Keto Diet You Need to Know
Keto Diet has undoubtedly become a trend. In the United States, life hackers in Silicon Valley use it as a diet fetish, Hollywood stars regard it as a trendy diet weight loss technique, and even on Instagram, countless ketogenic diet communities are showing phenomenal swiping. The reason is that ketogenic diet lovers achieve weight loss through this harsh and even somewhat unique way of eating.
Despite the controversy, the keto diet ranked first in Google searches in 2018.
What is Keto Diet
Keto Diet is not just a low-carb diet, it can even be said that it contains almost no carbohydrates, so in the diet process, such as bread, rice, and wheat, you need to control a certain amount. And the proportion of fat intake is close to 80%, which subverts the diet structure with carbohydrates as the main energy intake. That is to say, eating less or even no rice and eating meat with a big mouth can still achieve the effect of losing weight.
This doesn’t seem to hold up well. Even in the US, carbohydrates make up about half of the average calories in the diet, not to mention in many Asian countries where rice is the staple food. As a result, most people don’t stick to such a diet because there are huge differences in how the body responds to nutrition and dietary adjustments.
The significance of keto diet for disease treatment
It is undeniable that this kind of diet structure has been verified in scientific experiments to lose weight, but more notably, studies have shown that some ketogenic diet users will also have elevated cholesterol levels, which may be related to associated with increased risk of heart disease.
Of course, in addition to the ketogenic diet debate, another more important issue is the exploration of the ketogenic diet to treat diseases. The American Diabetes Association released a statement that the ketogenic diet can be used as a nutritional treatment option to improve people with diabetes. Even in the future, the ketogenic diet may have more possibilities in the treatment of diseases. For example, in diabetes, pancreatic cancer, and epilepsy, there are some interesting clinical effects.
Keto dieter
Reject carbs
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, there are more than 50,000 edible plants in the world, of which only three, rice, maize, and wheat, account for 60% of the world’s food energy intake, and all three staple foods are carbohydrates. But in the U.S., carbohydrates account for almost half of the calories in the American diet, and they also feature prominently in traditional diets around the world, from Italians’ favorite pasta to rice-dominant Asian countries.
Ketogenic culture
The rapid popularity of the ketogenic diet is no accident. In addition to the popular trend brought by the star effect, this subversion of the traditional dietary structure is more like a “cultural and community identity”. For example, the topic of before & after launched on Instagram, many successful cases have made the keto diet a popular diet phenomenon.
The ketogenic diet bans processed junk food, but it also strictly limits the intake of fruits, grains, and legumes, which are often an important part of a traditional healthy diet. Followers of the ketogenic diet argue that traditional nutrition theory is not only wrong, but harmful. This resistance to mainstream dietary thinking may better explain why ketosis has become popular. Because it’s not just a diet, it’s more of a culture and community.
According to Alan Levinovitz, a professor who studies dietary beliefs, the ketogenic diet looks more like a “rebellious” behavior, a protest against the traditional diet structure, so the rapid ketogenic diet Spread is not accidental.
Ketogenic mechanism
Before starting a ketogenic diet, you first need to understand how ketosis works. In a typical high-carbohydrate diet, glucose (or blood sugar) is the main source of energy for the body, most of which comes from carbohydrate-rich foods. When the body ingests, for example, biscuits, rice, or fruit, the glucose level in the blood rises, and the pancreas secretes insulin, which converts the glucose into energy, which is then transferred from the blood to the cells.
Normally, the body can only store glucose levels for a few days. Therefore, when the body does not have a source of carbohydrates, it will automatically find other ways to consume energy. One of these is a process called ketosis, in which the liver begins to break down fats into a usable source of energy called ketone bodies, or ketones for short.
Ketones can replace glucose as an energy source when glucose is in short supply. Once ketone production kicks in and ketone levels rise, the body goes into ketosis to burn fat instead of the usual glucose, but whether this results in increased calorie burn or fat loss remains a matter of scientific debate.
Ketosis pathway
There are several paths to ketosis, one is to stop eating completely, when the body stops eating for a long time, the body uses fat for energy and reduces the use of glucose, the other is to make the body think it is in a fasted state, every day Eat 20 to 50 grams of carbohydrates, the equivalent of a slice of bread or a small piece of potato.
Food source
Typically users of a ketogenic diet get about 5 percent carbohydrates from foods like fruit and salads, about 15 percent from proteins like salmon and sardines, and 80 percent from fats, including coconut oil and avocados.
Quantification of ketosis
Ketosis is a quantifiable state where users can measure their ketone levels with blood tests, breathalyzers, and urine. But tests have varying degrees of accuracy, with blood tests currently considered the most accurate measure.
How does the keto diet affect body composition
How do low-carb diets, like keto, affect body composition, specifically body water percentages and glycogen?
Whenever you eat carbohydrates, your body will burn some for energy while the rest will be broken down into glucose and stored in the liver or muscles as glycogen. For every 1 gram of stored glycogen, there are about 3 grams of water. Glycogen actually cannot be stored alone—it must be paired with water.
As you eat fewer and fewer carbs, your body will start to break down and use the glycogen in your liver, releasing it into the bloodstream to be used to generate energy. The glycogen stores in your muscles will also decrease as they get utilized for energy production within the muscles themselves. As your body uses up its glycogen stores, the water once attached to it becomes released and excreted. Thus, as you use up your glycogen, you also lose some water weight.
Keto will lead to a more rapid loss of glycogen and body water. Taken together, your glycogen stores and the water they carry can weigh up to a few pounds. This is why some people experience rapid weight loss in the first week or so when they switch to a low-carb or keto diet.
Aside from glycogen and the loss of body water, a low-carb diet itself can have a mild dehydrating effect. Salt intake has a notable effect on regulating how much body water you retain. When your carb intake is sufficiently low (usually 50 grams/day or fewer), your body will begin to make ketones—a byproduct produced when your body processes and metabolizes the fat you eat. These ketones can increase your body’s sodium excretion, thus causing further reductions in water weight.
How to track your body composition
Visbody devices are non-invasive and convenient, making it the ideal tool to implement into nutrition programs for body composition analysis and 3D modeling. The comprehensive results can be used to track and educate clients on body composition and health risk as well as understand the differences in diet consumption effects.
Visbody provides nutritionists and dietitians with the tools needed to effectively understand and empower each of their clients to succeed!
Risks of a ketogenic diet
Although the ketogenic diet craze is recognized in the fitness field, there are still two questions in the medical field that need attention: Is it safe to take long-term ketosis? And are there potentially dangerous or harmful reactions to the ketogenic diet? These still need to be verified by scientific experiments.
One concern is that studies have found elevated cholesterol levels in some ketogenic diet users, which may be associated with an increased risk of heart disease.
Ethan Weiss, a professor of cardiovascular research in San Francisco, said it’s a question of balancing benefits and risks, which is why ketogenic diet therapy requires rigorous clinical trials to answer the questions raised.
In addition, in the study of JAMA Internal Medicine, other physicians have proposed “ketogenic flu” phenomena such as cardiac arrhythmias, and constipation and documented in the scientific literature that ketosis can lead to vitamin and mineral deficiencies, among the largest The risk may be the effects of not consuming high-fiber, unrefined carbohydrates.
The therapeutic effect of the ketogenic diet
For the therapeutic potential of the ketogenic diet, oncologist and author Siddhartha Mukherjee and others from Columbia University are considering the diet as a tool or medicine, proposing that when the diet is used alongside traditional cancer medicines in “special cancer patients” group” may work.
Data proves that ketosis affects both insulin and blood sugar levels, as well as may interfere with the growth of cancer cells. At present, some doctors have begun to consider ketosis as a treatment method, especially for patients with type 2 diabetes, and the therapeutic effect of a ketogenic diet is gradually recognized.
When such dietary treatments were proposed more than a decade ago, much of the opposition was more about concerns that high-fat regimens would damage a person’s kidneys, arteries, and brain. But scientific experiments are also proving its medical effects. In a statement released by the American Diabetes Association, a low-carb diet may become a nutritional treatment option for people with diabetes, where standard care for type 2 diabetes includes weight loss, exercise, insulin therapy, and regular blood sugar monitoring.
In general, the application of the ketogenic diet in the medical field is gradually being recognized, especially for the treatment of diabetic patients. Perhaps the ketogenic diet will become the main treatment plan in the medical field in the future.
Ketogenic diet in front of medical research
The ketogenic diet may be good for cancer
Oncologists are also researching the unknowns behind the keto diet and exploring the diet’s potential benefits as a cancer treatment.
It is still too early to use a dietary treatment plan for any particular cancer type, but there is still a very high expectation for the medical value that a ketogenic diet can bring.
The ketogenic diet related experiments
In a study published in Nature in 2018, Mukherjee and his collaborators tested the effects of PI3 kinase inhibitors in animals, observing physiological phenomena by eating a ketogenic diet or taking drugs that suppress insulin levels.
Mukherjee’s purpose for the experiment was to demonstrate that if the drug caused physiological side effects, such as high sugar, high insulin, and high insulin to allow the tumor to recur, it would create a vicious circle.
In the study, the combination of the drug and diet reduced 12 types of tumors in laboratory animals, including even difficult-to-treat pancreatic cancer in humans. But ketones can worsen leukemia, which means researchers also need to be clear about the diet’s use.
The ketogenic diet may be beneficial for epilepsy
In addition, the ketogenic diet, which doctors have been using to treat epilepsy for nearly a century, appears to be more effective in treating epilepsy. The idea arose in the 1920s, when researchers observed that people who fasted had fewer seizures, but researchers were still unsure why the diet worked. Studies have shown that using a ketogenic diet can significantly reduce the risk of seizures.
Researchers are also currently exploring the benefits of ketosis for type 1 diabetes. In addition, there are preliminary studies showing that ultra-low-carb diets may even play a role in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
The mechanism of action of a ketogenic diet on disease remains to be studied
However, many studies are still carried out in animal experiments or cells, and more clinical responses are still needed as evidence. The ketogenic diet may appear to be as ineffective as gluten-free until better research results, but in the future, it may be the dietary cure miracle the medical field has been waiting for.
Conclusion
After losing weight, medical treatment, and the ketogenic diet have become Internet celebrity diet methods, on the one hand, they have become the maverick social currency of Silicon Valley “life hackers”, but the biggest risk is still the safety problem caused by blind ketogenic drinks. Of course, in addition to the “weight loss paradox” of the ketogenic diet, more ketogenic medical effects are also worthy of being included in the Instagram community discussion topic.