Re: Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation?
Laura said:
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Another thing that occurs to me is that dogs and cats do appear to eat some vegetable matter occasionally for what appear to be medicinal reasons relating to getting their digestive tracts activated. Maybe that is a clue? But what kind of vegetable matter would be appropriate?
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That is a question I have also been working on. I don't have a good answer, even for me, at this time. But some of the clues are starting to line up.
It's a good point that dogs and cats do eat some veggies, and as I mentioned earlier it seems pretty likely that paleolithic humans did too. Of course cats and dogs have a carnivore's short GI tract, so there are only so many parallels we can draw. The short tract makes them more tolerant of bacteria in their food, but severely limits their use of plant foods. Cats would seem to have no metabolic need for carbs per se, and no way to extract nutrients from the vegetable matter they keep down (a lot of it seems to come right back up!), but they still seem to need to eat some. Dogs may have some capacity for digesting the veggies that they eat, from what I have read. Paleo humans, I suspect, got a lot more mileage from their veggies, and it wasn't just a matter of not starving when there was no meat (ketosis handles situation that well, for quite some time at least).
I doubt that any supplement is a long-term solution. It seems to me that ideally, we should feed our colons what they want and let them do their job. The main difficulty that I am aware of, however, is that our colons are not, for the most part, really "ours." They contain vast amounts of bacteria, and the composition of those bacteria would seem to have a huge influence on health although the research into the details seems to be limited at this time.
It seems to me that if your colon is working well, the problem is pretty simple. Feed it foods containing indigestible saccharides and other materials that the bacteria can turn into short-chain fats and other beneficial byproducts. That should keep things moving while minimizing abrasion, and making good use of carbs that would otherwise be wasted. The abundant bacteria themselves contribute much of the fecal mass and moisture, as described in
Fiber Menace. The beneficial bacteria do produce LPS endotoxin, but this may be part of the regulatory process -- endotoxin triggers immune response, which limits the volume of bacteria.
Unfortunately, many of us do not have well-working colons. They may be physically damaged, and may be overrun with pathogenic strains of bacteria and other microbes. There may be inherited epigenetic issues or even genetic defects. That seems to be what makes the problem difficult.
One reasonable approach would seem to be starving out the pathogenic microbes while creating an environment where the symbiotic ones can re-establish themselves. This, however, is easier said than done, and there is not a lot of information to go by at this time. I have been gathering bits and pieces as I go, and I am in the process of trying different things.
I haven't eaten a significant amount of plant material in some days now, and my colon is largely clear. Sure enough, the pain is flaring up as before, but it is not as severe this time (although it could worsen), perhaps because I reached this point more gradually this time, first eliminating starch carbs and then eliminating the remaining fiber a few weeks later. The starch and fiber can each feed different strains of bacteria in different portions of the GI tract, and if there are multiple infections then eliminating everything at once could possibly provoke a more severe reaction than is necessary.
The last time I reached this point, the symptoms did start to alleviate, but then I had to go to a business conference and I wasn't able to maintain the diet that I wanted. Each time that happens, I essentially have to start over. This time I have an eight week stretch with no traveling (with about 4 weeks of that remaining), and I am determined not to have to break off at the crucial point. This next week could be especially interesting.
One possibility raised by Paul Jaminet is that mucus in the gut may provide a source of food that favors friendly bacteria over pathogenic strains. If this is so, eliminating fiber for a time could indeed be helpful, since the fiber can be used by all the strains.
Jaminet has a lot to say about gut mucus and low-carb diets, and this is the source of much of the "safe starch" controversy, but I think some of it is worth thinking about, at least as a short-term strategy to bring the gut back into balance. Basically he seems to be saying that, in an individual, if gluconeogenesis provides less glucose than is actually needed, it may lead to drying out of the gut's mucus lining, among other things.
I haven't seen any research confirming this claim, and that is part of the controversy. Did he just make up this low-carb "glucose deficiency" syndrome? Maybe. But it seems clear that he and some others following his diet did experience symtoms of this sort, and did benefit from eating certain selected starches. So whether he is correct or not, there might be something there worth trying.
I have experimented in the recent past with sweet potato, one of the "safe starches." It greatly reduced the type of pain I have now, but was clearly feeding microbes in my gut in an unhealthy way that produced excess gas and discomfort (although not in the more extreme way that FODMAP foods do). Jaminet, however, does not recommend sweet potato in a ketogenic diet because of its fructose content. He recommends other starches such as white rice (which I refuse to even taste, after the problems I have had with it, so forget that one) and regular white potatoes. He lists a few others as well.
Potato is something I
would consider, depending on how the current experiment goes. While I am concerned about arthritis (which I have), I don't have any direct reaction to potato if I reintroduce it. There are some precautions to be taken. The toxins are concentrated in the peel, so the peel must go (along with any "eyes" and green parts), and what remains must be cooked thoroughly. Jaminet recommends 50g (200 kcal) of starch per day, which should maintain ketosis in most individuals, but I would be inclined to go with more like 10-20 g/d.
Paleolithic humans would have had the advantage of being healthy to begin with, and it should have been far easier for them to tell when something new they tried didn't agree with them. Small amounts of glucose intake do not take you out of ketosis, small amounts of fructose are shunted to the liver like other dietary toxins, and some of the remaining material is perfect for feeding gut bacteria and thereby increasing fat intake and producing ketones.
I would not eat any fruit at this point, because of the potential for fructose and fiber to feed pathogenic bacteria, but I wonder if small amounts of well-cooked starch lacking fructose, as a supplementary source of glucose, might be worth a try if other measures do not prove to be enough. I am sticking with zero plant intake for now, but I am thinking ahead to what would be next to try, if needed.
