Dr Penny Figtree educates patients in eating a low carbohydrate diet.
WHY? Because it is so powerful.
This is a therapeutic diet and not a fad diet as the newspapers like to claim. It has been used medically for over 100 years and human beings have eaten a ketogenic diet for most of their history. It is only recently , with the development of agriculture ,that carbohydrates have become a prominent part of our diet.
All a ketogenic diet means is eating very few carbohydrates in your diet so your body burns fat as it’s fuel source. That’s it. Your liver makes a fatty acid called a ketone during a low carbohydrate diet and that’s why we call it a ketogenic diet.
A Ketogenic Diet Changes Your Metabolism
Your body will burn fat for energy not glucose.
- The liver makes a fatty acid called “ketones” from fat.
- These ketones have special effects and can signal to genes reducing inflammation and oxidative damage in the body. Researchers were excited to find ketones inhibit an enzyme called “HISTONE DEACETYLASE”. This enzyme is implicated in diseases of ageing and ageing itself. Perhaps ketones prolong healthy lifespan by inhibiting these enzymes. It certainly does in mice studies. They live15% longer on a ketogenic diet.
- On a ketogenic diet your insulin levels and glucose levels become very low and your blood lipids improve with a rise in good cholesterol and drop in triglycerides.
What Are The Benefits?
A ketogenic diet improves your cardiovascular risk , reverses diabetes, fatty liver disease and polycystic ovarian syndrome.
Researchers are investigating its effects on Alzheimers disease and in cancer. It is also used to treat epilepsy with seizures stopping in days ,even after people have tried multiple medications. If that isn’t enough it is being investigated in heart failure patients as ketones are the preferred fuel of the heart and as less oxygen is needed to use that fuel the sick heart works better on a ketogenic diet.
It all sounds too good to be true which makes me reluctant to write that paragraph but it is indeed true.
It is the healthiest of diets. If you have insulin resistance it is the only diet for you.
