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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?

#121

Post by StacyC »

abtom wrote: post #62
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…

Weight loss comes from having a calorie deficit, not from keto. You can gain weight on keto if you eat more calories. You can achieve the same weight loss by just eating fewer total calories, without cutting carbs as well.

The only thing I can say about calories is that after seven years on keto and feeling great, I have never given any thought to my calorie intake.

My weight remains stable as do my energy levels, so I can only assume that (1) I am getting exactly the right amount of calories from my diet, or (2) calories are an irrelevant metric.

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

#122

Post by jonfw »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #100
abtom wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that satiation is a major aspect. How satiating a food is, is not simply about carbs/proteins/fats. Most carb rich foods people eat today are high in sugar and low in fiber. That causes people to overeat. You can also overeat with high fat foods because fat is much more energy dense. You can just as easy have a bad keto diet as you can have a bad high carb diet. Replacing processed carbs with processed meat wi…

The evidence that high cholesterol “causes” heart disease isn’t very good. There appears to be an association, but that’s really all we can say.

in my experience- the more I learn about nutrition, the more I realize that we're just talking about everybody's best guess. Hard facts are scarce in this space.

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

#123

Post by Darmody »

danlugo92 wrote: post #94
Darmody wrote: post #26

I love how we're starting to focus on our diets to prevent or cure a huge amount of diseases. You don't need drugs, expensive treatments, nothing, only a good diet. (read the comments below for an clarification for this statement) I personally can't work on a very low carb diet. Now I'm eating carbs again but NOT refined carbs. I make sure everything I eat is nutrient dense. Well, not everything, I'm not a robot but…

Exercise too

I workout 4 days a week. Probably I'll update my routine to 5-6 days a week with more cardio to lower my body fat from 14-15% to 10%.

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

#124

Post by PudgePacket »

cies wrote: post #30
iand wrote: post #10

Can someone explain why ketosis is the secondary energy system in the body and not the primary?

Our bodies are primate bodies. Primates are frugavorian omnivores (get most calories from fruit, and eat very little animal tissue (mostly insects)). Fruit contain mostly carbs: short carbs a.k.a. sugars. We're optimized for eating lots of sugar. Primates have a hard time producing fat from carbs (a process called lipogenesis), just a few calorie% per day. This, combined with the tiny bits of fat in fruits/insects, w…

> We're optimized for eating lots of sugar.

Not even sure how to respond to that one. American diabetes rates?

> Primates have a hard time producing fat from carbs

??? carbs -> glucose -> insulin -> increased lipogenesis. Carbs are _better_ than protein or fat at producing bodyfat.

> Is eating lots of animal products bad for you? Yes. It's been shown again and again in large studies that humans do better on predominantly whole plant foods.

In large, observational studies with innumerable co-founding factors, including lumping regular meat (a steak) in with highly processed meat (mcdonalds burger).

I agree with the whole food part, and plants can be good, but exclusion of unprocessed meat is not proven to be any more healthy.

You also self describe as vegetarian in your profile, and ketogenic diets often include meat.

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

#125

Post by rahulmax »

cies wrote: post #115
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 o…

Fructose, in fact is the villain. Check out https://peterattiamd.com/rickjohnson/

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

#126

Post by amanaplanacanal »

shlant wrote: post #88
jmkerr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Paleo medicine' sounds like living a long, healthy life and dying an old man at 30.

exactly. The diet is one big Appeal to Nature fallacy

Possibly. On the other hand, it does makes sense to feed animals a diet to which they are evolutionarily adapted. Visit a zoo sometime and ask what each animal eats. They are all feed something intended to be nutritionally similar to their natural diet. Because that’s what works.

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

#127

Post by PudgePacket »

shlant wrote: post #73
throwaway_kufu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brain doesn’t only run on glucose it certainly runs on ketones and ketones are much more efficient at crossing the blood brain barrier. Now when the brain is running off ketones it still needs some glucose, but the body accounts for that by being able to produce its own glucose and doesn’t need it from outside sources like carbs or sugar). Ketosis is the default energy System, in that all things being equal when…

> ketones are much more efficient at crossing the blood brain barrier Source? > Ketosis is the default energy System, in that all things being equal when a person doesn’t introduce any food they naturally go into ketosis. People literally need to eat certain foods that spike insulin to get “kicked out” of ketosis. That is not a sound argument for it being the "default energy system". It makes much more sense that "de…

Humans can produce all the glucose they need when in nutritional ketosis or starvation ketosis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis

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

#128

Post by StacyC »

dan00 wrote: post #116
biswaroop wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Before my last blood test a few months ago I decided to try the “Feldman Protocol” as an experiment — a week before the test I ate nothing but meat and eggs, very high in protein and fat. The results were as Feldman’s work predicts.

My HDL was up (67), triglycerides down (60). When my doctor got the results she called me and the conversation went like this:

Doc: I got your bloodwork results in today.

Me: And?

Doc: I have really good news.

Me: Great!

Doc: What are you doing?

I explained a little about the Feldman Protocol and she went quiet for a while, and finally said, well, keep doing what you’re doing I guess.

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

#129

Post by amanaplanacanal »

shlant wrote: post #79
reedf1 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with a lot of what you said - I mean this with the highest degree of respect - but I've noticed a certain strain of assertions here that throws off alarm bells. Do you have some resources on this "frugavorian" thing?

here's some information to start with: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-9699-0_... Here is a simplified overview: https://steemitimages.com/DQmYgdPbWvCt78oycPdEKNffevjh7UnCsq...

“Nonhuman” primates, it says.

It’s pretty clear that humans haven’t eaten a primarily fruit based diet in a very long time. It’s likely that moving away from that diet predated changes that made us human.

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

#130

Post by PudgePacket »

nsl73 wrote: post #106
mirsadm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that it isn't safe? I guess the other question is what makes you sure that another diet is safe?

It’s a really extreme diet. I would be concerned with the fat intake, the cholesterol intake, and limits on certain fruits and vegetables.

Your body makes more cholesterol than you get from diet, it's more complicated than just "cholesterol high = bad".

Also would encourage you to read up on recent literature about fats. The "low fat = healthy" fad hasn't held up for some time.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073510972...

> The recommendation to limit dietary saturated fatty acid (SFA) intake has persisted despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Most recent meta-analyses of randomized trials and observational studies found no beneficial effects of reducing SFA intake on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and total mortality, and instead found protective effects against stroke.

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