I stumbled upon this video, it came up on YouTube. The last 2 conditions are scary, but all this fear mongering has to stop at some point. I researched Keto a lot before starting it, so I have no idea what real research these people are using for these types of videos. is it there point just to get more views by using fear?
Fear tactics
SomeGuy
(Joey)
#2
That seems to be how most successful politicians do it. Good for fund raising, clicks, votes, etc.
PaulL
(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing)
#4
This YouTube channel seems to be part of Health Magazine, which is owned by Meredith Publications. You’d have to do an analysis of their editorial board and their advertisers to get an idea of any likely biases.
But the scrip is indeed slanted. We know that one of the reasons that the therapeutic ketogenic diet works to treat epileptic seizures is that the brain needs cholesterol and certain fats in order to function properly. A high-insulin, high-carbohydrate diet (and yes, those terms are redundant) interferes with brain metabolism in vulnerable people, and the ketone bodies serve as excellent fuels for the brain, as well as having helpful epigenetic effects.
The anti-inflammatory effects of a ketogenic diet result both from reducing the inflammatory exposure from insulin and certain polyunsaturated fats, as well as, again, from the effects of the ketone bodies on various cells. The anti-aging effects of a ketogenic diet are probably more from reducing the stimulus of mTOR by elevated insulin, but such a diet also reduces the oxidative stress on the body from consuming too much glucose (a/k/a carbohydrate). Any anti-cancer properties of a ketogenic diet probably result from the lack of glucose damage to cellular metabolism; such damage, in the opinion of the well-known cancer researcher, Dr. Thomas Seyfried, being the major cause of almost all cancers.
The whole “catch the keto flu” business just made me laugh. We all know it’s just the result of low sodium, and that eating a bit more salt is all it takes to prevent it. And I’ve never heard of anyone vomiting from the “keto flu.” What a joke!
I’ve also never heard of anyone getting diarrhoea from going keto, unless perhaps they ate far too much vegetable oil. My bowel movements are much better since I went keto, and most people I know from these forums report the same thing. Many people also report that they improved their Crohn’s disease and IBS symptoms by going keto, some of them by eliminating fibre from their diet, others by making sure to get plenty of fibre. But the β-hydroxybutyrate we produce when in ketosis is an excellent source of healing for the bowel.
As for the hit to athletic performance, this is a known effect during the early days of a ketogenic diet. We are depriving our muscles of glucose, and they are no longer used to metabolising fatty acids, so for a while we have to limp along on ketone bodies, until our muscles’ fatty acid metabolic pathways are reactivated. For most people, keto-adaptation takes six to eight weeks, and then they are either back to their pre-keto endurance levels or above them. Explosive power takes somewhat longer to return, but it also eventually returns to or exceeds pre-keto levels.
The danger of ketoacidosis is non-existent in anyone with a functioning pancreas. But even people with Type I diabetes find that a ketogenic diet helps them control their glucose better than other diets, and they can eliminate their bolus doses of insulin before meals. This means that they are able to avoid the wild swings in insulin and glucose that can lead to ketoacidosis.
There are numerous studies showing that not only do people tend to lose more fat on a ketogenic diet, they also keep it off better, if they remain on the diet. Any weight regain seems to come a bit later and not be as great, and the net loss is still greater than that from other diets. The big danger of regaining fat seems to come from returning to the old diet that got us fat in the first place. Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt is fond of saying that keto is like showering: if we do it every day, we get lots of great benefits, but if we stop, we eventually lose all the benefits. He says life is unfair like that. 
The only way to “zap your metabolism” and “lose muscle mass” is to eat too few calories and too little protein.
The big difference from the ketogenic diet as properly understood, and the popular conception of it, is that we don’t eat enormous quantities of fat. Ideally, we eat enough to satisfy our hunger, and that is all. In fact, given that fat contains 9 cal/g, whereas carbs and protein contain 4 cal/g, it takes less than half the fat by weight to replace the same number of calories we used to get from carbohydrate. If you do the arithmetic, 133 g of fat provides the same amount of calories as 300 g of carbohydrate. So keto isn’t really a high-fat diet, it’s more of a “proper-fat” diet, lol!
lfod14
#5
I’d have to agree with #6, having had it happen to me, but the constant ketoacidosis mentions, and keto being a “Cardiologists nightmare” are just laughable. The video was all over the place.
Fangs
#7
fear mongering…the fear placed out there to just fuel someone’s own agenda for personal gain and power and more is just why that term was coined…fear mongering…and it is rampant.
PaulL
(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing)
#8
Number 6 talks about skeletal muscle loss, and it is possible if we fail to eat enough protein while on keto. But the idea that a ketogenic diet is a cardiologist’s nightmare derives from Ancel Keys’s cherry-picked data on the correlation between saturated fat intake and atherosclerosis, which has been debunked. In fact, more recent research has shown that the heart muscle actually prefers ketones to glucose and thrives on them.
And as for the notion of arterycloggingsaturatedfat, research done around the time Keys was promoting his misinformation showed that it was actually a high-carb intake that cause an excess of free-floating fatty acids in the blood stream, but Keys and his buddies were able to shout down those other researchers. Published memos from the Sugar Research Foundation show that some of those buddies of Keys’s were being paid by the sugar industry to badmouth fat and play down the negative effects of consuming sugar. And interestingly, the correlation between saturated fat and coronary heart disease Keys claimed to see vanishes if all the data he collected are analysed, but there is a robust correlation between sugar intake and coronary heart disease, both in the 7 countries Keys selected and in the full data set, but Keys dismissed that correlation out of hand.
I don’t know who that doctor is in the video, but she is either woefully ignorant of the data about diet and nutrition, or she is lying through her teeth.
SomeGuy
(Joey)
#9
Isn’t it equally possible to fail to eat enough protein on a carb-rich diet, too? In other words, failing to eat sufficient protein is just failing to eat sufficient protein.
If you don’t maintain sufficient hydration you will get dehydrated on keto. Then again, the same goes for high carb eaters.
lfod14
#10
No, #6 was losing muscle mass and metabolism. I (think) the biggest driver of my metabolic slowdown was fasting, but after the fact went back in labs and my thyroid numbers were getting worse consistently over the years while doing standard keto.
lfod14
#11
That’s true, but for some reason most keto’rs over eat fat and under eat protein, and up until about a year ago people were wrongly afraid of GNG turning their steak into cake. So while not directly linked, they unfortunately seem to go hand in hand.
PrimalBrian
#12
Indeed, @PaulL. I love the “keto flu” stock video they show of people coughing and sneezing. Yeah, that’s exactly what happens when people “catch” the keto flu. 
And how can anyone reference ketoacidosis and not use the words “pre-existing diabetes” to, well, explain the thing correctly?
SomeGuy
(Joey)
#14
I don’t question your personal experience, but I’ve not heard of keto’ers being prone to under-eating protein (nor have I been attuned to much fear of gluconeogenesis).
On the contrary, I hear of newbies to carb-restriction most often fearful of eating too much fat, not protein - since that’s what’s been drummed into us by the “nutrition experts” over the decades. As the battle between carbs and fats has raged on, protein is always pitched as the neutral “good guy” on the menu.
Having said this, vegans are the ones who must take extra care to avoid becoming deficient in protein, since they shun the animal-based foods so rich in this essential macronutrient - without which we lose muscle mass and become malnourished.
I guess it just goes to show: If for some reason we fail to eat enough protein, we will have failed to eat enough protein. 
PrimalBrian
#15
I seem to recall a weird period a few years ago where a famous keto personality (with millions of impressions per month) used a phrase similar to “if you eat too much protein it’s like eating chocolate cake” due to GNG, and that got a lot of stir for 6-12 months and then died down once people realized and understood the process is demand (not supply) driven. Weird times, indeed.
PaulL
(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing)
#16
My, oh my, you might just have hit upon something there!
There is some evidence to suggest that low thyroid numbers don’t necessarily mean the same thing on keto as on SAD. Some prominent keto experts, such as Dr. Robert Cywes, have taken this and run with it, on the grounds that the reference ranges were calibrated on a population of high carbers. I’m not sure the case has actually been proved that low thyroid hormones on keto are benign. Did you find that your lower numbers were accompanied by symptoms?
SomeGuy
(Joey)
#17
Thanks for this context - apparently, I missed this round of brou-ha. (I probably didn’t bother clicking on posts with headings like “Beware of protein!” and “GNG is bad!” and the like.)
PaulL
(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing)
#18
It was bigger on these forums five years ago, when I joined. I suspect it was some expert’s best guess, at some point, and people took it and ran with it. Then evidence came out to show that the picture is a lot more nuanced.
The same is true of protein and mTOR. Protein does activate mTOR to some degree, and mTOR activation seems to have some negative effect on longevity. Bikman, who is far more concerned with muscle loss later in life, takes the opposite view, stressing protein intake regardless, and pointing out that insulin actually activates mTOR far more than protein does. I think the people urging unlimited protein may be shown later on to have been somewhat misguided, just as the advocates of restricted protein have been shown to be misguided. I suspect we need a reasonable amount of protein, but shouldn’t go overboard in either direction.
SomeGuy
(Joey)
#19
Clearly before my time … Today I enjoy the benefit of standing on the shoulders of giants. Thx.
