Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

blogs.scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 319 posts

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#111

Post by serg_chernata »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #108

This has been scattered around the existing comments, but I'd be really interested to hear people who are keto comment explicitly on its perceived cognitive effects. I know a number of pretty successful scientists who have told me they feel that being keto provides them a significant performance advantage. I'm really interested in how it affects perceived energy, clarity of thinking, fatigue, and creativity. I'm gear…

I went through about 2 months of pure keto earlier this year. Small disclaimer, I generally follow a "warrior" diet and intermittent fasting. I think keto gave me a similar "sharp" awareness and energy. For whatever reason, not eating, while difficult at first, provided me with even more energy and clarity in the same way keto did. Even though I continued doing fairly intense workouts 3 days a week.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#112

Post by seangrogg »

I see a few ad hoc source recommendations, but is there a solid resource (or list of resources) surrounding this? Particularly who would benefit from this diet, good foods, what to expect from your first few weeks/long term, should it be something you do in phases, etc?

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#113

Post by drewrv »

Periodic wrote: post #59
wpietri wrote: post #31

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 work…

Thank you for pointing this out! I glossed over it in the title, but it is bears special attention to avoid falling into any traps of rhetoric. There definitely seems to be a trend in diet right now to search for the "natural" cure to all our ills. The Paleolitic Diet is probably the best example of this because it is explicitly named as being based on the past. There is an unfounded belief that primitive people were…

I agree with you that a "natural" diet is not necessarily better. And I think we could engineer better food for us than the stuff we used to eat. There's some of that going on with golden rice for example.

But the vast majority of food "innovations" in wealthy countries like the US are not engineered to improve health. Mostly the goal is to save money or improve taste, and these goals can make a diet less healthy.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#114

Post by dave_sullivan »

rotwoof wrote: post #62

I've been doing Keto since Feb 25 2016. My primary goal when switching over was weight loss, which turned out to be easy. I'm 25, male and was experiencing growing health complications related to obesity. I've lost well over 60 lbs since making the switch despite the fact that I maintain a primarily sedentary lifestyle though I now work out weekly as well as take bi-daily walks. There are downsides though. It's not c…

Has there been any more research into the long term health effects of Keto?

I tried it years ago, but found it to be more of a pain than it's worth (I seem to have better luck with intense exercise 3x per week and avoiding sugar). And it seems like tons of meat and cheese is actually bad long term, in the sense it clogs your arteries or increases cancer risk.

Atkins did not look like he was in good shape inside when he died.

It strikes me as a body hack that bypasses a lot of bodily processes evolution may have counted on as we developed. But it seems like we know a fair amount about the chemistry and processes involved, so I'm curious.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#115

Post by eth0up »

abandonliberty wrote: post #65
wpietri wrote: post #31

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 work…

Cyanide is also natural. Organic farming permits organic pesticides, half of which are cancerous as well and may have worse environmental impacts [0]. The organic label doesn't guarantee that you're getting more ethical/better/safer products - and it is worth a lot of money. [0] https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~lhom/organictext.html Funny, when I first saw your comment it was collecting negative votes, so I came in to l…

A few thoughts: Does 'organic' regulation permit the use of paraffin coatings? I imagine the prolific use of paraffin in conventional produce could make rinsing away pesticides quite difficult.

Copper sulfate is one of the most common organic pesticides that I am aware of. It's certainly nothing to gorge on. However, when handled safely, it may be preferable to directly engineering a pesticide into the plant.

On the organic farms I tended, there was very minimal use of pesticides or herbicides. The inherent diversity of the farm allowed the temporary discontinuation (rather than synthetic maintenance) of problematic plants, and either experimentation with others, or the continuation of what was presently working. For weed control we relied on hay and profuse weeding by hand, some of the weeds being edible (amaranth) and providing snacks during the process, at least for me ;) Personally, I prefer this method to glyphosate.

The term "natural" may not be synonymous with "healthy and safe", but it does functionally delimit e.g. Roundup from acetic acid.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#116

Post by serg_chernata »

lopatin wrote: post #91
rotwoof wrote: post #62

I've been doing Keto since Feb 25 2016. My primary goal when switching over was weight loss, which turned out to be easy. I'm 25, male and was experiencing growing health complications related to obesity. I've lost well over 60 lbs since making the switch despite the fact that I maintain a primarily sedentary lifestyle though I now work out weekly as well as take bi-daily walks. There are downsides though. It's not c…

I also lost a bunch of weight on keto after several failed attempts at simply cutting calories. 235 lbs to about 185 and it all happened pretty rapidly (about half a year) considering I barely exercised. Lots of salads, chicken breasts, eggs & bacon, lettuce wraps, and quest bars. Regular coffee though, never was a fan of throwing butter in there. I mean I did do light cardio on and off, but I think it was mostly the…

Are you blending the butter or just stirring? I make mine with butter, coconut/almond milk from califia and a bit of vanilla extract. Blended in bullet mixer for about 20 seconds and it comes out like an unsweetened latte.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#117

Post by seekingcharlie »

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…

You still need to be eating at some kind of deficit if you were expecting weight loss.

The reason keto works so well is that it completely suppresses your appetite and you end up eating at a deficit naturally.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#118

Post by akavi »

wnevets wrote: post #40
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.

I wonder how much of this is cultural/emotional.

I'm ethnically Indian, and grew up with white rice as by far the dominant carb in my diet. To this day, I'm not particularly fond of bread (though I like crusty, soft-crumbed bread like french baguettes from time to time). However, if I go more than a week without a rice based dish, I crave it on a visceral level.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#119

Post by rotwoof »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #108

This has been scattered around the existing comments, but I'd be really interested to hear people who are keto comment explicitly on its perceived cognitive effects. I know a number of pretty successful scientists who have told me they feel that being keto provides them a significant performance advantage. I'm really interested in how it affects perceived energy, clarity of thinking, fatigue, and creativity. I'm gear…

During my faste days, wherein my caloric intake drops down to the two-hundreds I have experienced significant improvements in cognition. Specifically my awareness of my surroundings, ability to concentrate for long periods of time and short term memory recall improved noticeably.

The first time it happened to me during one of my faste days it felt as though I had taken a powerful stimulant.

Re: Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

#120

Post by serg_chernata »

Since we're discussing this, I wanted to ask a question in regard to electrolytes.

First time I tried keto everything was fantastic except I missed the electrolyte requirement and ended up with heart palpitations along with muscle cramps and overall crappy feeling once enough time passed and I unwittingly ignored the electrolytes.

Talking to doctors proved to be worthless because most of them haven't even heard of keto nor understand why anyone would do that.

Does anyone have advice or reading materials in regard to this aspect of keto?

PS I am a completely healthy male of 27 years old and active lifestyle. I'm pretty positive there's nothing wrong with me physiologically.

Post reply on HN