Do you think it would be beneficial? Why or why not?
If an otherwise healthy keto individual gets Coronavirus, would increasing dietary carbs be beneficial to them?
lfod14
#2
Canāt see what that would do. carbs arenāt an essential nutrient. Thereās plenty of situations where they can be helpful but the virus just needs to run itās course. Most people getting it are better in 48hrs with nothing done to them.
OldDog
(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.)
#3
My uneducated guess is that sugar seems to exacerbate most disease situations. Donāt see an exception hereā¦
Ruina
(Hyperbole- best thing in the universe!)
#4
I think if you are going to raise this sort of question, you should share your thinking. We know eating ketogenically improves our general health and reduces diabetes and cardiovascular disease, the two largest known comorbidities leading to serious complications and death. So why would altering the diet that solves those two problems improve oneās chances?
Iām not saying it wouldnāt. But even a hypothesis needs some reasoning behind it. Unless you are just asking for controversy.
CrackerJax
('Jackie P')
#5
I agree but I must say this post from @atomicspacebunny weirded me out a bit ā¦
I will re-omit if your burning only fat (high ketones) in the presence of a viral infection, it will kill you dead!
No if ands or buts period as you omit!
You eat sugar and carbs and lots of it to heal from a virus.
The reason the Corona Virus kills the elderly is because of the size of the thymus gland between the heart and the sternum, that is the core of the immune system and gets smaller as you age, its size determines the strength of your immune system and cross talk communication with the microbiome not a keto diet nor any amount of autophagy from fasting is going to save you from a virus.
ā¦
This prompted me to read this ā¦
āA Surprising Effect of Sugar on the Immune System - The Atlanticā https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/498965/
ā¦and now Iām not sureā¦
Shinita
#6
I canāt imagine why it would be suddenly desirable for me when carbs always messed with me and my body starts to complain in their presenceā¦ Itās N=1 and just a guess, nothing even remotely scientific but carbs arenāt essential and they are pretty undesirable for me so I canāt imagine what good they would suddenly do. But I remember the bad ones.
I would keep my carb intake at a minimum for sure as I feel best there and I burden my body the least that way. Maybe some fasting would be good but my body tells me if it doesnāt want food for a while.
SomeGuy
(Joey)
#7
My knee jerk reaction is: heck, no.
Rationale: Since carbs tend to be systemically inflammatory for most of us, it seems to follow that promoting general body-wide inflammation at a time when your immune system is best focused on repelling a specific antigen would not be helpful.
Then again, if you were on your death bed and the carbs could provide a temporary burst of metabolic energy at a critical turning point to help you pull through (despite the potential longer term cost), maybe thereās a unique case for that situation. Youād want an informed medical opinion ā¦ and when it comes to knowledge about the consequences of eating carbs, such opinions are pretty hard to come by anyhow. 
OldDog
(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.)
#8
I must be dead, and just donāt know itā¦
On the other hand, Iām not a mouseā¦
charlie3
(charlie3)
#10
I think this virus is going to put a light on all things healthy or otherwise and that has to be a good thing. 2 years ago I got serious about health and fitness, low carb, high fat, lots of activity/exercise, lately more careful about sleep. In that time havenāt had a fever so canāt say if the healthy living matters.
One school of thought says most of us will get the virus sooner or later. When there are so many millions there should be lots of data answering quesion about whether healthy living matters.
amwassil
(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.)
#11
@Halo Most of the people contracting coronavirus are eating carbs. Itās not helping them. On the other handā¦
atomicspacebunny
(Bunny)
#13
āā¦This switch seems to be importantānecessary, evenāin the bodyās response to bacterial sepsis. Ketogenesis limits the bodyās formation of substances known as reactive oxygen species, which can damage cells. When you introduce glucose (as in, if you eat sugar, or any carbohydrate that breaks down into sugar), that switch to a fasting metabolism is undone. The sugar triggers the release of the hormone insulin, which tells the body that we donāt need to use our fat reserves, bringing ketogenesis to a grinding halt. So when the mice were given glucose, the inflammatory process caused damage to neurons in the brain, causing the mice to convulse and die. Meanwhile the virus triggered a different type of sepsis, in which removing glucose was uniformly lethal. In that case, glucose seemed to be necessary for adapting to the stress of viral inflammation, by preventing stress-mediated apoptosis (cell death). Without that, an area in the brainstem was destroyed by inflammation, and the mice would stop breathing. ā¦ā
āā¦In principle, one day a doctor could give a diagnosis along with a specific dietary recommendation. That could speed recovery and limit the global crisis of antibiotic overuse. It might even beāI hesitate to say in the middle of a diabetes epidemicāan excuse to eat sugar. ā¦ā ā¦More
I would go with my natural built-in innate feelings, I remember having a really really bad respiratory infection along with a throat infection in the darn summer time (thought I was going to die for sure two separate times many years apartā¦lol) and my body was telling donāt eat, and I truly was not hungry and did not eat for days (Iām thinking to myself you surely must be dying āā¦oh lawrd hep me Iām dyingāā¦lol) then finally it disappeared (after a month) but that was bacterial and my body was not hungry, so that was definitely ketones at work healing my body because of loss of appetite.
I would hate to see somebody following the ketogenic diet purposely trying to starve themselves of carbohydrates thinking ketosis is going to heal them if they got this corona virus when there body is telling them to eat sugar?
āā¦In the immediate term, Medzhitovās takeaway is to follow our cravings when weāre sick, because they may reflect evolutionary mechanisms that evolved to be protective: āSo, for example, when you have the flu, you kind of feel like having some tea and honey. That may be the bodyās way of telling us that we need some glucose. I suspect we have these mechanisms that tell us what we prefer to eat (or not to eat) when weāre sick. Those are the mechanisms we should probably listen to.ā ā¦ā ā¦More
OldDog
(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.)
#14
Carbohydrates are not necessary for human health.
Why would they be necessary when we are sick?
Meanwhile:
# Much ado about keto and influenza (in mice)
A new study shows that mice fed a ketogenic diet for seven days were protected from a lethal flu virus by increasing the number of specialized immune cells in their lungs. But interestingly, this protection only came once the mice had metabolically adapted to the high-fat diet. Giving exogenous ketones without the metabolic adaptation did not confer the same benefit.
atomicspacebunny
(Bunny)
#15
Even in that case I would still go with what my body is telling me, that may only be true in mice[1] not humans.
I see that parroting quote quite often but you fail to describe what you mean by that, your talking about sugar, just in case you did not know that?
Essential nutrients that come from whole food complex carbohydrates are absolutely necessary, there are no essential foods.
References:
OldDog
(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.)
#16
Speaking of parroting, that is simply not true no matter how much you want it to be true.
Iāll show you the science when I have a little more time, if someone else doesnāt beat me to it.
atomicspacebunny
(Bunny)
#17
No need too!
Science and pseudo-science are two different things?
Iāll stick with the science!
atomicspacebunny
(Bunny)
#19
Truth is very simple; somebody has to eat the carbs, the animal eats the plants, absorbs the nutrient from the plants and you get the essential nutrients from eating the animal, so carbohydrates (plants) and the nutrients they contain are absolutely necessary or there would be no life on this planet. Or you can eat the plants too?
When you eat carbohydrates you produce saturated fats endogenously so there is your dietary fat.
So let me parrot your statement back to you: āā¦no matter how much you want it not to be true, it is trueā¦ā
Rclause
(Scott)
#20
If this is going to be carried out to the extent that because an animal I eat has eaten carbs prior, therefore I require carbs. Well you have lost me on that logic.