Nutrition
Ketogenic Diet
The ketogenic diet consists of a drastic reduction in the amount of carbohydrates consumed in the diet. Low carbohydrate strategies are extremely popular in several countries, due to their weight loss results, positive impact on health and for promoting great satiety.
They work with a metabolic context where the decrease in the hormone insulin, due to the lower intake of hydrates, leads to stored energy to be used as an energy source with greater efficiency.
Healthy insulin level promotes the expenditure of stored fat, it is this hormone that tells you how your stored energy will be used – if it will be stored (high insulin) or if it will be burned / oxidized (low insulin).
From very low carbs (very low carb, which may or may not be ketogenic) – with around 20g daily – to low carb, which reaches 130g daily, these strategies promote a diet totally free of processed foods, based on animal products, such as meats, poultry, eggs and low or very low starch vegetables. They favor a more adequate intake of protein and gentler carbohydrates, which do not actually cause glycemic spikes like cereals, helping to maintain satiety and causing a natural caloric deficit, without the person having to go hungry to lose weight. That’s why they are so sustainable in the long term.
Low carb is the food strategy of choice for metabolic syndrome diseases and professionals who apply it experience cases of type 2 diabetes remission daily in their offices.
For this reason and because of robust scientific evidence, the American Diabetes Association recently released a booklet teaching nutrition professionals how to apply low carb for the management and remission of type 2 diabetes, as many countries already include these strategies in their T2DM remission guidelines and metabolic syndrome diseases.
There are numerous health benefits of this eating style and the benefits are diverse. See below:
Increases energy levels, by increasing ATP production (our energy currency) by 27% over glucose and increasing the number and size of mitochondria.
It has anti-inflammatory power, with an increase in glutathione, our main antioxidant. The ketogenic diet is quite anti-inflammatory and is used to control autoimmune diseases.
Decreases hunger: The diet stabilizes the flow of brain energy by delivering ketone bodies to the brain in addition to glucose. It also decreases the levels of ghrelin, one of the hormones responsible for hunger.
It helps with sleep. Ketosis also promotes deeper sleep because it increases the production of another neurotransmitter, adenosine, responsible for signaling sleep to the brain. Furthermore, many molecular pathways activated during ketogenic diets are known to modulate sleep-wake cycles, circadian rhythms and sleep stages.
Improves mental resilience – by increasing the neurotransmitter GABA, provided by ketone bodies.
It potentiates the epigenetic response.
Increase basal metabolic rate (BMR) – keeps your body working at a rate favorable to weight loss, as it increases caloric expenditure.
It acts in the remission of hypertension. Ketone bodies, especially beta-hydroxybutyrate, is an excellent vasodilator, which makes the ketogenic diet effective in the remission of hypertension. Improvement can be noticed quickly. In addition, the diet is extremely diuretic and favors this remission.
Remission of diseases of the Metabolic Syndrome.
Brain neuroplasticity: increased neurotrophic factor derived from the brain, which allows for greater neural plasticity, facilitating new connections and programming new behaviors!
