{"id":7241,"date":"2014-08-25T23:12:50","date_gmt":"2014-08-26T05:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/?p=7241"},"modified":"2014-08-26T07:56:36","modified_gmt":"2014-08-26T13:56:36","slug":"reactions-to-arguments-about-ketosis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/2014\/08\/25\/reactions-to-arguments-about-ketosis\/","title":{"rendered":"Reactions To Arguments About Ketosis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So far I\u2019ve only read about 2\/3 of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1628600071\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1628600071&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=fatheadmoviec-20&amp;linkId=35EMRP73XM63NFKN\" target=\"_blank\">Keto Clarity<\/a>, Jimmy Moore\u2019s recent book.\u00a0 (As usual, I\u2019m behind on my reading.\u00a0 The book was released three weeks ago.)\u00a0 Since the book is about nutritional ketosis, naturally I\u2019ve been replaying the debates about ketosis in my mind as I read.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to clutter up my soon-to-appear review of the book with those debates (the book, after all, is mostly a how-to guide for people who have already decided to try a ketogenic diet) so I thought I\u2019d chime in with some thoughts on ketosis now and review the book on its own merits.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not a fan of caustic debates among bloggers and authors who all advocate a more-or-less paleo, whole-foods diet but disagree on safe starches or ketosis.\u00a0 I explained why in my post about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/2014\/04\/10\/differences-commonalities-and-the-peoples-front-of-judea\/\" target=\"_blank\">Differences, Commonalities and the Judean People\u2019s Front<\/a>.\u00a0 We agree far more than we disagree, but when the topic of ketosis comes up, you can almost sense some people wanting to yell \u201cSplitters!\u201d across the coliseum.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gb_qHP7VaZE?feature=player_embedded\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Depending on which splitter has the floor, nutritional ketosis is either the natural human metabolic condition and should be sought by everyone who wants to be lean and healthy, or it\u2019s an emergency-only condition that will ruin your metabolism and possibly kill you.\u00a0 I don\u2019t buy either argument, at least not as a blanket statement for everyone.\u00a0 I believe achieving ketosis could be beneficial or not, depending on the individual.\u00a0 So I\u2019ll just toss out some of the arguments I\u2019ve come across recently in books, blogs and podcasts and respond with what went through my head when I heard them \u2013 and that&#8217;s all these are: my personal reactions to those arguments.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ketosis was the natural metabolic state of our Paleolithic ancestors.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I used to believe that, but I don\u2019t anymore.\u00a0 I think paleo people probably drifted in and out of ketosis, depending on the season and what foods were obtainable.\u00a0 Fossilized bones and fecal samples tell us that many if not most early humans consumed a wide variety of plants, including starchy plants, and a whole lot of fiber.\u00a0 We call them <em>hunter-gatherers<\/em> for a reason.\u00a0 If all they ate was meat, they\u2019d just be hunters.<\/p>\n<p>As Jimmy\u2019s book and others point out, to achieve and maintain nutritional ketosis, you not only have to restrict carbohydrates, you will probably have to restrict protein as well.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think paleo people would have restricted either.\u00a0 As the Jaminets discussed in their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1451699158\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1451699158&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=fatheadmoviec-20\" target=\"_blank\">Perfect Health Diet<\/a> book, the hunter-gatherer tribes whose diets were documented typically consumed somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 30 percent of their calories as carbohydrates.\u00a0 That alone would prevent nutritional ketosis for most of us.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the Inuit \u2013 our poster-boys for a carb-free diet \u2013 apparently consumed rather a lot of freshly killed seafood that contained perhaps 20 percent of its calories in the form of glycogen, otherwise known as muscle starch.<\/p>\n<p>But let\u2019s suppose for the sake of argument (since the point has indeed been hotly debated) their seafood didn\u2019t contain that much glycogen.\u00a0 It\u2019s been documented that adult male Inuits consumed an average of 240 grams of protein per day.\u00a0 That\u2019s not exactly what I\u2019d call protein restriction, and I find hard to believe anyone would stay in nutritional ketosis while eating that much protein.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Paleo humans only ate plants as a fallback food if there wasn\u2019t enough meat available.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I know that one isn\u2019t true.\u00a0 At least it wasn\u2019t true for many Native American tribes.\u00a0 I just recently read that in areas where hunting tribes and farming\/gathering tribes lived near each other, they got together for food swaps.\u00a0 The hunters traded meat for maize, beans, squash, etc.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think they\u2019d voluntary trade away precious meat for what they considered a desperation-only food.\u00a0 They must have liked those starchy plant foods.\u00a0 As someone who enjoyed fresh squash from Chareva\u2019s garden with dinner a couple of nights ago, I can tell you I\u2019d happily swap some excess meat for it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>If you\u2019re not in nutritional ketosis, it means you\u2019re still a sugar-burner.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Simple math says otherwise.\u00a0 I believe (as do the Jaminets, by the way) that we should get most of our energy from fat.\u00a0 But you can get most of your energy from fat without being in <em>nutritional ketosis<\/em>, which is defined as a reading of 1.0 or higher on a blood ketone meter.\u00a0 Let\u2019s look at some numbers.<\/p>\n<p>Suppose I consume 2,000 calories in a day, including 100 grams of protein and 100 grams of carbohydrate \u2013 in other words, roughly what I consumed during my <em>Fat Head<\/em> fast-food diet.\u00a0 That would be 800 calories from protein and carbohydrates combined, plus 1200 calories from fat.\u00a0 My brain would have used up much of the carbohydrate, and since my muscles didn\u2019t shrink, I certainly wasn\u2019t converting all that protein to glucose and using it for fuel.\u00a0 But what the heck, for the sake of argument, I\u2019ll say all 800 protein and carbohydrate calories were used for energy.<\/p>\n<p>With me so far?\u00a0 Good.<\/p>\n<p>Given the weight I lost during that month, I was burning at least 3,000 calories per day, possibly more.\u00a0 That means I was burning 2200 calories or more in the form of fat \u2026 which means even if every gram of carbohydrate and protein was used for fuel (which it wasn\u2019t), 73% of my energy needs came from fat.\u00a0 So I obviously wasn\u2019t a sugar-burner.\u00a0 But I can tell you from my own n=1 attempt at maintaining nutritional ketosis that I can\u2019t do it while consuming 100 grams of protein and 100 grams of carbohydrate in a day.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s another recent example:\u00a0 as I recounted on the blog, I spent five hours last Saturday clearing the brush from our fields.\u00a0 It was hard, physical work that no doubt burned rather a lot of calories.\u00a0 For breakfast (my only meal before all that work), I had four eggs fried in butter and two pieces of gluten-free toast slathered in butter.\u00a0 The toast provided 22 grams of carbohydrate, or a whopping 88 calories.\u00a0 If I wasn\u2019t burning mostly fat during the day\u2019s labors, I would have keeled over.\u00a0 And yet I wasn\u2019t in nutritional ketosis.\u00a0 I checked out of curiosity and registered 0.4 on the meter.<\/p>\n<p><strong>If you don\u2019t feel good or experience health problems while in a constant state of ketosis, there\u2019s something wrong with you and you need to fix it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I disagree completely, and when I hear that one, it sounds eerily like vegan-think.\u00a0 Tell a vegan you felt lousy while trying to give up animal foods, and she (because most vegans are she) will reply that meat is evil, we know it\u2019s bad for you, so if you don\u2019t feel good without meat in your diet it means you\u2019re addicted to meat, or you\u2019re not doing your vegan diet correctly, or there\u2019s an underlying health problem you need to identify and fix so you can give up meat.<\/p>\n<p>Nonsense.\u00a0 If you feel lousy on a vegan diet but then feel better after eating a steak, it means you should eat the steak.\u00a0 That&#8217;s how any proponent of a paleo diet would reply.<\/p>\n<p>But if you tell some people in the <em>everyone should be in ketosis<\/em> crowd that you felt better and saw some health problems disappear after eating two or three potatoes per week, suddenly the potato becomes like meat to a vegan.\u00a0 <em>No, no, no, the potato is bad!\u00a0 If you feel better after eating the potato, it means you\u2019re not doing your ketogenic diet correctly.\u00a0 You need more fat.\u00a0 You need to eat nose-to-tail.\u00a0 Something is still broken in your metabolism, so you need to dig deeper and find the underlying issue and fix it.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>No, it means you should eat the potato.<\/p>\n<p>The whole premise of paleo diets is that the ideal human diet was shaped by evolution.\u00a0 The diet that kept our paleo ancestors healthy is the diet that will keep us healthy too.\u00a0 For reasons I explained above, I don\u2019t believe our paleo ancestors lived in a state of chronic ketosis.\u00a0 There\u2019s no reason we should all be genetically geared to thrive on a diet that none of our ancestors actually consumed.\u00a0 In fact, adopting that diet might be a bad idea for some people.<\/p>\n<p>But once again for the sake of argument, let\u2019s suppose that with enough diligence and determination, you could identify that deep, underlying problem that\u2019s causing you to feel lousy when you stay in ketosis for weeks on end.\u00a0\u00a0 Here are your options:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Spend months of your life and hundreds if not thousands of dollars undergoing tests, waiting for results, undergoing more tests, digging and researching and visiting specialists and perhaps finally identifying that deep, underlying metabolic problem that caused you to feel good after eating a potato \u2026 but feeling like crap until you do identify the deep, underlying metabolic problem.<\/li>\n<li>Eat the potato, feel good, and go on your merry way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Pretty easy choice, if you ask me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ketosis will ruin your metabolism.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Like I said, I believe staying in chronic ketosis could be a bad idea for some people.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s bad for everyone.\u00a0 Dr. Jeff Volek has lived on a ketogenic diet for decades.\u00a0 So has Nora Gedgaudas.\u00a0 Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt has been measuring ketones and maintaining ketosis for (if memory serves) at least two years now. If their metabolisms are broken and their health is going down the tubes, you sure as hell can\u2019t tell by looking at them.<\/p>\n<p>Back during the raging safe-starch debate on this blog, I mentioned that I\u2019ve heard from people who lost weight and felt better after adding some starch back into their diets, and that I believe them.\u00a0 I have no reason not to believe them.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also seen posts and read comments from people who were able to lose weight and keep it off for the first time in their lives after going ketogenic.\u00a0 I believe them too.<\/p>\n<p>A ketogenic diet has clearly been a godsend for Jimmy Moore.\u00a0 Yes, you could argue (as so many internet cowboys have) that if Jimmy can\u2019t keep his weight down on anything other than a strictly ketogenic diet, it means his metabolism is broken.\u00a0 Fine.\u00a0 Drinking a 12-pack of Coca-Cola per day and ballooning up to over 400 pounds by age 30 probably will break your metabolism.<\/p>\n<p>But if going ketogenic allows you to feel great and lose nearly 80 pounds and keep it off, then go ketogenic \u2026 unless, of course, you believe it\u2019s better to remain obese while spending years of your life and hundreds if not thousands of dollars undergoing tests, waiting for results, undergoing more tests, digging and researching and visiting specialists and perhaps finally identifying that deep, underlying metabolic problem that prevents you from losing weight while eating potatoes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ketogenic diets are stupid because everyone apart from diabetics should be able to consume at least 150 grams of carbohydrate per day.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t think the <em>everyone should eat starch <\/em>argument makes any more sense than the <em>no one should eat starch<\/em> argument.\u00a0 All humans have the AMY1 gene, which makes it possible to digest starch.\u00a0 That\u2019s one of the many reasons I believe our paleo ancestors ate starchy plants.\u00a0 But some clearly ate a lot more than others.\u00a0 Let\u2019s review a quote from Denise Minger\u2019s book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0984755128\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=211189&amp;creative=373489&amp;creativeASIN=0984755128&amp;link_code=as3&amp;tag=fatheadmoviec-20&amp;linkId=DTX27KTY6OYCUZWQ\" target=\"_blank\">Death By Food Pyramid<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">It turns out the number of AMY1 copies contained in our genes is not the same for everyone. And the amount of salivary amylase we produce is tightly correlated to the number of AMY1 copies we inherited. AMY1 copy number can range from one to fifteen, and amylase levels in saliva can range from barely detectable to 50 percent of the saliva\u2019s total production. That\u2019s a lot of variation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>It sure is.\u00a0 And that means some people can handle a whole lot more starch than others.\u00a0 Research shows that people with fewer copies of the AMY1 gene are more likely to be obese.\u00a0 To quote a study I mentioned in a previous post:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">The chance of being obese for people with less than four copies of the AMY1 gene was approximately eight times higher than in those with more than nine copies of this gene. The researchers estimated that with every additional copy of the salivary amylase gene there was approximately a 20 per cent decrease in the odds of becoming obese.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why when people have pointed to the Kitavans as examples of people who are lean and healthy despite a diet very high in starch, I\u2019ve replied, \u201cGood for them.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not a Kitavan.\u201d\u00a0 I haven\u2019t had a genetic test to determine how many AMY1 copies are floating around in my DNA, but given the difference in my weight and health on high-starch vs. low-starch diets, I suspect I\u2019m in that under-four-copies group.<\/p>\n<p>I usually eat two meals per day.\u00a0 To get 150 grams of carbohydrate into my diet, I\u2019d have to consume 75 per meal.\u00a0 Not a chance.\u00a0 After supplementing with resistant starch, I&#8217;ve found I can have that potato or squash with dinner and end up with a post-meal glucose peak in the 125-135 range.\u00a0 I\u2019m fine with that.\u00a0 So now I have a potato with dinner a few times per week.<\/p>\n<p>But when I consumed two potatoes (i.e., about 70 grams of starch) awhile back as an experiment, my glucose ended up at 195 and stayed high for two hours.\u00a0 I\u2019m not fine with that.\u00a0 And no, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s because I need to eat more starch to raise my tolerance.\u00a0 That\u2019s just another version of the <em>if you can\u2019t be healthy on this diet, it means you\u2019re not doing it right<\/em> argument.\u00a0 If I\u2019m in the low-amylase group, there is no way for me to do it right.\u00a0 Yes, I can eat some starch \u2013 but only some.\u00a0 Based on my experiences and n=1 experiments, I\u2019d say 100 grams is the upper limit for me.\u00a0 Your upper limit may be higher or lower.\u00a0 We\u2019re all different.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A ketogenic diet will starve your gut bacteria and ruin your gut health.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If there\u2019s one warning ketogenic dieters should pay attention to, I\u2019d say that\u2019s the one &#8230; although I think the possible danger lies in a lack of fiber, not ketosis per se.\u00a0 I recently watched a two-part series on the gut biome produced by ABC Catalyst in Australia.\u00a0 The bottom line is that our gut bacteria need fiber, period.\u00a0 It\u2019s their food.\u00a0 I no longer buy the notion tossed around by some low-carbers that fiber is useless.\u00a0 It\u2019s not only useful, it\u2019s probably crucial for long-term gut health.<\/p>\n<p>In part one of the series, researchers did some blood work on a young, very fit gymnast after feeding him a meal of French fries and other junk food.\u00a0 He was surprised to learn that his body was pumping out a higher-than-average level of insulin to normalize his blood sugar \u2013 in other words, he was at risk for developing diabetes.\u00a0 (The doctor\/journalist who hosted the episode only pumped out half as much insulin after the same meal.)\u00a0 In part two, after a month on a high-fiber diet, the same gymnast ate the same junk-food meal.\u00a0 This time his body required only half as much insulin to do the job.\u00a0 Fiber has been shown in research to improve insulin sensitivity \u2013 and since most of us who adopt low-carb diets want to lower our insulin levels, fiber should be part of the diet.<\/p>\n<p>That doesn\u2019t necessarily mean the fiber has to come from starchy plants, but if were on a ketogenic diet, I\u2019d sure as shootin\u2019 be loading up on as many high-fiber vegetables as I could.\u00a0 I\u2019d also try supplementing with resistant starch as soon as possible.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, those are my thoughts about the ketosis pro and con arguments.\u00a0 You may now proceed to the comments and yell \u201cSplitter!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So far I\u2019ve only read about 2\/3 of Keto Clarity, Jimmy Moore\u2019s recent book.\u00a0 (As usual, I\u2019m behind on my reading.\u00a0 The book was released three weeks ago.)\u00a0 Since the&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/2014\/08\/25\/reactions-to-arguments-about-ketosis\/\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7241"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7263,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7241\/revisions\/7263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}