Most of the health issues I write about really come down to the impact of inflammation on our various body tissues. While inflammation is a vital function of the body to help us fight infection and heal from injury, too much inflammation or inflammation when it is not needed destroys our health and well being.
If you think of snuggling up in front of your fireplace with a cheery little fire keeping you warm, everything feels good and in balance. But what could happen to cause the fire to get too hot and make us uncomfortable or even burn us? The answer is too much of something. In the case of our fireplace, too much wood on the fire or too much oxygen feeding the fire will make it burn too hot and cause problems. You might even throw trash into the fire that burns too rapidly or that gives off toxic smoke while burning. This too would be a problem for us as we try to snuggle up in front of the fire.
In modern times, “too much” is the cause of most of our modern diseases. In olden times “too little” would be a problem for health as we saw lots of deficiency diseases like pellagra, scurvy, rickets, goiter, and malnutrition. But we don’t see much of that in this country anymore. These days our chronic diseases are all coming from “too much.” What diseases am I talking about? I am talking about all the big killers – cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, COPD, Alzheimer’s, and a host of others. In this country, if you don’t die in an accident of some sort, one of these diseases is usually what will kill you.
All the big killer diseases have a specific common metabolic imbalance driving them and triggering the inflammation – insulin resistance. This is a disease of excess, a disease of “too much.” Generally it is thought of as the consequence of eating too many carbohydrates on a regular basis. The remedy is to stop eating carbohydrates almost completely. Do this and you can reverse most of the chronic killer diseases or at least improve them significantly. Doing this is called eating a Ketogenic diet.
Ketogenic; what does that mean? The term comes from the fact that the brain cannot burn fats for energy like the rest of the body tissues. Fats can’t cross the blood-brain barrier and get into the brain to feed it. So when our blood sugar starts to decrease from not eating carbs, then our liver manufactures energy units called ketones from the fats that can feed the brain. Other tissues can also use ketones for energy, but the brain is the big user. The heart is different and always uses fats for energy. So Ketogenic simply means ketone generating diet.
The liver not only creates ketones to feed the brain, but it also starts making sugars out of proteins and the backbones of the stored fats. This detail is important because some people will do a diet that generates ketones but also generate lots of sugar made from proteins they are eating. Their urine and breath says they are manufacturing lots of ketones to feed the brain, but they are not getting the blood sugar lowering benefit they think they are getting. They do not make much of a change in their insulin resistance, unless they get those blood sugars down as much as possible. Switching the brain to burning ketones reduces brain inflammation and improves immune function, it is also great for endurance athletes, but does not produce the long-term improvements we are looking for with a real Ketogenic diet.
So what does that mean? That means we not only have to cut out the carbs, but we also have to be very moderate on our protein consumption. Five to six ounces of protein food, like meat, per day is all you would want. This equals 40 to 50 grams of protein per day.
If you do not need to lose any weight, then you can eat as much fat as you would like on a Ketogenic diet, along with all the non-starchy vegetables and raw nuts you would like. But if you want to lose weight, as well as lower blood sugar, then you would want to limit your fat consumption to force your body to use its stored fat for energy.
What is completely left out of a Ketogenic diet is all the starchy and sugary foods, including most fruit. To be in a useful Ketogenic state, you would have to avoid all grains, beans, sugars, root vegetables, starchy vegetables, and any other sources of carbohydrates. Artificial sweeteners also have to be avoided as they trigger insulin spikes just like sugar does.
For most people getting used to eating a Ketogenic diet takes some adaptation and creativity. Finding substitutes for the foods you used to love that are full of sugar and carbs is a challenge, but not super hard. There are tons of resources now available compared to virtually none 10 years ago. There are lots of cookbooks, and now lots of restaurant choices that will work for you while you are fighting chronic disease with a Ketogenic diet. But this requires motivation – usually finding out you are facing one of these diseases.
Ketogenic diets empower you to do more for your health than anything modern medicine has to offer at this point. No special supplements are necessary, just eating good healthy food. Shopping becomes much easier. You cruise the vegetable isle then slide through the meat isle and bam you are done. You never even go down the isles full of packaged foods. You eat only fresh foods.
If you really want something that feels like bread or sweets, my Miracle Bread will work as it is made from almond flour and egg whites. For a sweet taste, stevia, Lo Han, erythritol, and xylitol are our only acceptable sweetening agents.
If you need to make a powerful change to your health, the Ketogenic diet is the single most powerful thing you can do on an everyday basis. If you want to make it even more powerful, you could add in intermittent fasting. This is where you eat all your food within an 8 to 10 hour time window each day. Going organic is also a powerful addition to this diet health intervention.
If you are facing chronic disease or are concerned about it because of a family history of chronic disease, then here is a powerful tool to upgrade your life.