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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?

#141

Post by shlant »

PudgePacket wrote: post #127
shlant wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

but does that make it the "default energy System"?

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

#142

Post by el_oni »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #81
el_oni wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reversed his T2 diabetes and lost quite a bit of weight doing keto. His doctor had advised meds to “manage” the disease. My assumption there is that compliance for meds is probably better than compliance for huge lifestyle changes (such as diet). And that most people that the doctor sees in your BILs situation wouldn't stick to a ketogenic diet, and would need to go onto meds at some point in the future anyway. Asi…

> My assumption there is that compliance for meds is probably better than compliance for huge lifestyle changes (such as diet). This is probably true, but I'd like to see statistics. Compliance with med schedules is pretty terrible, too; that's why all of your antibiotics have a label telling you to actually finish your course.

According to the highlights of this 2011 study[0], compliance is around 50% for drugs. I don't know if this is higher or lower than i was expecting to be honest...

[0]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3068890/

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

#143

Post by Pelic4n »

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 fully agree with you, I was being snarky.

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

#144

Post by AnonC »

jonfw wrote: post #66
abtom wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is well understood by now. The issue is that most people aren't actually going to track their calories- they eat when they're hungry. If you adjust your diet- you can satiate your appetite on a lower number of calories. The idea is that meats, vegetables, and fats help you meet your nutritional goals on a fewer amount of calories when compared to carbs- because carbs are empty calories.

> The idea is that meats, vegetables, and fats help you meet your nutritional goals on a fewer amount of calories when compared to carbs- because carbs are empty calories.

A minor correction: carbs are not necessarily empty calories. If you consider only sugary soda, then yes. There’s no one verb either. There are simple carbs, complex carbs, etc. The best kind of carbs are from whole foods (not refined where fiber and other nutrients are removed).

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

#145

Post by AnonC »

ubercow13 wrote: post #136
shlant wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 betwee…

>It takes a LOT of effort and discipline That's the whole point, low-carb takes less effort and discipline for the same result

> low-carb takes less effort and discipline for the same result

For which group of people and what cultural background?

Any advice on diet that tends towards “this works for all or most” is very likely riddled with personal bias.

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

#146

Post by throwaway_kufu »

mrob wrote: post #56
throwaway_kufu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keto is the primary energy system. Consider when you don’t eat (fasting) your body goes into Ketosis. In other words it’s the default energy system. You literally have to introduce Specific foods that knock you out of Ketosis...it just so happens now a days those are the primary foods people eat. Foods that spike insulin and knock you out of Ketosis really wouldn’t have been available in a constant supply to keep peo…

Even in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, prolonged fasting is not the default. If you're going to argue that metabolism under abnormal conditions defines the primary energy system, alcohol must be the primary energy system. It's used at higher priority than either carbs or fats.

Alcohol is an energy source just as much as carbs, fat and protein for sure...but the brain can’t run on alcohol, only ketones and glucose.

Your natural state is ketosis (that makes it the primary fuel source). And we are not talking about “prolonged fasting” or “abnormal conditions”, we are talking about natural states. So if you happen to kick yourself out of ketosis and start running primarily on glucose most people will burn through their glucose stores in just a few hours and their body will crash/shutdown to preserve the remaining glucose for the brain (think of marathon runners “hitting the wall” which doesn’t happen in ketosis, you basically have unlimited fat energy stores and your body will internally produce the limited glucose the brain needs)

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

#147

Post by abtom »

s1t5 wrote: post #67
abtom wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You can achieve the same weight loss by just eating fewer total calories, without cutting carbs as well. Achieve weight loss - yes, achieve the same weight loss - no. If you primarily want to lose fat rather than muscle, your insulin metabolism becomes an important variable.

This is a popular myth. There is simply no evidence to back to this claim. On the other hand there is a lot of evidence that preserving/increasing lean mass (non fat mass) depends only on protein and not fats/carbs. Check this article which summarizes multiple studies in this area - https://www.menshealth.com/health/a25924744/keto-diet-carbs-...

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

#148

Post by throwaway_kufu »

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…

> Source?

More interesting, however, is the fact that ketones can provide as much as 70% of the brain's energy needs, more efficiently than glucose. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3219306/

You are ignoring the most important part, humans don’t need outside sources of carbs/sugar (glucose) to power the brain, the body will produce the required glucose internally. So humans can live without carbs/sugar but the same can’t be said without fats.

And no ketosis is not a state of starvation, it’s not clear why you keep saying that, it’s a metabolic state that the body only gets thrown out of when insulin is spiked.

Again it is the default the body only gets knocked out of when introduced to certain foods in certain quantities, which would not have been available pre-ag.

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

#149

Post by andai »

PudgePacket wrote: post #124
cies wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 predomina…

I was vegetarian for 10 years and tried a beef only diet for my immune problems.

I was told that I would have trouble digesting meat again but to my surprise, it was much easier than usual, and I felt great the whole day (also actually felt full for like 6-8 hours after a meal).

Then gradually reintroducing foods one by one helped me pinpoint the culprits.

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

#150

Post by amanaplanacanal »

shlant wrote: post #134
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

you could certainly make the argument that most humans haven't a primarily fruit based diet for a while (although evolutionarily it really hasn't been that long) but that doesn't change the fact they are our closest ancestors and the way our bodies are built STILL very much mirror those of primates which means they, in many ways, still work as theirs did. It's not like we have evolved entirely different digestive sys…

Gorillas digestion is based primarily on fermentation of plant fiber, which is why they have a huge gut. Humans have an acidic stomach environment which doesn’t digest fiber at all. A small amount of fermentation happens in the human gut, but it can only produce a few calories a day.

Evolution has changed us considerably in the last couple million years.

We may be closely related genetically to gorillas, but our digestion is probably closer now to a dog’s than a gorilla’s.

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