The keto diet is a top food and health search phrase. The ketogenic diet has been popular for over a decade as a fast weight loss method, unlike fad diets like the master cleanses and grapefruit diet.
Does the keto diet assist in managing chronic conditions beyond weight loss?
Keto Diet 101
What Exactly Is the Ketogenic Diet?
The keto diet has high fat, moderate protein, and low carbs. By eating more fat than carbs, your body changes from using carbohydrates for energy to using fat.
Unless on a low-calorie ketogenic diet, macronutrient distribution is prioritized above calorie intake. Most ketogenic diet sources recommend 70 percent fat, 25 percent protein, and 5 percent (or 20 to 50g) carbs.
Why Was the Keto Diet Invented?
The ketogenic diet was developed approximately 100 years ago to treat epilepsy. Many health professionals call the keto diet a “fad diet.” However, short-term keto diet weight reduction and muscle building are new.
In the 1920s, Dr. Wilder proposed that the ketogenic diet might reduce epileptic episodes. He hypothesized that a high-fat, low-carb diet might likewise minimize epileptic episodes after seeing that fasting did. Wilder’s research concluded that a ketogenic diet helped manage epilepsy.
Researchers tested the ketogenic diet for type 2 diabetes, pediatric nutrition, and Rett syndrome before the 2000s. It is being utilized for weight reduction and sports endurance.
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Science of Calories
All cells require energy to operate. Energy is needed to transfer ions in and out of cardiac myocytes, which contract muscles. Neurons require energy to transmit impulses. Chemists, food scientists, and health experts decided to use kilocalories (kCal) to assist the public in understanding how various foods contribute to their energy demands.
The body has hundreds of different cell types and an estimated 32.7 trillion cells (32,700,000,000,000 cells!). These cells need plenty of energy from meals. Cells like glucose. Glucose, a basic sugar, may be generated from protein, glycogen, or carbs. It is quickly digested and stored as glycogen in the muscles and liver for energy.
Balancing Energy Needs
Contrary to common misconception, vitamins and exercise do not “speed up” or “slow down” metabolism. Metabolic processes in the body break down macronutrients to supply energy to cells. Understanding how our bodies evolved to digest fats and carbs is the greatest approach to understanding how they affect us. This evolution is summarized below:
- Researchers believe that human cells evolved to “prefer” glucose as their major energy source because carbohydrate-rich diets have always been readily available. In contrast, fat- and protein-rich foods were limited.
- Carbohydrates are still the most affordable and accessible macronutrient.
- In abundance, our bodies store glucose and fat. This helped hunter-gatherers survive famine and seasonal hunger by drawing on fat storage.
- One theory for why digestible carbs, and hence glucose, were so crucial in the human diet was that the brain required more energy to expand. However, brain development requires dietary fat.
- Our body could temporarily use fat energy reserves when food is limited. The body breaks down adipose tissue into ketones to use stored fat. Most cells utilize ketones instead of glucose for energy. Ketones underpin the ketogenic diet.
- Protein makes hormones, muscles, enzymes and transports proteins. The body may produce glucose from muscle and food protein under specific circumstances.
Our predecessors had a very different food environment than we had. Western diets are high in processed carbs rather than the fruits, vegetables, herbs, and entire grains our ancestors ate. These carbs lack fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Refined carbs increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, whereas complex carbohydrates reduce the risk.
What Happens When We Eat Mostly Fat?
The ketogenic diet is a high, stable fat, moderate protein, and extremely low carbohydrate diet. After many days on a ketogenic diet, your metabolism will adapt to the purposeful increase in fat intake and enter nutritional ketosis. When this occurs, cells use ketones, a byproduct of fat breakdown, for energy instead of glucose.
On the keto diet, the body constantly breaks down fat into ketones, which our cells utilize for energy. Ketones, instead of glucose, power most organs. Ketones are more easily used by high-energy-demanding muscles (heart, and brain). Hepatic (liver) cells cannot utilize ketone bodies as fuel; hence they require glucose. To avoid muscle breakdown, even ketogenic dieters must take glucose-containing carbs.
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5 Chronic Health Conditions Benefited By Keto Diet
The ketogenic diet has recently received renewed attention as a viable treatment option for various debilitating diseases.
Epilepsy
Ketogenic diet therapy (KDT) is an evidence-based epilepsy treatment that is safe and manageable for children 100 years after its initial usage. Researchers now understand how ketosis reduces seizure frequency and severity.
How? Ketone bodies and glucose deprivation impair glutamatergic synaptic impulses, reduce glucose production, and activate potassium channels to govern muscular spasms.
Does the ketogenic diet control seizures? One meta-analysis examined the ketogenic diet in epileptic children. The ketogenic diet reduced epileptic episodes by up to 50 percent and eliminated seizures in 33 percent of newborns after one month.
Metabolic Syndrome and Type 2 Diabetes
Many at risk of metabolic illnesses, including pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes, are intrigued by the ketogenic diet’s ability to regulate glucose levels. The ketogenic diet manages diabetes theoretically: Ketones replace glucose since the keto diet reduces carbs. Thus, blood glucose levels, a metabolic indication, stay steady, and insulin needs decrease.
The ketogenic diet improved glycemic control and weight loss in overweight type 2 diabetics. Low-carbohydrate diets, including ketogenic diets, helped type 2 diabetes patients regulate glucose, triglycerides, and HDL cholesterol, according to a comprehensive review and meta-analysis. They didn’t lose weight long-term.
Another study warns against a ketogenic diet for type 2 diabetics. In healthy insulin producers, the ketogenic diet may cause insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes by altering insulin usage. Thus, adopting a diet without diabetes may increase the risk of diabetes. Ketone-prone diabetics may also have issues. The ketogenic diet is widely used to manage diabetes, but no recommendations exist.
Initial research is encouraging, but the excitement for using the ketogenic diet to manage metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes surpasses the evidence health professionals have to advocate it. The long-term diabetic effects of a keto diet are unknown. Suppose a metabolic illness patient and the healthcare team agrees that a ketogenic diet may be part of the treatment plan. In that case, everyone should know the risks and advantages.
Cancer
The ketogenic diet and cancer are contentious. A ketogenic diet may generate oxidative stress in cancer cells but not in healthy ones. The ketogenic diet prevents cancer metastasis in animal studies. Some cancer cases have regressed. Nausea and weight loss might worsen with cancer therapy.
There are hundreds of cancer varieties, each with its own pathophysiology and etiology. The ketogenic diet is not recommended for cancer therapy since current research barely covers the tip of the iceberg on its effects on cancer development. Before advocating the ketogenic diet for cancer, scientists and doctors require reliable clinical proof that it slows tumor development, prevents cancer, or improves symptoms.
Alzheimer’s Disease & Parkinson’s Disease
Neurodegenerative disease symptoms have decreased in modest human investigations. Some ideas suggest the keto diet may even reduce illness symptoms. The success of ketogenic diets in treating brain-based epilepsy raised the issue of whether they may cure other brain illnesses. Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients may benefit from the ketogenic diet.
The high amounts of ketones in the ketogenic diet increase neuronal energy stores, which help brain cells withstand and recover from metabolic disorders that impair brain health. Ketogenic diet antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties may also contribute.
As researchers learn why the ketogenic diet works, they may suggest alternatives that still benefit from it. However, patients with mild to severe neurological disorders may not accept the ketogenic diet long-term. Elderly persons, who are at risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, also have diminished appetite and malnutrition.
Thus, although the ketogenic diet may help those with very moderate or mild Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease, it may harm the nutritional state of older people, who are most impacted by these illnesses. The ketogenic diet cannot be used to treat neurological illnesses due to a lack of long-term data.
Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease
Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) is a prevalent liver condition caused by fat accumulation. This disorder differs from the fatty liver since it occurs in non-drinkers. Diabetes, insulin resistance, obesity, high cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood pressure put people at risk of NAFLD.
The ketogenic diet with nutritional supplements improved liver function and weight reduction in a six-month clinical investigation of NAFLD patients. Long-term ketogenic diet use in healthy mice caused NAFLD. The keto diet’s weight reduction and macronutrient distribution delay and reverse NAFLD. However, the medical profession warns that healthy keto dieters may acquire NAFLD over time.
The keto diet’s short- and long-term effects on NAFLD therapy require further investigation.
What Works: Plant-Based Diets for Chronic Disease
The keto diet is not the sole treatment option. Research suggests that risk-reducing diets work. Physician groups are now recommending plant-based diets for chronic illness patients. Plant-based diets are easy to follow and have been shown to minimize chronic illness and improve disease management.