Can an extreme low carb diet be used as medicine? • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by jasonpeacock » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

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?

Dietary cholesterol != blood cholesterol.

In fact, carbs are metabolized into cholesterol, so really you need to be avoiding bread if you want to lower your cholesterol, not eggs.

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

#162

Post by keymone » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

lifty wrote: post #13

iand wrote: post #10

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

Most probably because fats were not as common as carbs were when our metabolic system evolved.

carbs weren't very common: wheat, rice and potatoes literally didn't exist, fruit were nothing like they are today (probably 5% carb content). all those frutarian theories are just crazy.

animals (fat and protein), on the other hand, were everywhere.

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

#163

Post by ubercow13 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:42 PM UTC

smoe wrote: post #157

ubercow13 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How does it take less effort? I lost around 30 kg from being obese without doing low, high or abstain anything. Also no calorie counting except in the very beginning. After going down the rabit whole of trying to understand all the details of nutrition. What eventually worked is the simple and stupid advice: eat less, move more. The problem is that there are no easy 30 day hacks, which is what people often expect. Fr…

The claim (which the above comments are seemingly ignoring, and I kind of believe myself but am not asserting) is that low-carb diet decreases hunger, making it naturally less effort to eat less (or at least requiring less willpower)

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

#164

Post by PeterisP » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 8:48 PM UTC

shlant wrote: post #119

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 betwee…

Yes, that's the whole point. Advice "Eat less, move more" does not work because people won't follow that advice, so it's ineffective advice and we need something better.

The appropriate measure for effectiveness of public health recommendations is whether the recommendations get results. It doesn't matter if simply eating less and moving more would get results, if advising people "eat less, move more" does not result in them actually eating less and moving more.

It's not useful to compare diet A with diet B, you need to compare the effect of "tell people to follow diet A" versus "tell people to follow diet B", because the likelihood of actually following the advice (influenced by ease, convenience, and compatibility with natural urges) is probably the most important part that determines what results (if any) it will achieve.

If one system or diet is much more difficult to follow than another, if "it takes a LOT of effort and discipline" then that's a serious limitation, a legitimate flaw of that system or diet. It's worthless to evaluate the effect of a process that almost nobody will do.

And this is a key argument in favor of the keto diet - that people who don't manage to achieve a calorie reduction through simply eating less or calorie counting find it easier to get a calorie reduction through this system, because it better aligns with our normal satiety mechanism.

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

#165

Post by smoe » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

ubercow13 wrote: post #163

smoe wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it take less effort? I lost around 30 kg from being obese without doing low, high or abstain anything. Also no calorie counting except in the very beginning. After going down the rabit whole of trying to understand all the details of nutrition. What eventually worked is the simple and stupid advice: eat less, move more. The problem is that there are no easy 30 day hacks, which is what people often expect. Fr…

The claim (which the above comments are seemingly ignoring, and I kind of believe myself but am not asserting) is that low-carb diet decreases hunger, making it naturally less effort to eat less (or at least requiring less willpower)

From what I heard the hunger problem is mostly coming from refined carbs, not carbs in general. I have nowhere near the expertise to make a claim one way or the other.

But even if true, if you don't go for a drastic weight reduction schedule you can snack on fruits, vegetables, nuts, etc. trough the day while still staying well within approximate calorie goals. I don't quite see why you should limit yourself to 3 fixed meals.

While at some point we might be able to say with certainty diet x is better for situation y, from my experience with myself and people in my circles, in practice, the by far hardest, but most important part of losing weight is switching and staying from an unhealthy lifestyle to a reasonably healthy one, whichever philosophy that might be.

I think for a lot of people Keto offers a fairly smooth transition. Just the images of the dishes alone look 10x more appealing than what is usually associated with diet meals. But in my case, you would have to pry that European bread from my dead hands before I remove it from my diet. I would not stick with Keto for a single week. On the extreme change side, I also saw someone going straight from living off of instant ramen, burgers and energy drinks to full on vegan buying only on farmers market or make/grow it at home.

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

#166

Post by dalore » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

shlant wrote: post #119

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 betwee…

Another problem with the advice of eat less move more is that you are putting blame on the person. If they only tried harder they wouldn't be fat. No matter if they have tried really hard only to get told they aren't good enough. When really the whole game is stacked against them. Companies creating highly desired, but low in nutrition and satiety food. Cereals full of sugar being marketed as heart healthy. It's all stacked against them and the message needs to change.

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

#167

Post by biswaroop » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 3:59 AM UTC

StacyC wrote: post #109

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?

I eat quite a lot of red meat, ribeye when I can, ground beef. Also pork, some fish. I prefer beef with a bit of fat. I am convinced that dietary fat and cholesterol are not the problem as we have been told for decades. My blood work is excellent. In fact, my doctor is on board with what I am doing but she also doesn’t quite know what to make of it. I think she still has some cognitive dissonance with someone eating…

Ah well my concern with eating red meat is related to the cancer risk and the impact on climate change. Are you worried about these issues in relation to your diet?

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

#168

Post by shlant » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 4:09 AM UTC

dalore wrote: post #166

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…

Another problem with the advice of eat less move more is that you are putting blame on the person. If they only tried harder they wouldn't be fat. No matter if they have tried really hard only to get told they aren't good enough. When really the whole game is stacked against them. Companies creating highly desired, but low in nutrition and satiety food. Cereals full of sugar being marketed as heart healthy. It's all…

you can certainly cite the multitudes of factors working against staying healthy in todays modern environment, and those are super valid and should be considered. However, ULTIMATELY nobody can force you to be healthy and bar getting rid of any possibility of anyone obtaining "unhealthy" food, the responsibility in the end lies with the individual in most cases.

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

#169

Post by shlant » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 4:14 AM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #150

shlant wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dige…

> our digestion is probably closer now to a dog’s than a gorilla

I feel you are nitpicking one of MANY factors and choosing Gorillas out of all the primates because they are more terrestrial folivores than the rest. Almost all aspects of our structure mirror primates such as chimpanzees and orangutans. What about our digestive system is more like that of a dog?

By the way - you flagging my comments just because you disagree is misusing the feature. This isn't reddit where you downvote whatever you disagree with. Flagging is for marking comments as breaking HN guidelines.

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

#170

Post by jacobjuul » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 8:24 AM UTC

StacyC wrote: post #109

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?

I eat quite a lot of red meat, ribeye when I can, ground beef. Also pork, some fish. I prefer beef with a bit of fat. I am convinced that dietary fat and cholesterol are not the problem as we have been told for decades. My blood work is excellent. In fact, my doctor is on board with what I am doing but she also doesn’t quite know what to make of it. I think she still has some cognitive dissonance with someone eating…

you don't say how much you eat, but are you testing your ketones after eating meat? Protein in moderate to high quantities (especially lean proteins) can pull you out of ketoses quite easily.