Keto Clarity: Your Definitive Guide to the Benefits of a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet (9 page)

Nutritional ketosis is not ketoacidosis. Yet many in the medical profession have a knee-jerk reaction to ketones. Their knowledge is limited and possibly biased. Hopefully the information is this book will educate both consumers and health-care practitioners and ease their minds about a ketogenic diet. It is a safe and healthy tool to address the obesity crisis we face.

– Jackie Eberstein

Here’s why doctors are so concerned about ketoacidosis: When diabetics do not get an adequate amount of insulin, their bodies respond as if they are starving. Their bodies think there’s no more glucose to be had, either from diet or glycogen stores, and they switch to burning fat instead and ramp up ketone production so it can be used as an alternative energy source. The problem is, these diabetics aren’t out of glucose—in fact, they have elevated levels of blood glucose. Insulin is the hormone that allows glucose into cells, and without it, the blood sugar has nowhere to go and accumulates in the bloodstream, even as the body can’t stop making ketones. Once levels of the blood ketone beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) approach 20 millimolars, a diabetic patient will get very sick and may fall into a coma. Ketoacidosis can even be life-threatening. It’s an extremely serious thing and certainly should not be messed around with. But keep in mind this condition only applies to type 1 diabetics and, very rarely, truly insulin-dependent type 2 diabetics.

It would be impossible for this sequence of events to happen to non-diabetics. If you can produce even a small amount of insulin in your body, ketones naturally remain at safe levels. As I’ll share about in chapter 9, during my one-year experiment of purposely putting myself into a state of ketosis, I tested my blood ketone levels twice daily, and the highest reading I ever saw was 6.4 millimolar, less than one-third of the level considered dangerous.

Thousands of people are on low-carb diets, and with a substantial part of the medical community looking for harm, none has been found. This is strong, probably irrefutable, anecdotal evidence that low-carb diets are safe. So, we’re all engaging in doing the experiments.

– Dr. Richard Feinman

Another key point to keep in mind is that the rise in blood ketone levels that leads to ketoacidosis in diabetics corresponds with a simultaneous elevation of blood glucose levels. But when ketosis is used for therapeutic purposes in everyone else, blood glucose actually drops. This is a major difference that should help put your mind at ease if you are at all concerned about stern warnings from your doctor.

In the next chapter, we’ll look at the differences between keto and the traditional Atkins diet. Some people have made the two synonymous, and there are quite a few similarities between them. But we’ll help you understand the subtle but very important differences that set them apart.

You may have heard that ketosis is a “dangerous state” for the body to be in. But ketosis simply means that your body is metabolizing a high amount of natural, fat-based energy sources. Ketones are molecules generated during fat metabolism—and that can be fat from the avocado you just ate or fat from the adipose tissue on your waistline.

– Ben Greenfield

Key Keto Clarity Concepts

• Ketogenic diets have traditionally been used to treat epilepsy.
  
• Low-carb, high-fat diets are often characterized as “extreme,” but they’re not.
  
• Ketosis causes your body to switch from a sugar-burner to a fat-burner.
  
• Being in ketosis is a completely normal metabolic state.
  
• Ketones play an important role in human health from birth.
  
• Our Paleolithic ancestors were sustained by ketones during food shortages.
  
• The Inuit recognized the importance of keto-adaptation.
  
• The molecular formulas for glucose and ketone bodies are very similar.
  
• Ketones are the preferred fuel source for the muscles, heart, liver, and brain.
  
• When you’re keto-adapted, your energy comes from body fat and the fat you consume.
  
• Ketosis is something to consider if you’re dealing with a weight or health issue.
  
• The term
  ketosis
  is unfortunately often confused with
  ketoacidosis
  .
  
• Medical professionals sometimes think—incorrectly—that having ketones in the body is a harmful state.
  
• Ketoacidosis happens when very high ketones occur simultaneously with very high blood sugar levels.
  
• Nutritional ketosis happens when elevated ketones occur simultaneously with
  low
  blood sugar levels.
  

The typical protein levels of the Atkins diet are not ketogenic in our research mice and in fact promotes obesity in them. The Atkins diet is not really ketogenic, at least in mice.

– Dr. Charles Mobbs

Ketogenic diets are certainly nothing new in nutrition, and we have the late, great Dr. Robert C. Atkins to thank for that. He played an integral part in the marketing of a low-carb, high-fat nutritional approach for burning fat and generating ketones. When Dr. Atkins first began promoting ketosis in the early 1970s, the methods for measuring for ketones were quite primitive. But thanks to some new technology that has come along in recent years, we can quantify ketone production to make sure you’re at a level that will give you the benefits that ketogenic diets promise.

If you’ve ever followed an Atkins-style low-carb diet, you probably already understand the importance of being in a ketogenic state, in which your body switches from using carbohydrates as a primary fuel source to using fat—both dietary and stored body fat—and ketone bodies. Dr. Atkins was far ahead of his time when he made this key concept the centerpiece of his bestselling books. Despite their popularity, however, the “k” word quickly became taboo because of the confusion between it and diabetic ketoacidosis (as discussed in chapter 1). As much as Dr. Atkins tried to explain that ketosis is something different, the negative stigma stuck. That’s why the marketing for the Atkins diet has always focused more on carbohydrate restriction and less on ketosis.