off the body’s carbohydrate (aka glucose) supply, but providing energy and nutrients in the form of fat (plus a little protein), we can get the same effects as straight-up starvation: ketosis.
As with starvation, it usually takes some time to get into ketosis once we stop eating carbs.
Let’s take an even deeper look
Many people like to measure their ketosis with Ketostix, which test for ketones in the urine. This is not always a reliable indicator, since all it tells you is whether you’re excreting excess ketones, not whether you’re actually in ketosis per se.
In addition, Ketostix only measure the presence of excreted acetoacetate, not the presence of D-β-hydroxybutyrate.
Over time, our body’s excretion of ketones can change, even if we’re still in ketosis. Therefore, you may see different readings on the Ketostix, regardless of what is actually happening in your body.
Great idea, and totally new… except it isn’t.
As early as 1953, there were studies looking into whether we could “artificially” produce ketosis by supplementation.
Today, we know that by supplementing with ketone bodies (usually D-β-hydroxybutyrate or certain esters) you can raise the level of ketone bodies in the blood without being in ketogenesis.
This has a lot of cool possibilities. If ketone supplementation can give us the health benefits of ketosis without us having to fast / starve or follow a very restrictive diet, that could be a win-win.
Unfortunately, we still don’t have conclusive human studies on this that would give us clear direction. Check back in 10 years.
Is ketone supplementation effective?
The buzz is that ketone supplements can make you thin and cure whatever ails you. But what you read about in the media or on the interwebs isn’t always what scientists actually found in the lab.
If you didn’t know better, you’d think ketone supplementation just started. Actually, research on this topic goes back to the 1950s. All of it has been conducted using rats. Here are the findings.
Weight loss
D-β-hydroxybutyrate supplementation made some types of rats eat less and lose weight, but not other types of rats.
Some evidence kinda sorta indicates that D-β-hydroxybutyrate supplementation might activate brown fat (a metabolically active fat that is, in part, responsible for thermogenic adaptations) via the sympathetic nervous system, but there was no follow-up.
Blood glucose regulation
Another showed that ketone supplementation with either 1, 3-butanediol acetoacetate diester or sodium/potassium β-hydroxybutyrate decreased blood glucose with no changes in cholesterol or blood triglycerides (the not-so-great side effects of the ketogenic diet).
Traumatic brain injury
In one study, infusing D-β-hydroxybutryate into adult rats after traumatic brain injuries showed improved energy (ATP) levels.
In another study, D-β-hydroxybutryate didn’t improve things and actually caused damage to the blood-brain barrier, even in healthy rats.
Epilepsy
New evidence suggests that it may not be D-β-hydroxybutryate or acetoacetate preventing seizures; rather, it might be the relatively short-chain fatty acids (nanoeic and decanoic acids) in the diets when on a ketogenic diet crossing the blood-brain barrier, inhibiting seizures.
But in another study that exposed rats to high-pressure oxygen containing ketone esters such as R,S-1,3-butanediol acetoacetate diester, the rodents saw increased blood β-hydroxybutryate and decreased seizures.
Cancer
A recent study found that ketone supplementation extended survival in mice with metastatic cancer. But while it’s true that most cancers have a highly anaerobic metabolism, this in not universal. If proven to be effective, it’s likely that ketone supplementation would be an additional treatment rather than a stand alone treatment for cancer, because of its robust nature.
For now, almost no studies on ketone supplementation have used human clinical trials. So if anyone tells you that ketone supplementation is a miracle cure, ask if you can get some for your pet rat… if it’s the right kind of rat.
All you have to do is starve people, or feed them a high-fat/low-carb diet, and wait. Then you see if it changes whatever you’re interested in fixing.
Since we’ve known about fasting and ketosis for quite a long time, and it’s relatively easy to research, there are probably good reasons why it’s not yet considered a miracle cure.
And it’s not because Big Pharma or Carbohydrate Corporation or The Cancer Conspiracy have vested interests. (Trust me, we scientists can barely keep the grad students from contaminating the super-purified water by leaving the lid off the jug, never mind organize an evil cabal of ketosis deniers.)
To be fair, the introduction of anti-epileptic drugs in the late 1930s onward did lead to less interest in dietary ketosis as a treatment for epileptic children.
But we don’t yet use ketosis (or ketone supplementation) to fix everything from muffin tops to hangnails because:
CONTINUE READING FROM COPYRIGHT SOURCE
If you believe the buzz, ketosis—whether via the almost-zero-carb ketogenic diet or via ketone supplements—can curb appetite, enhance performance, and cure nearly any health problem that ails you. Sound too good to be true? It probably is.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if butter and bacon were “health foods”?
Maybe with a side of guacamole and some shredded cheese on top?“I’m doing this for my health,” you could purr virtuously, as you topped your delectably marbled, medium-rare steak with a fried egg.
Well, many advocates of the ketogenic diet argue exactly that: By eating a lot of fat and close to zero carbohydrates you too can enjoy enhanced health, quality of life, performance, brain function, and abs you can grate that cheese on.
So, in this article, we’ll explore:
- What are ketones, and what is ketosis?
- What, exactly, is a ketogenic diet?
- What evidence and scientific research supports the ketogenic diet?
- Do ketone supplements work?
- Is the ketogenic diet or ketone supplementation right for me?
How to read this article
If you’re just curious about ketogenic diets:- Feel free to skim and learn whatever you like.
- You don’t need to know every detail. Just get the general idea.
- Check out our advice at the end.
- Pay special attention to the section on athletic performance.
- Check out our advice for athletes at the end.
- We’ve given you some “extra credit” material in sidebars throughout.
- Check out our advice for fitness pros at the end.
It all started with the brain.
If you’ve called Client Care at Precision Nutrition, you might have spoken to Lindsay.Aside from being an incredibly helpful and friendly voice on the other end of the phone, Lindsay is also a tireless advocate for a health condition that has shaped her life in many ways: epilepsy.
Epilepsy is an ancient brain phenomenon, known to medicine thousands of years ago. To manage it, our Neolithic ancestors drilled holes in one another’s skulls, perhaps trying to let the bad stuff out—a practice known as trepanation.
Around 400 BCE, the ancient Greek doctor Hippocrates observed a man who had seizures for five days. On the sixth day, he noted, as the patient “abstained from everything, both gruel and drink, there were no further seizures.”
About 1,400 years later, in 1000 CE, the famous Persian physician Avicenna—who coined the term “epilepsy”, from the ancient Greek verb epilambanein (to seize or attack, as the neurological condition caused seizures), speculated that “overfeeding” might be a risk factor for epilepsy.
By 1911, a pair of Parisian doctors were trying fasting as a treatment for children with epilepsy, and in the United States, physical culturist Bernarr McFadden was claiming that fasting for three days to three weeks could cure anything.
Despite not having the tools and insight of modern neuroscience, these and other people who explored fasting and dietary prescriptions for neurological disorders were on to something.
We now know that there may be a dietary connection—not just between epilepsy and what we eat (or don’t), but also with many other brain disorders.
Unfortunately, fasting isn’t fun. We evolved with a pretty strong aversion to starvation, and our brains and GI tracts have lots of ways to make sure we eat enough.
Which raises the question:
Could we get the health benefits of fasting another way?
In other words:
Could there be “fasting without fasting”?
In 1921, two things happened.One: Endocrinology researcher Rollin Woodyatt noted that the same chemical environment happened with both starvation and a diet that was very low in carbohydrates and very high in fat.
Two: Dr. Russell Wilder wondered:
Could a person get the health benefits of fasting without actually fasting?
He and other doctors at the Mayo Clinic experimented with what Wilder called the “ketogenic diet” during the early 1920s. Not only did children with epilepsy seem to improve overall with this type of diet, they seemed to think and behave better as well.
Proven by several notable medical authorities, a ketogenic diet as a treatment for childhood epilepsy found its way into medical textbooks by around 1940, and stayed there throughout the 20th century.
Nowadays, aging, contact sports, and modern warfare present us with new populations of people whose brains might benefit from a ketogenic diet:
- people with neurodegenerative disorders (such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s); and
- people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) from events such as explosions or concussions.
First the brain, then the body.
There was another group of people who became curious about ketogenic diets some time in the 1980s and 1990s: bodybuilders and physique athletes.These folks weren’t too concerned about brain health or longevity. They wanted to be ripped.
The ketogenic diet seemed like a magic bullet: a way to eat butter, bacon and cream, and still get abs.
Today, what’s old is new again.
Physique- and performance-conscious people, as well as people looking to maximize lifespan and life quality, have rediscovered this old-school dietary paradigm and are wondering:- Could a ketogenic diet help me perform better?
- Could a ketogenic diet help me live longer?
- Could a ketogenic diet help me look great on the beach?
It depends. (Don’t you hate that? But it’s true.)
To understand why, we’ll look at:
- the science of ketosis;
- what a ketogenic diet looks like in “real life”;
- who it might work for (and might not work for); and
- what this means for you.
What does a ketogenic diet look like?
It might be hard to translate “low carb, high fat” into everyday foods.To give you a better idea of the ketogenic diet in real life, here’s a comparison: Protein Carb Fat PN Mixed Meal ~30% ~40% ~30% Paleo Meal ~40% ~20% ~40% Low-Carb Meal ~40% ~10% ~50% Ketogenic Meal ~20% ~5% ~75%
And here’s what that might look like translated into meals.
Notice a few things.
Protein
For the first three meals, protein is more or less the same, with a little variation.Ketogenic diets, on the other hand, include less protein—usually closer to 10 or 20 percent of total daily intake.
Extremely low in carbohydrates
The Precision Nutrition plate suggests high-fiber, slow-digesting carbohydrates, such as whole grains, beans and legumes, fruits, and starchy vegetables.The Paleo plate may contain slightly fewer carbohydrates (early human diets often had plenty of them), but eliminates the grains and beans / legumes.
The “low carb” plate will have fewer carbohydrates than the first two, but still have a small amount, likely from vegetables.
The ketogenic meal shoots for near-zero carbs. Most estimates suggest around 10-15 grams of carbs a day. To give you an idea of what this looks like, that’s about one fist-sized portion of cooked carrots, or about 10-15 grapes. For the whole day.
Very high in fat
The Precision Nutrition plate suggests about 1-2 thumb-sized portions of fat-dense foods (like nuts, cheese, avocado, olive oil, etc.) per meal, depending on body size, activity level, and goals.The Paleo and low-carb plates may be roughly similar, with a little variation.
We might call all three of these “moderate fat”. Indeed, some indigenous diets (aka variations on the “Paleo” concept) are often quite low in fat, especially saturated fat.
The ketogenic meal, on the other hand, is high fat—even up to 90 percent of total energy intake. That means if you’re eating a 500-calorie spinach and mushroom salad, you get about 2 thumb-sized pieces of chicken breast on top, and then pour about 3-4 glugs of olive oil on top… Yum yum!
Highly restrictive
A ketogenic diet is the most restrictive and limited of all four of these styles of eating. Here’s what you can eat on a ketogenic diet:A small amount of protein, such as:
- meat
- poultry
- fish
- seafood
- eggs
- avocado
- coconut and coconut milk or oil
- olive oil and any other oil
- nuts and nut butters
- bacon
- egg yolks
- butter
- cheese
- leafy greens
- brassicas: broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage
- asparagus
- cucumber
- celery
- tomatoes
- peppers
- mushrooms
- zucchini
- Most dairy (except high-fat items like butter and certain cheeses)
- Fruit
- Grains
- Beans and legumes
- Starchy vegetables (such as sweet potatoes)
- Slightly-sweet vegetables such as winter squash, beets, or carrots
- Most processed foods (with the notable exception of pork rinds)
Ketogenic menus:
- Vary in the proportion of protein but are generally low.
- Stay as close to no-carb as possible.
- Are very high in fat.
- Are very limited in food choices.
Well, for particular groups of people, ketosis may indeed be helpful.
(For other people, of course, it may not be helpful… and it may be actively harmful. We’ll talk more about that in a moment.)
To understand why this is true, let’s look at how ketosis actually works.
What is ketosis?
The role of ketones
Ketones are a group of organic compounds with a specific structure.The term “ketone” was actually coined around 1850 by German chemist Leopold Gmelin, along with the term “ester”. (See? Not as new as you’d think!)
We can use two types of ketones as energy sources, acetoacetate and D-β-hydroxybutyrate. (The β sign means “beta”.)
Our body can make ketones through a complex biochemical pathway.
The pathway to ketosis
Put very simply, when the conditions are right (for instance, during starvation or fasting, or when our carb intake is very low):- Our body releases fatty acids from our stored body fat.
- These fatty acids enter other cells.
- Fatty acids are combined with co-enzyme A to form acetyl-CoA chains.
- These chains move into the mitochondria (our cells’ energy factories).
- The chains are broken down into acetyl-CoA units by a sequence of reactions known as β-oxidation.
- Chemical magic happens.
- Acetyl-CoA forms your friends the ketones: acetoacetate and β-hydroxybutyrate, along with acetone (the same smelly stuff in your nail polish remover).
- Ketones are released by the liver into the blood.
- Almost any cell that needs energy can grab it from these circulating ketones. Again, our brain will be the greediest for these nummy little molecules.
The shape and orientation of molecules is important.
Stereoisomers are molecules with the same chemical makeup, but different shapes and configurations. You can imagine your right hand as a “stereoisomer” of your left: they both share the same components, just arranged differently.
Shape and orientation matter to molecules and their actions, just like having right-handed and left-handed gloves or shoes matters.
The ketone D-β-hydroxybutyrate is not the same as its stereoisomer L-β-hydroxybutyrate.
This difference in molecular configuration matters for several parts of the conversion process.
For instance, when D-β-hydroxybutyrate is converted back to acetyl-CoA, its intermediate form D-β-hydroxybutyrate-CoA isn’t the same thing as L-β-hydroxybutyrate-CoA (an intermediate of β- oxidation).
Each stereoisomer uses different enzymes for conversion, much like each lock has its own unique key.
This difference also matters for ketone supplementation (see below).
You want to supplement the right stereoisomer, rather than a random pile of ketone types. Usually in test tube chemistry, you get a mix of stereoisomers (often around half one type, and half another type), unlike our body, which only uses and makes one version.
Ketosis happens when blood ketones are higher than normal either through dietary changes (which lead to very low blood glucose) or through supplementation (independent of blood glucose concentrations).
Some people like to think of ketone bodies as the fourth energy source for humans (in addition to carbohydrates, fats and proteins).
That’s technically true, but the alcohol in booze (aka ethanol) can also be used for energy. Just because we can metabolize something doesn’t always mean we should.
Let’s take an even deeper look
Ketosis, which just means having more ketone bodies than normal, should not be confused with ketoacidosis, which is a potentially dangerous metabolic situation of uncontrolled ketosis.
Normally, our body is very good at self-regulating.
If it senses acid levels rising (as happens in ketosis), it responds by buffering with more alkaline molecules (such as bicarbonate), changing blood levels of CO2, absorbing hydrogen ions, or telling the kidneys to excrete more dihydrogen phosphate and ammonium ions.
However, if for some reason our body can’t compensate, and blood pH drops below about 7.35 (in other words, becoming more acidic), we’re in trouble.
This usually happens in diabetics and alcoholics, since their normal metabolic mechanisms may not work properly.
For the average healthy person, dietary ketosis or even brief fasting is generally safe.
How do we get into ketosis?
Method 1: Ketogenesis
We can make our own ketone bodies naturally, through the process of ketogenesis.Our ancestors kicked off ketogenesis the good old fashioned way: by starving. About 72 hours into starvation, ketogenesis is happening and you’re in ketosis. Congratulations!
Ketosis is essentially an effect of fasting. This means that many of the health effects of fasting may be due to ketosis itself, rather than something like energy restriction.
Let’s take an even deeper look
Interestingly, how quickly ketosis happens varies by age and species.
Other mammals don’t seem to go into ketosis nearly as quickly as humans (your friendly neighborhood hibernating bear or squirrel who doesn’t eat for weeks to months at a time? No ketosis.)
Babies, on the other hand, go into ketosis within a few hours of not eating.
This may have to do with our energy-hungry human brains. About 20 percent of our overall energy intake is devoted to feeding our brains. Although bears and squirrels are clever enough to get into the garbage, they don’t have brains as large as we do.
It seems that ketogenesis is a human backup system that provides enough energy (via ketone bodies) to the ol’ noggin in times of starvation.
And it may be this particular evolutionary adaptation—which perhaps began as a way to keep the thinking factory upstairs working when food was scarce—that also enables the brain-benefiting effects of the ketogenic diet.
Stored glucose (our sugar-based fuel) is actually rather heavy. We don’t carry around much of it. Our body prefers to store most of our excess energy as body fat.
When we eat normally, our brain gets enough energy from glucose that can easily pass the blood-brain barrier.
When we stop eating, we run out of stored glucose (as glycogen) within 2-3 days (faster if we’re active), and have to find some other fuel source.
By the way, the relative heaviness of stored glycogen is why many people report fast weight loss on a ketogenic or low-carb diet: their body has dumped a little extra weight in the form of glycogen and water (which tags along with glycogen in a 3 parts water to 1 part glycogen ratio). Unfortunately, this water and glycogen comes right back once we start eating normally again.
Method 2: A ketogenic diet
Most people frown on starving children with epilepsy, so a ketogenic diet is the next best thing.By cutting off the body’s carbohydrate (aka glucose) supply, but providing energy and nutrients in the form of fat (plus a little protein), we can get the same effects as straight-up starvation: ketosis.
As with starvation, it usually takes some time to get into ketosis once we stop eating carbs.
Let’s take an even deeper look
Many people like to measure their ketosis with Ketostix, which test for ketones in the urine. This is not always a reliable indicator, since all it tells you is whether you’re excreting excess ketones, not whether you’re actually in ketosis per se.
In addition, Ketostix only measure the presence of excreted acetoacetate, not the presence of D-β-hydroxybutyrate.
Over time, our body’s excretion of ketones can change, even if we’re still in ketosis. Therefore, you may see different readings on the Ketostix, regardless of what is actually happening in your body.
Method 3: Supplement with ketones
If ketones are what we want, why not just take them instead of making our own by fasting or cutting out carbohydrates?Great idea, and totally new… except it isn’t.
As early as 1953, there were studies looking into whether we could “artificially” produce ketosis by supplementation.
Today, we know that by supplementing with ketone bodies (usually D-β-hydroxybutyrate or certain esters) you can raise the level of ketone bodies in the blood without being in ketogenesis.
This has a lot of cool possibilities. If ketone supplementation can give us the health benefits of ketosis without us having to fast / starve or follow a very restrictive diet, that could be a win-win.
Unfortunately, we still don’t have conclusive human studies on this that would give us clear direction. Check back in 10 years.
Is ketone supplementation effective?
The buzz is that ketone supplements can make you thin and cure whatever ails you. But what you read about in the media or on the interwebs isn’t always what scientists actually found in the lab.
If you didn’t know better, you’d think ketone supplementation just started. Actually, research on this topic goes back to the 1950s. All of it has been conducted using rats. Here are the findings.
Weight loss
D-β-hydroxybutyrate supplementation made some types of rats eat less and lose weight, but not other types of rats.
Some evidence kinda sorta indicates that D-β-hydroxybutyrate supplementation might activate brown fat (a metabolically active fat that is, in part, responsible for thermogenic adaptations) via the sympathetic nervous system, but there was no follow-up.
Blood glucose regulation
Another showed that ketone supplementation with either 1, 3-butanediol acetoacetate diester or sodium/potassium β-hydroxybutyrate decreased blood glucose with no changes in cholesterol or blood triglycerides (the not-so-great side effects of the ketogenic diet).
Traumatic brain injury
In one study, infusing D-β-hydroxybutryate into adult rats after traumatic brain injuries showed improved energy (ATP) levels.
In another study, D-β-hydroxybutryate didn’t improve things and actually caused damage to the blood-brain barrier, even in healthy rats.
Epilepsy
New evidence suggests that it may not be D-β-hydroxybutryate or acetoacetate preventing seizures; rather, it might be the relatively short-chain fatty acids (nanoeic and decanoic acids) in the diets when on a ketogenic diet crossing the blood-brain barrier, inhibiting seizures.
But in another study that exposed rats to high-pressure oxygen containing ketone esters such as R,S-1,3-butanediol acetoacetate diester, the rodents saw increased blood β-hydroxybutryate and decreased seizures.
Cancer
A recent study found that ketone supplementation extended survival in mice with metastatic cancer. But while it’s true that most cancers have a highly anaerobic metabolism, this in not universal. If proven to be effective, it’s likely that ketone supplementation would be an additional treatment rather than a stand alone treatment for cancer, because of its robust nature.
For now, almost no studies on ketone supplementation have used human clinical trials. So if anyone tells you that ketone supplementation is a miracle cure, ask if you can get some for your pet rat… if it’s the right kind of rat.
Will ketosis help me?
Ketogenesis and ketosis are easy to study.All you have to do is starve people, or feed them a high-fat/low-carb diet, and wait. Then you see if it changes whatever you’re interested in fixing.
Since we’ve known about fasting and ketosis for quite a long time, and it’s relatively easy to research, there are probably good reasons why it’s not yet considered a miracle cure.
And it’s not because Big Pharma or Carbohydrate Corporation or The Cancer Conspiracy have vested interests. (Trust me, we scientists can barely keep the grad students from contaminating the super-purified water by leaving the lid off the jug, never mind organize an evil cabal of ketosis deniers.)
To be fair, the introduction of anti-epileptic drugs in the late 1930s onward did lead to less interest in dietary ketosis as a treatment for epileptic children.
But we don’t yet use ketosis (or ketone supplementation) to fix everything from muffin tops to hangnails because:
- For many populations, ketosis has little or no effect.
- It may only work for particular types of people, with particular needs and health conditions.
- It may take too long to see a measurable effect.
- For many people, a ketogenic diet is too hard to consistently follow.
CONTINUE READING FROM COPYRIGHT SOURCE