Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous? • Hacker News Board

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#21

Post by trendia » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:06 PM UTC

Genetics plays a very large factor in fat and cholesterol metabolism, and one that I think explains the variance in success with the ketogenic diet.

e.g. FTO, PPARG, APOA5, FABP2, and APOE.

Essentially, not everyone processes fat the same way, and for some, especially those with APOE4/4, a high fat diet may actually be deleterious to health.

People with the right genes will have great success with ketogenic diets... but convincing their friends to join in might not have the outcome they expect.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#22

Post by hinkley » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:06 PM UTC

jlturner wrote: post #11

I'm on my third ketogenic diet stint, and I can attest to how fantastic it is. I'm narcoleptic and I experience nearly no symptoms on the diet, my fiancée is epileptic and is transitioning off her meds to the ketogenic diet (with the supervision of her nutritionist and neurologist), and a former employee uses it to keep her benign tumor from spreading (actually! And she's totally normal, again with doctors). All of u…

I appear to be one of those weirdos who reacts to something in bread but not celiac.

I was watching that Michael Pollan series and he was talking about his theory that industrial bread was the problem and everyone would be fine if we went back to sourdough. Well this feels like one of those things that sounds good but has no substance, but clearly at this point I'm willing to try anything. There's a little bakery on my way home and they're open late. I've had half a loaf of sourdough bread in two and a half days and other than burping more, I feel no worse than I did last week.

What I wonder every time someone posts about ketosis is just how bad are sugars and starches for us, and how did we get this far without figuring it out?

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#23

Post by mrob » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:07 PM UTC

If we're sharing anecdotes here, I've also tried a ketogenic diet for about 2 months. I wasn't trying to lose weight, I was just curious what it was like. The only change I noticed was I became slightly weaker, lifting only about 90% of my previous weights. But this might have been placebo, because I had already heard that it could happen. I stopped the diet because it made cooking and eating difficult for no obvious gain.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#24

Post by Nav_Panel » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

rpazyaquian wrote: post #10

The main problem I have with ketogenic diets is that it's actually quite difficult and sometimes expensive to eat a 90-95% fat diet. I tried it for a while, and since I couldn't have carbs OR too much protein, I had several instances where my dinner in a pinch was melted down cheese and half-n-half. Your diet basically becomes cheese and avocados with some, but not too much, salmon or chicken. I'm not arguing that it…

> The main problem I have with ketogenic diets is that it's actually quite difficult and sometimes expensive to eat a 90-95% fat diet

From what I've seen, your diet should be ~60-70% fat, 5% or less carbs, and ~25-35% protein. Definitely not 95% fat.

> I had several instances where my dinner in a pinch was melted down cheese and half-n-half. Your diet basically becomes cheese and avocados with some, but not too much, salmon or chicken

What about vegetables? I ate a lot of salads when I did keto. I also ate a lot of fattier meats, such as cured italian meats and ground beef. No reason to eat super lean protein when fat is most of your calories; buy the cheap fatty stuff and enjoy it. Also, eggs? I was having an omelette every morning.

> I also wonder if it's possible to work out while doing keto

It's very possible: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22835211 but I doubt it would be if you're not eating any protein...

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#25

Post by akgoel » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:11 PM UTC

tzaman wrote: post #7

I do keto once a year for about 3 months, and truth be told I feel like a superman. I feel more energetic, loose a ton of fat (ironically with increased fat intake), get more stuff done and overall feel better. The only reason is stop doing it is because I'm a sucker for sweets :) I started all this by asking a friend of mine who's a personal trainer what's the best way of loosing 15 kilos (because I was fat) and he…

I did keto for 4 months at the beginning of this year, and I did lose 40 pounds, and generally felt great. But then I started getting more active and picked up tennis. I found that after 30 minutes, I was completely out of energy. It wasn't that I was tired, it was that I literally felt like I was out of fuel. Taking a swig of Gatorade immediately picked up my game, and so I had to introduce carbs back into my diet just to stay active.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#26

Post by 1123581321 » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:11 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #22

jlturner wrote: post #11

I'm on my third ketogenic diet stint, and I can attest to how fantastic it is. I'm narcoleptic and I experience nearly no symptoms on the diet, my fiancée is epileptic and is transitioning off her meds to the ketogenic diet (with the supervision of her nutritionist and neurologist), and a former employee uses it to keep her benign tumor from spreading (actually! And she's totally normal, again with doctors). All of u…

I appear to be one of those weirdos who reacts to something in bread but not celiac. I was watching that Michael Pollan series and he was talking about his theory that industrial bread was the problem and everyone would be fine if we went back to sourdough. Well this feels like one of those things that sounds good but has no substance, but clearly at this point I'm willing to try anything. There's a little bakery on…

To answer your second question, this is something we knew and collectively forgot in the middle of the 20th century. Gary Taubes' theory is that if WW2 had not been so devastating, the European scientific community mighy have been healthy enough to prevent the "fat is bad" myth from taking over.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#27

Post by tetraodonpuffer » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:12 PM UTC

what I wonder every time I hear people be very enthusiastic about how their diet improves their quality of life, is if it's just a case that eating good food and working out (which a lot of people do when starting a new diet) is the trigger to feel better as opposed to the vegan / raw food / ketogenic / paleo / high-carb specifics, not to mention the obvious placebo effect of starting something new that supposedly will help you feel better.

It does feel that we as a species, being omnivore, can do just fine on all sorts of different diets, and maybe the reason these testimonials come up for all sorts of different diets, is that it's the staying away from sugar / processed food, the working out, caloric restriction, weight loss and consequent improvement in quality of sleep that cause the improvements, as opposed to the food specifics.

Going from eating fast food, not working out and sleeping badly, to eating less caloric whole foods, working out and sleeping well would make anybody feel so much better and lose weight, regardless of what type of whole foods they pick.

If this is the case, then it opens the opportunity to pick your diet more based on say environmental impact or ethical reasons, as opposed to say feeling that your veggie diet is not as good as your friends' paleo diet because you have been veggie for 10 years and your friend just went paleo and so they are in the "omg I feel so much better" phase.

Wish it was possible to do a double blind study on diet and its effects but unfortunately for obvious reasons that's not possible. On the other hand it is quite possible to quantify your diet's environmental impact / footprint, which makes minimizing it reasonably feasible.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#28

Post by tew28 » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:13 PM UTC

Something to watch out for - the first time I tried a ketogenic diet, I developed a terrible rash on my torso after three weeks. After a few fruitless trips to the dermatologist, I found that it was very possibly something called prurigo pigmentosa, a rash that tends to occur in people fasting or in ketosis. Someone even set up a website about it - www.theketorash.com. It's unfortunate, as I had been successfully losing weight. No one really knows how to treat it, except for, well, eating more carbs.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#29

Post by whiskers08xmt » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:15 PM UTC

CuriouslyC wrote: post #4

While I don't think a ketogenic diet is an optimal diet in terms of longevity or overall health (as all blue-zone diets are carb rich), it does appear to confer some benefits in the short term which are fairly compelling. The vast majority of humans are adapted to seasonal eating, with high carbohydrate diets during spring, summer and fall, and very low carbohydrate diets during winter (or during the wet/dry seasons)…

Out of curiosity, are there any areas with a fat rich diet, which has good access to quality health care? It seems most cultures, which aren't based around hunting and gathering, have a carb based diet, as it's simply the most feasible for supporting a large population.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#30

Post by artellectual » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:16 PM UTC

nadezhda18 wrote: post #5

artellectual wrote: post #2

Actually, I've tried the ketogenic diet. It's great, however it does have negative side effects. That is the lack of fiber. This can lead to hemorrhoids. Which can be extremely painful. Everything was great, I burned a lot of baby fat, but it was painful in the toilet, there was bleeding involved. You need to supplement yourself with fiber if you want to try the ketogenic diet.

thanks for sharing the experience! How long did you stay on this diet? I am on high protein diet (proteins in grams ~= my weight in pounds) and I take a fiber supplement to make sure I am Ok on the bathroom side of the things. I noticed I need to take more fiber (27-30 grams, which is above recommended 25 grams) comparing to the days when I do not eat a lot of proteins. I wonder how much fiber one needs to take when…

I did it twice, the first time was 3 months long, the second time was only 4 weeks (I couldn't deal with the pain)