A reader asked me this question... Hiya Dr. I am new to your page and three months ago went on a ketone diet and sometimes just eat low glycemic index, and my leaky gut has miraculously improved a lot. Not completely, but a great deal. What do you know about ketone and low gi diets, would you mind weighing in? The ketogenic diet is wildly misunderstood by a lot of doctors despite the ample research showing its benefits for the brain and the body. Dr David Perlmutter, author of the best seller Grain Brain, goes into great detail about how well the brain runs on ketones, and how he actually uses them to decrease tumor size before doing brain surgery. Here is a quick summary of what the ketogenic diet is and what are its benefits. For a really great summary, check out this link: drperlmutter/tag/ketogenic-diet/ Here is the basic premise... our bodies can run on 2 fuel sources: glucose or ketones. Glucose will be derived from carb intake, and many people dont know that you can also convert proteins into glucose. This is one reason why some patients will go on a high protein low carb diet and still have glucose elevations. The body will turn protein into glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis. In contrast, when dietary fat is high, and carbs and protein are lower, your body will convert the fat into a ketone to use for energy. This is not the same as diabetic ketoacidosis, which is what many people mistake it for. The brain is actually more efficient on ketones than on glucose. I love placing patients with functional hypoglycemia on a ketogenic diet when they are the kind of patient who just cant comply with eating every 2 to 3 hours. The ketones provide long lasting energy and prevent those nasty dips in energy that hypoglycemics get, and we all know that so many people with Hashimotos also suffer from blood sugar issues. Ketogenic diets have also been shown to be good for preventing cancers or even, as Dr Perlmutter explains, shrinking them. Cancer cells are extremely sugar hungry, which is why we can use PET scans to find them. A PET scan uses a radioactive isotope of sugar to locate the cancer cells, because they will greedily gobble up the sugars and use it as fuel to grow. Cancer cells, meanwhile, cannot use ketones to grow. So, with less fuel, you can slow them down, and in the cases Dr Perlmutter describes, you can even shrink them in some instances. Ketogenic diets can also be very anti inflammatory. Many people do not know that sugar intake actually fuels general inflammation by activating a molecule called nuclear factor kappa beta, and that sugars can actually bind to your cells and cause them to be destroyed through a process called glycosylation. This process has been linked to Alzheimers and Dementia. I like using really healthy fats for my ketogenic diet, such as avocado, olive oil, egg yolks, nuts, etc. I do pre and follow up blood test to verify that the patient is in fact getting improvement in their cholesterol profile, triglycerides, and inflammatory markers. The sad thing is that even when we can show on a blood test that there are improvements, many naysayer physicians will still insist that this diet is unhealthy despite clear objective evidence that it has helped the patient. So I highly recommend that if you are going to do this that you get the help of a qualified practitioner, and run regular lab tests to check your progress. Also Dr Perlmutter and Dr Mercola are great resources for this. Check out their YouTube pages. Here is a link to an interview they did on the subject: youtube/watch?v=ZABnzXpzRCc And another one here: youtube/watch?v=UjPgK7gWJeM
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 21:23:34 +0000
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