Fasting, autophagy, and fat supplementation

#41

Labdoor also doesn’t rank Centrum well. It was recently brought to my attention that Labdoor is also not infallible, but there are probably better choices out there than Centrum. Also, they test specific batch numbers so the tests may not apply to other batches.

(Keto Krazy) #42

“There are very few binary switches in the human body.”

:joy: Can you say geek using zeros and ones? :wink:

(joievawter) #43

I use a tsp of butter (33 calories) if needed. Works great for me when I do.

#44

Good to know! And nothing beats butter :wink:

(Stephanie Hanson) #45

This is my wish too. Without a cost effective way to measure insulin directly, it’s all data driven speculation. Jimmy Moore has commented a couple times that he thinks one is in the works. I don’t know if that’s based on info he has or just hopeful thinking.

(G. Andrew Duthie) #46

That would be fantastic. Seems to me that if (as appears to be the case) conventional wisdom continues to move in the direction of keto (though perhaps more slowly than we’d like), the ability to test insulin more regularly and conveniently would be in the interests of enough people to make it a worthwhile (i.e. profitable) investment.

Either that, or we find someone who is fabulously wealthy and suffering T2DM, save their life with keto, and get them to back the research needed to create an insulin meter. :slight_smile:

(Stephanie Hanson) #47

Dr Nally commented in one of his podcasts that there is a device. It costs about $6K right now. I googled it and couldn’t find it. So, maybe that’s why Jimmy thinks a more affordable option is in the works.

(Richard Morris) #48

I agree we need to close the feedback loop.

But in the meantime the best metric I can come up with is the one I used in my whey experiment

#49

Might be even more useful to use the GKI for this since it correlates well.

(Crow T. Robot) #50

Richard, are you sure about this? I was under the impression from a couple of sources including Dr. Fung, that it wasn’t really starvation, but a restricted calorie diet the were on (around 1500 kcal per day).

(Richard Morris) #51

I just checked, and you are right. It was a famine-like semi-starvation diet of 1,560 kilocalories per day for 24 weeks.

A 1000 kCal/day deficit for 24 weeks should push the the contribution from body fat to it’s limit so that could be measured.

I’m not sure where I got the 40 day figure from. I’ll have to read over the Alpert study again, it might have been just the last 40 days that they used the data from to rule out contribution from the lead-in period.

(Cheryl Meyers) #52

I did the same.

(Michael Wallace Ellwood) #53

I heard his podcast with Dr Benjamin Bikman, and this subject came up.
I got the impression that Dr Bikman was in touch with people actually working on this, and he seemed fairly optimistic about the prospect. Of course, no solid timescales were mention. :slight_smile:

But I’ll bet the test strips are even more expensive than those for ketones! :wink:

(Stephanie Hanson) #54

I suspect you’re right about the strip cost. I’m hoping that the keto community will be able to influence mass buying. I suspect many of us and probably diabetes doctors will want to use them

I think it would be uber cool if they would recruit from our ranks to test run them.

(Kathy Meyer) #55

I have been known to do this as well – I sprinkle salt on it and let it slowly melt in my mouth. It’s like heaven on Day 2 or Day 3 of a fast.

(Jessica) #56

I’m sorry if this was already discussed and I missed it, or I missunderstood something. But how can someone tell if the body has access to enough body fat or not?
I already used the calculator, which is great btw, but I’m still curious. There seems to be more about it.

(Richard Morris) #57

Your body usually works out the details and doesn’t bother you - so there are not a lot of signals. One is that we appear to switch off optional heating when we hit a budgetary crisis … so if your finger tips are getting cold and there isn’t a good excuse (ie: it’s not winter), that might be a sign.

There is a blood test apparently to show circulating NEFA (non esterified fatty acids) which just means energy released from fat cells. I haven’t been able to find a lab in Australia who will do it. It seems to be mainly for research labs.

(Jessica) #58

Bingo…
So I haven’t done an extended fast for longer than 3 days. But I imagine the body will eventually gain access to that fat, right? (related to insulin sensitivity…?)

This would mean if the goal is weight loss, with short-ish fasting periods, I’d better be supplementing with fat if some signal like that comes up (or stop the fast).

If the goal is autophagy, if this comes up you’d have to accept a lower BMR in exchange?*

  • went back to your original post, you already answered that.
#59

Just make sure that you’re getting plenty of electrolytes, especially sodium since there seems to be growing anecdotal evidence that sodium supplementation also seems to resolve some of these feelings.

After insuring enough sodium, I will sometimes power through the symptoms and other times supplement with fat - the main difference for me is when the cold symptoms occur with hunger.

I have successfully used a combination of water, ACV, cayenne pepper and sea salt with some light exercise like a walk to also get through the feeling of cold and/or hunger without needing to supplement with fat; sometimes I’ll add 1/2 Tbsp to 1 Tbsp of butter to the mixture.

I should add that my guestimated body fat at the moment is probably around 10% to 12%, so I don’t have much body fat left, so I am more likely to run up against the issue of not getting enough calories from stored body fat.

Personally, I would err on the side of supplementing with fat as needed while trying to minimize its use with the end goal of using it as sparingly as possible and would tend to supplement more with fasts over 24 hours and avoid fat supplementation under 24 hours.

(Richard Morris) #60

Yeah for people who are doing well fasting, sometimes even doing some extra exercise pushes them over the edge.

That happened to @siobhan the other day about 70 hours into a fast she decided to walk 7k and she felt, cold, then weird, and then noticed that she wasn’t thinking right (I think the phrase she used was she knew she had to swipe her card at a gas station, but her brain wasn’t helping her to do it).

She had some gas station cheese and salami and sat down till the feeling passed. In her case I suspect she pushed faster than her body fat could supply energy, and because after 3 days she didn’t have any capacity in circulating lipids she was using it as fast as it was being released from body fat. (@DaveKeto might have an opinion on that ) In that circumstance if you want to keep going on the fast and the extra exercise is just short term, you can eat a little fat … it may take 30 mins for that to hit your circulation so it’s probably worth taking a food with a small amount of glucose … like a Salami from a gas station :slight_smile:

In general the first day on a fast you are using body fat AND fat being trafficked by LDL AND fat (and protein/carbs) from the food you’ve eaten. Second day you are now using just body fat and any fat still circulating in LDL. By day three you are running only on body fat and here’s the problem for skinny people fasting. Body fat has a limit how fast it can give up energy,

If you have 20 lbs of body fat you can only release a maximum of 615 kCal/day, if you have 60 lbs you can release 1845 kCal/day. So a skinny person used to burning 1500 kCal a day all of a sudden having access to 610 kCal is probably going to feel the brakes come on.

So for that person, a little dietary fat will [ironically] help them keep in a fasted state.