Ketogenic Diet - Powerful Dietary Strategy for Certain Conditions

Well, first thing to note is that saturated fats may in some increase some fraction of cholesterol, the thing is - who cares!

Cholesterol is not the bogeyman you may have been led to believe it is. There is for instance no correlation between patients admitted to ED with acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) and their level of cholesterol - if the hypothesis were true that cholesterol causes heart disease, the result would be skewed towards high cholesterol. Cholesterol is (mostly - with the exception of some genetic variants) a sign of inflammation, the attempt of the body to fix things.

The main issue with PUFA is oxydation - or in another term, they turn ‘rancid’. That is why a lot of those PUFA need to be chemically treated/ processed to be palatable, and to remain so over the (prolonged) shelf life of the product.

Most dieticians are still wed to the old Keysian ‘Lipid Heart Disease Theory’ - this theory has been shown to be incorrect at least 30 years ago, if not longer.

Well my dad has high cholesterol problems and high blood pressure, not to mention an excised gall bladder, and I've been looking to see if a keto diet and consuming saturated fats would be beneficial for him, but I'm sure his doctor would disagree. Would keto work for him or people like him?
 
Also are there potential negative side effects from being in ketosis long term? Or do the pros outweigh the cons in this case? From what I've gathered so far, this forum promotes being on keto long term and indefinitely if possible... but people I've spoken to say that isn't a good idea.
 
Also are there potential negative side effects from being in ketosis long term? Or do the pros outweigh the cons in this case? From what I've gathered so far, this forum promotes being on keto long term and indefinitely if possible... but people I've spoken to say that isn't a good idea.
I recommend that you take your time to read all 287 pages of this thread. You will learn a lot. Keto is not for everyone.
 
Keto is not for everyone

I totally agree with hlat - read the whole thread if you want to know more about this topic. It’s a long thread and you’ll see that the stance on keto diet has shifted somewhat over time.

As hlat mentioned, keto is not for everyone, and to be in keto all the time, even if you tolerate it well, is questionable. I used to be hard-core keto for about three years and have upped my carbs somewhat over time. I also do intermittent fasting, which may convey similar benefits.

So, yes, read the thread and you’ll know a whole lot more about the keto diet.

As to your dad - everyone can benefit from keto, problem is, you won’t know unless you try. And then, the benefits maybe are not due to the keto diet per se, but by the avoidance of stuff you would eat if not on a keto diet.

It’s complicated, and most importantly, it’s an individual thing. You might have to experiment - and experiment for a prolonged period of time - to know whether keto is for you, and to what degree.
 
Working my way through the thread. Had a quick question (if answered later in the thread then my apologies)

Is the fat:protein ratio 3:1 or 4:1? I'm around 200 lbs, not exactly skinny.

Got another question. If I were to start doing daily resistance exercises, then how would my protein intake and my fat:protein ratio factor into this?
 
Working my way through the thread. Had a quick question (if answered later in the thread then my apologies)

Is the fat:protein ratio 3:1 or 4:1? I'm around 200 lbs, not exactly skinny.

Got another question. If I were to start doing daily resistance exercises, then how would my protein intake and my fat:protein ratio factor into this?
I used this ratio of proteins: carbohydrates: fats is 10%: 10%: 80%. I would advise you to use the program Cronometer: Track nutrition & count calories /. I had enough free functionality. Since I love accuracy, it was important for me to control all the parameters, especially at the first stages of the keto diet. When registering, you will enter your data (weight, height, body fat content), choose a diet, the degree of your physical activity and the program will give recommendations in grams how many proteins, fats and carbohydrates, etc. you need to consume.
I would still recommend reading this thread and a good book on keto nutrition. For example, Dr. Mercola. It helped me to create an overall picture of what advantages await me and what difficulties. It is necessary to prepare for the transition to keto, buy the necessary products, vitamins, etc. The transition to keto for everyone happens in different ways, for someone it is easier, for someone it is more difficult. Knowledge is not superfluous.
Here I described my initial experience
I hope this will help you a little, but in any case, only from personal experience you will understand all the subtleties of the keto diet.
 
I've always done 2:1. That's fat to (protein+carbs) in grams. So if you eat 22g of protein and 3g of carbs, you need to eat 50g of fat. I start with the target of protein and go from there. So eating excess carbs just makes you need to eat more fat. But I think there is room to have a meal that doesn't reach ketosis levels, especially when you're adapted. I think there are charts for how much protein you need to eat if you're active or doing weight lifting.
 
At the end of the day, it’s probably and individual thing - just play with the ratios a bit and see what works best for you. IOn diet matters there is no one-size-fits-all.

Indeed. Andrey, in my experience, everybody is different. There are general rules, such as reducing carbs, eating real foods, but the rest the person needs to tailor by listening to their body. You'll find more information as to what these general rules are by reading the whole thread.

Many of us tried limiting our protein/adding extra fat according to ratios and found that it didn't work like that.

For me, how i work in a day (whether that be mentally or physically) determines how much i will need to eat to feel satiated. I like more fat, protein and a bit of salad, others do better with less fat, protein and rice/vegetables.

Bear in mind that, often, when switching to a diet like this, an adjustment period is needed. So how you eat now may not be how you'll eat in a few months time. It took me a month or more when trying out keto to be able to digest fat (enzymes helped a lot), and now i can consume it without issue.

There's a podcast from 2017 from the Objective:Health peeps that might help with your question:

The Health & Wellness Show: The Devil's in the Details: Diet Dogma and Fine-Tuning Your Own

 
Indeed. Andrey, in my experience, everybody is different. There are general rules, such as reducing carbs, eating real foods, but the rest the person needs to tailor by listening to their body. You'll find more information as to what these general rules are by reading the whole thread.

Many of us tried limiting our protein/adding extra fat according to ratios and found that it didn't work like that.

For me, how i work in a day (whether that be mentally or physically) determines how much i will need to eat to feel satiated. I like more fat, protein and a bit of salad, others do better with less fat, protein and rice/vegetables.

Bear in mind that, often, when switching to a diet like this, an adjustment period is needed. So how you eat now may not be how you'll eat in a few months time. It took me a month or more when trying out keto to be able to digest fat (enzymes helped a lot), and now i can consume it without issue.

There's a podcast from 2017 from the Objective:Health peeps that might help with your question:

The Health & Wellness Show: The Devil's in the Details: Diet Dogma and Fine-Tuning Your Own


Thank you very much for this sum up and sharing, which resume perfectly the situation, from my perspective.

This topic of alimentation and dietary habits is a real mess, at least I find.
I've been diving in it for quite a while now, really searching to get a bigger picture of the question.

Currently being in an environment where MOST people are vegans full of ethic values, I find myself alone, still full of enthusiast intentions but kinda lost in all of that.
I don't know which place adopting in the middle of it.

With the keto knowledge base I acquired for about 10months, I recently decided to interest myself into other diets' arguments like veganism or omnivorism.
The point is that I feel like ALL of them find studies proving the biological legitimacy (let's keep the ethical apart) of their diet.
I'm not a scientist, I'm simply searching to make a sense at ALL.

The result now is that I feel completely lost in these various battles of information and don't know on which foot dancing anymore (Idk if this expression exists in english).

So, sharing it here could be my way of "calling upon Cassiopeia" for knowledge to answer, because I'm in a deep quest for coherence right here-now and start to feel a bit exhausted about this matter, as I do also have my life to manage aside.


Anyway, I first came here to give a possible answer to a question I asked on this thread on June 25th, being :
"What are these Certain Conditions referred to in the topics title ?"

I recently stumbled upon this, and funnily made this curious connection :
From the website ketonutrition.org [see attached]


How could I properly end this message if not by sharing my frustration despite my profound will for balance in understanding.
What a life...
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot_20211114-231040.jpg
    Screenshot_20211114-231040.jpg
    614.6 KB · Views: 26
Hi ELT, I can understand your frutstration.

Yes - you can pretty much find a study for whatever you want, thus is the (corrupted) state of science. And it is not only corruption of science, that makes assessing this topic difficult, but also the complexity involved in diet and health. How do you measure health? And how do you control for all the individual differences in humans? Well, you can’t - so, the ‘scientific’ approach as expressed in papers and publications, where people are randomly assigned to groups of control or ‘intervention’ might not be the best way to answer such a very complex question. But there might be other ways to come to some conclusions.

One approach is to look at basic sciences and how these apply to diet and health, to look at metabolic pathways, for instance and what they seem to require to function normally. For instance we know that when eating a high carb diet proteins get ‘sugar-coated’ thus degrading protein functioning. Or that eating a high carb diet requires higher amounts of certain vitamins or trace elements, of which we are deficient anyway. Or that processed foods, which are full of ‘toxic’ additives and preservatives, is unlikely to be beneficial if eaten consistently to the detriment of unprocessed foods. Etc …

Once you have formulated a general view of what might be more ideal than other things, you try it on yourself. Change your own diet to a more beneficial one, and see what happens. Then tweak the process until the result matches what you wanted to achieve (weightloss, enhanced cognitive functioning, whatever …)

I think that is roughly the process that we went through since this thread started. I know it is a looooot of reading, but if you read the thread in its entirety, you would at the same time get a feel for how we come to some consensus on complex issues like diet. And you will also gain the insight that one size does not fit all.

While the keto diet is very beneficial for a lot of people, for some it doesn’t work, and for some others it is outright detrimental.
 
I recently had a tick bite that needed an excision to completely remove the tick. After that, while the wound was healing, I had some vaue side abdomen pain, which prompted the GP to order a blood test and ultrasound of my abdomen (he suspected Hepatitis). They came back and indicated that 1) my cholesterol levels and lipase level were high, and 2) I had some gallbladder polyps.

Both the excision and abdomen pain are now gone. But the results from the blood test and ultrasound worry me a bit, because the GP said they may be symptoms of pancreatitis. For reference, my levels are:

Total cholesterol: 5.4 (< 4.0)
HDL: 0.75 (> 1.0)
LDL (direct): 4.49 (< 2.5)
Non-HDL: 4.65 (< 3.3)

Lipase: 140 (<70)

An important data point is that I have been following the keto diet for a long time and eating a lot of fat (about 80 - 85% of my energy intake is fat). So I thought the high cholesterol and lipase levels could be attributed to that. The same could be said about the gallbladder polyps as my gallbladder must be working hard to digest all that fat.

That's my current tentative conclusion. But I'm posting here anyway in case someone may see it differently. Thanks in advance.

BTW, my GP ordered a CT scan of my abdomen as a follow-up. I will do it next week.
 
Back
Top Bottom