What is a ketogenic diet

• A ketogenic diet is any diet that causes the body’s metabolism to stop using glucose and start using fat as a source of energy. The diet causes the liver to start producing ketonebodies. A keto diet restricts the number of carbs to 100 grams per day, with the amount of protein and fat depending on the goal of the dieter. Ultimately the absence or presence of carbs will determine whether a diet is ketoor not.

• The body uses a mix of protein,fat and carbohydrates as fuel, but when carbohydrates are removed from your diet, the body is forced to find an alternative fuel for energy. Free Fatty Acids (FFA) are one source of energy that the body turns to. Unfortunately not all organs can use free fatty acids for fuel, but they can use ketones.

• Ketone bodies are created when free fatty acids don’t completely break down in the liver. While on this diet, important organs such as the brain and the nervous system, use ketonesas a non carb fat-derived source of fuel.

• The ketogenic diet affects mainly two hormones, insulin and glucagon. Insulin is the storage hormone, responsible for moving nutrients out of the blood stream and into the target tissues. Glucagon is a fuel mobilizing hormone, stimulating the body to breakdown stored glycogen, especially in the liver.

• Once you have removed carbohydrates from your diet, your insulin levels decrease and your glucagon levels increase. This process then leads to an increase in free fatty acids from you’re your fat cells and tgus more free fatty acids are burned in the liver. This increased burning of free fatty acids leads to the production of ketone bodies.

Exercise and the keto diet

• As with any diet, exercise will improve the effects of the keto diet. Unfortunately the keto diet does not allow for a sustained high intensity exercise regimen because of the low carb intake, so only slow low level exercise are allowed. For people who wish to maintain a high intensity exercise routine, they should introduce carbs without affecting ketosis. You can consume carbs around the time of exercise to sustain performance without affecting ketosis.

Fasting

• Fasting and the keto diet are very similar, but the difference is that the keto diet encourages the consumption of food.

History and medical use

• The keto diet has been used medically to treat certain medical conditions, childhood epilepsy being the most noteworthy. We see writings as early as the 1900’s that promote the use of total fasting as a treatment for seizures in children. The problem is that fasting cannot be sustained in the long term.

• Early Researchers found that a high fat, low carbohydrate and minimal protein diet could maintain ketosis for extended periods of time. In 1921, Dr Wilder started the original ketogenic diet for the treatment of epilepsy.

• The Keto diet was used less during the 30’s , 40’s and 50’s as new drugs were developed. The ketodiet was all but forgotten during that period. In 1994 the diet was essentially “rediscovered” after Charlie( a two year old with seizures that couldn’t be controlled by medications and treatments) started using the diet. His father went through literature until he found the ketodiet and consulted with the John Hopkins Medical center. After starting the diet, charlie’s seizures stopped.

History and obesity

• Ketogonic diets have been studied over the years. Reesearch stemming from HILL, who fasted subjects up to periods of 60 days, examined the effects on the body, which were summarized by Cahill. Rapid weight loss would occur in the morbidly obese, while the extremely obese subjects would be taken on an extended diet up to a year, consuming only water, vitamins and minerals.

• Complete starvation came with a problem of losing body protein from muscle tissue. Researchers developed The Protein Sparing Modified Fast (PSMF) in the early 70’s to combat this problem of losing body protein. The PSMF provides enough high quality protein to prevent muscle loss during “starvation mode”. PSMF is still used today under strict medical supervision.

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• In the early 1970’s the Atkins diet became the most popular ketogenic diet. The “Dr Atkins Diet Revolution” sold millions of books. Dr Atkins limited the amount of carbohydrates while providing an unlimited amount of fat and protein.

• Atkins made a large number of claims that were unsupported and was criticized by the American Medical Association. This dealt a big blow to the keto diet as it all but disappeared from the mainstream. The high carbohydrate, low fat approach started to become a norm for health, exercise performance and fat loss

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