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Can an extreme low carb diet be used as medicine?

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Re: Can an extreme low carb diet be used as medicine?

#111

Post by amanaplanacanal »

shlant wrote: post #96
dalore wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Eat less, move more" is the advice professionals have been giving for years. This advice doesn't work though. Yes you have to do those things but telling people to do that in of itself is useless. There are strong biological/environmental factors at play working against that very advice. Having obesity isn't just some decision that people wake up and decide on. The main advantage of the low-carb diet is that it may…

> This advice doesn't work though It does work in the vast majority of cases. "biological/environmental factors" that may make this harder are the exception, not the norm > The main advantage of the low-carb diet is that it may cause you to want to eat less But this isn't unique to low-carb diets. You can also swap out a portion of your food for vegetables and get similar satiety while eating less calories. Eating sl…

The advice doesn’t work. If it worked, why do we still have an obesity epidemic? Are there still people who haven’t heard this message?

Re: Can an extreme low carb diet be used as medicine?

#112

Post by PudgePacket »

shlant wrote: post #64
sradman wrote: post #39

Before the advent of anti-seizure drugs, the ketogenic diet [1] was an effective and widespread intervention used to treat epilepsy. The downside is the discipline required to keep intake of carbohydrates below 15 grams per day, especially in children. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet

additional downsides include kidney stones[1,2,3,4], bone mineral loss[5] and a long list of other complications (including death): https://www.thepaleomom.com/adverse-reactions-to-ketogenic-d... 1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11095028/ 2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10893623/ 3. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/088307380730192... 4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2852806/ 5. https:/…

Firstly those studies are all in children..

Study 1 doesn't actually show increases in kidney stones.

Study 2 has N of 4...

Study 3 looks reasonable, though they did note "use of oral potassium citrate significantly decreased the prevalence of stones" which is good news!

Study 4 has N of 25 & no info about what they actually ate other than macronutrient ratio.

Re: Can an extreme low carb diet be used as medicine?

#113

Post by shlant »

kesor wrote: post #5

Yes. And it has been used to cure some things you wouldn't believe. Here is the shortlist of the more serious illness that the PaleoMedicina group in Hungary have shown to effectively treat using their low-carb PKD protocol https://justmeat.co/wiki/pkd/ https://www.paleomedicina.com/en/paleolithic_ketogenic_diet_... Here are testimonies of even more people healing their serious diseases on a purely carnivore and zero…

do you have any sources that aren't from "justmeat", "paleomedicine" or "meatrx" which are clearly extremely biased?

Re: Can an extreme low carb diet be used as medicine?

#114

Post by blaser-waffle »

qrush wrote: post #47

I've been on keto for probably a full year of my life at this point, broken up every few months. I usually can't maintain it for longer than 2-3 months at a time because it really is a strict diet - but it's always been worth it once I get into the "mode". I absolutely love it because it turns the daily roller coaster of hunger pains for me caused by carbs into a steadier, more predictable climb. I basically feel no…

Same here. Love me some homemade bread, gotten really good at ciabatta.

It makes it hard to do anything more than 2-3 months on keto. I found that it works as advertised -- skin gets better, weight drops, generally more energy -- but it's very hard to get away from carbs. Like, you need to be DILIGENT, and even if you stay on top of it it ends up limiting your life in many ways. I could live without a lot of carbs but giving up on pizza was hard...

Re: Can an extreme low carb diet be used as medicine?

#115

Post by cies »

roenxi wrote: post #6

I'm going to go with a corollary to Murphy's law. Since anything that can go wrong will, every activity or substance is going to be the problem for somebody. As far as I can tell, the only thing that dieticians are consistently against is sugar in large doses.

> the only thing that dieticians are consistently against is sugar in large doses.

Not all sugar is the same. In fruit is in fructose form and "fiber bound". Refined sugar is the devil, but so are most refined products.

Fructose be absorbed by cells with little to non insulin. Also, in the company of fiber it gets absorbed slower into the blood (less sugar spike).

Finally there's the fat-sugar issue: in the company of fat (fatty blood) the muscle/liver cells become less insulin sensitive.

I regularly binge on fruit, but only when i have not eaten ANY fat yet for that day. I do this for 2+ years now and I find a lot of benefits.

Re: Can an extreme low carb diet be used as medicine?

#116

Post by dan00 »

biswaroop wrote: post #97
StacyC wrote: post #34

I am 58, on a (mostly) strict ketogenic diet since 2013. It has worked wonders for me and I expect to eat this way the rest of my life. I eat a lot of meat and eggs as I have found that combination (1) is something I enjoy very much, and (2) makes me feel the best. I didn’t have much weight to lose but I went from 175 to 160 (high school weight) and under 15% body fat. My energy level is consistently very good. Diet…

Do you avoid red meat? Also, do you worry about cholesterol intake from the meat and eggs?

You might be interested what Dave Feldman has to say about the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LuKwsz9Woc

I really like his engineering approach.

Re: Can an extreme low carb diet be used as medicine?

#117

Post by shlant »

Darmody wrote: post #42
Pelic4n wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You don't need drugs, expensive treatments, nothing, only a good diet. Moms on facebook keep telling me this but my physician disagree! Do you have an essential oil for this?

I realized that that statement can be misinterpreted. I'm not talking about not using drugs or going to a doctor when it's needed. I'm saying a good diet can prevent a lot of bad stuff and sometimes even reverse things like diabetes.

I agree with the responder that your original statement sounds a bit hyperbolized, but I also am an advocate that diet can treat a LOT more conditions than most people think

Re: Can an extreme low carb diet be used as medicine?

#118

Post by PudgePacket »

shlant wrote: post #86
nradov wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately almost no human nutrition studies meet evidence-based medicine standards. And in fairness to the scientists, the constraints imposed by funding and ethics make it impossible to do really meaningful research. All we get are observational studies which show some correlation, often mixed up with multiple uncontrolled confounding factors. So if you want to try a different diet like extreme low carb or whate…

> In the worst case it probably won't kill you Unfortunately, that is also not necessarily true: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19027591/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15679508/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15329077/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11575609/

> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23273808/

> Conclusions: The KD is a safe and efficacious therapy for intractable childhood epilepsy in Chinese children. The influence of age on efficacy is worth further investigation.

?

Re: Can an extreme low carb diet be used as medicine?

#119

Post by shlant »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #111
shlant wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This advice doesn't work though It does work in the vast majority of cases. "biological/environmental factors" that may make this harder are the exception, not the norm > The main advantage of the low-carb diet is that it may cause you to want to eat less But this isn't unique to low-carb diets. You can also swap out a portion of your food for vegetables and get similar satiety while eating less calories. Eating sl…

The advice doesn’t work. If it worked, why do we still have an obesity epidemic? Are there still people who haven’t heard this message?

> If it worked, why do we still have an obesity epidemic

not everyone follows the advice? It takes a LOT of effort and discipline? Food is a powerful vice and coping mechanism. Addiction of any kind is not an easy thing to overcome especially when that addiction is so normalized.

> Are there still people who haven’t heard this message?

I think in most first-world countries no, but there is a massive difference between hearing something, understanding something and successfully implementing something

Re: Can an extreme low carb diet be used as medicine?

#120

Post by shlant »

PudgePacket wrote: post #118
shlant wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the worst case it probably won't kill you Unfortunately, that is also not necessarily true: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19027591/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15679508/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15329077/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11575609/

> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23273808/ > Conclusions: The KD is a safe and efficacious therapy for intractable childhood epilepsy in Chinese children. The influence of age on efficacy is worth further investigation. ?

edited. Thanks for catching that. I have a lot of different links in my notes haha
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