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Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#31

Post by wpietri »

No comment on the main topic, but the "unnatural or advantageous" binary in the title is a confusion that I really dislike. "Natural" and "good" are independent axes. No relationship should be assumed. Tuberculosis is natural, but not good. Brushing your teeth is unnatural, but I'm happy to call it good.

This can seem obvious, but the error crops up all the time in serious ways. E.g. women voting and joining the workforce was seen as unnatural, therefore wrong. People market all sorts of quack remedies as natural, and therefore good.

It goes the other way, too. Slavery was seen as right, and people decided it was therefore natural. (See the various declarations of secession of the US states for examples.) Violence is seen as wrong, so people decide it must be unnatural, ignoring our long history as predators, the amount of education we give children about not hitting, and our societal structures for limiting violence.

Is and ought: two entirely separate things.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#32

Post by jlturner »

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…

Was posted a few months ago on HN: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-co...

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#34

Post by azdle »

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…

Not sure where you got the 90-95% fat, but I've never seen anyone suggest that you should be eating anywhere near that much from fat. If you were actually trying to get that high I can understand why you'd feel like it's a "sick person diet". From what I've seen, the traditional advice for 'macros' is that you should be eating 65/30/5 for fat/protein/carbs. However people often misinterpret that to mean that that's a goal for each and if they haven't eaten that much they should force themselves to eat that.

If you're serious about your diet, you should really take 5 minutes and figure out exactly what your body need. Each person is going to be a bit different, but in general (but slightly more specific than the last 'in general') you should be eating less than 20-50g of 'net' carbs, you should eat at least 1-2g/kg of lean body mass, and you should eat as much fat as it takes you to not be hungry. There are calculators that will walk you through all this, http://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/ is one that I've used before, it's more targeted at weight loss, but it's only one that I've found that makes an effort to cite the calculations it does.

As for working out, yes it's definitely possible. I've been lifting since December and making great progress. There are also occasionally stories of endurance athletes that swear by a ketogenic diet. My understanding of why it can be beneficial is that it basically removes your dependence on glycogen, when runners 'hit the wall' it's their body running out of glycogen their body then has to transition to running on fat. Keto-adapted runners are just running on fat from the beginning so they don't hit the wall and are more used to burning fat for energy.

I'm not a runner so I don't have personal experience in any of that, but in my lifting I do find that I have to take it a bit slower than I expect others have to. When you're keto you lose a bit of the 'bursty' power that people with glycogen reserves have.

I don't claim to be an expert on any of this, but I do continue with it. I've been mostly ketogenic since May of 2013, and I've had many improvements in things like mood, hair, skin, and sleep and I definitely notice a change in those things when I decide that the social aspects of eating are more important than my diet.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#35

Post by rhinoceraptor »

nefitty wrote: post #6
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.

I've heard some people also suffer from ammonia breath from ketosis. Maybe you have experienced that?

It's acetone breath, it is a temporary side effect of keto-adaptation. Other ones include excessive thirst, light headedness and headaches.

Most people never heavily use ketones, so it takes the body some time to re-build the machinery to do so.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#36

Post by rjsamson »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #17
vixen99 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many options for avoiding your problem. Vegetable fiber using vegetables with minimal or zero reserve carbohydrate should do it. Cabbage for instance also offers additional benefits from its phytochemicals. See for instance http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304423806...

You can even go one step further and eat Sauerkraut. A lot of the (limited) carbohydrates in the cabbage are fermented into lactate, which has some health benefits, and if you make it yourself it is a good probiotic.

Yup - and it's got a lot of potassium too! Definitely a keto staple for me.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#37

Post by rhinoceraptor »

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…

Over 70% fat is where you want to be if you are using it for epilepsy. There's no reason a healthy person should go that high.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#38

Post by cobbzilla »

nefitty wrote: post #6
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.

I've heard some people also suffer from ammonia breath from ketosis. Maybe you have experienced that?

as mentioned in the article-- It's acetone, not ammonia.

Acetone is one of the byproducts of keto metabolism, and, unlike other byproducts which are expelled in the urine, acetone is breathed out, resulting in the slightly-sweet-smelling "keto breath".

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#39

Post by jlturner »

mrob wrote: post #23

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…

The first time I did keto I lost a lot of weight until I started lifting, and while the scale stopped changing entirely I continued becoming much more lean as a result. Definitely have more power lifting with carbs though.

Also it's possible that your carbs weren't low enough (the diet is extremely restrictive, generally you want less than 10-20g carbs which is most / all from leafy vegetables) and you may have been stuck in glycolysis/ ketosis transition which makes you feel weak.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#40

Post by wnevets »

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…

>Bread is delicious

Bread taste sooo good when you haven't eaten in a long time, it really is addictive.

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