Are there any studies of a group of people who are on keto for most of their lives, and their health and longevity?
Long term health with Keto
I donāt believe so, and Gary Taubes believes that it may be impossible to do such a study. In any case, it would be extremely costly and nearly impossible to fund.
Itās going to come down to a process of elimination. So far we know 2 things fairly certainly:
- we need to eat to survive
- what a near perfect obesogenic diet looks like
There will never be such a study Iād be willing to bet, and by there is if they get around to it weāll all be long dead.
What about people who use/d it to control epilepsy? Anyone ever check on them?
Actually, the Eskimo ate mostly fat. They concentrated on the fatty organ meats, and gave the lean muscle meat that we eat to their dogs (dogs are better able to stay healthy on a leaner diet). And I donāt know that the Eskimo were or are any different genetically (Iād like to see the research on that assertion; I think some carb-biased researcher just made it up); ketosis is the default state of the human body if youāre a hunter-gatherer.
If you consider the standard āhealth markersā such as lipid panels, blood pressure, weight, blood glucose, A1c, cardiac calcium scores and probably more, are all improved greatly with a keto diet, I would have to assume that life expectancy will be longer as well. Not only that, it seems that keto may be a great cancer deterant.
We know for sure that metabolic disease is a cluster of many things such as obesity, diabetes,heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer disease, and more. We know that high insulin plays a huge factor in metabolic disease. Keeping insulin as low as possible can only be a good thing and keto does this.
Like the absolute disaster of the low fat, calorie counting advice or the past 40 or 50 years has proven to be an utter failure, I think keto will prove the opposite but in the meantime, I will not be waiting around for the āproofā.
Itās great that the health markers improve, and it seems to reverse health issues that people have, but they are a snapshot in time. Does it really tell you what the diet does to your body after 40 or 50 years on the diet? Another concern that I have is that none of the longevity āblue zoneā areas (that I know of) use a low carb diet.
Agree that ketosis is probably the default state for humans (or one of the default states for sure!) - but I think the Inuit non-keto adaptation is a real thing. Chris Masterjohn - not a carb-biased researcher by any stretch - did a whole video on it. Iād be able to tell you all about it but I only made it about 10ā in
Great read. I am glad I finally was able to read and understand the Keys study and what the associations mean. Dr. Fung says it all the time, Correlation is not the same thing as Cause.
Not really a snapshot in time for me. It has been almost 9 full years and my health markers vast improvements remain very good and I am fighting a predisposition for type 2 diabetes.
According to David Sinclair, Steven Gundry and Valter Longo, meat-based proteins activate aging pathways. What are your thoughts?
The studies I can find appear to show a correlation between the amount of protein in the diet and longevity, but nothing about the source of the protein.
Obviously, a plant based diet will be lower in protein, while presenting challenges to obtaining sufficient essential amino acids and other nutrients.
There is something to be said for pre-agriculture human evolution, which relied heavily on animal based food sources.
Based on my witnessing my own familyās data, you have heart attacks and strokes starting around age 55. All are diabetic and have high blood pressure. The generation before them all lived to be in their 90ās with no heart attacks, strokes, or diabetes. My guess is they didnāt have a high sugar diet, got plenty of exercise, and ate a lot of pigs.
At the risk of seeming āprimitiveā in my thinking, I have spent some time looking at longevity studies. If veganism was the ticket to longer life, wouldnāt vegans be the longest lived among us? Theyāre not. But to be fair, the āgarbage gutsā among us arenāt either. From hours and hours of looking at longevity numbers (a few years ago), I came to the conclusion that the longest lived people are generally omnivores who are a bit picky about what they eat. If you have information which disproves that, Iām certainly interested.
(Spoiler alertā¦ this is what I remember of finding. Donāt read if you want to do your own reading without any bias of anything I say on down this post.)
I came from an SDA background, one that liked to preach that veganism is next to Godliness and that only those who are vegan are fit for translation into Heaven and those who choose the vegan diet will be the healthiest and longest lived of all people. They also love to preach that because of their āhealth messageā, that they live 7 to 10 years longer. (Longer than āwhoā, they usually do not specify.) And so, a few years ago, while I was questioning a bunch of stuff, including whether I belonged in that denomination, I also questioned that 7 to 10 years statement that got so freely bantered about in crowing fashion. (FWIW, I am no longer associated with that particular church.)
As I looked through study after study, it seemed that just adding an element of āfaithā, regardless of what particular flavor, added about 3 - 4 years to the longevity. I also seemed to be seeing that just a general looking after of oneās health added another 3 - 5 years to the longevity. Hmmm. That 7 to 10 years because of any particular denominationās teachings pretty much vanished at that point.
All that said, the group that seemed to stand out as the longest lived, though not by leaps and bounds, just a little, were practicing Jews. And from that, I concluded that the longest lived people are generally omnivores but at least somewhat picky about what they eat.
I am not Jewish and have no plans to become a practicing Jew. But I thought it was relevant to the conversation as a practicing Jew is likely to be eating kosher, or at least leaning heavily in that direction. Lots of meats are kosher but a practicing Jew is not likely to be a vegan or a vegetarian. I can imagine that a thoughtful Jew could easily lean towards a keto or low-carb diet without that much ado. It is harder for a vegetarian and much harder for a vegan, though I wonāt say itās impossible.
I know there are people here who might disagree with some of the above, and thatās fine. There are factors that could relate heavily to the religious stuff, such as family connections, and being a part of things / people / groups that add purpose to a personās life for those who arenāt of a religious mindset. Iām trying to think in terms of āprinciplesā rather than āspecificsā. The stuff I was looking at was years ago so there might be better studies out there. But Iām sharing what I remember from having spent some time on the subject.
Firstly, amino acids are amino acids, regardless of the proteins they were proteolysed from. There is no way to remember whether the protein they were liberated from came from a plant or an animal.
Secondly, the essential amino acids are found in the correct proportions for human nutrition in meat, not in plants.
Thirdly, the notion that high protein intake hampers longevity comes from the speculation that activating mTOR, which protein intake does under the right (or wrong) circumstances, has a bad impact on longevity. This is why there is a lecture by Dr. Ron Rosedale floating around YouTube recommending eating just enough protein to replace the irreducible nitrogen loss (which on average is about 0.6 g/kg lean body mass/day). However, there are data to indicate that (a) activating mTOR may not be such a bad thing for our longevity, and (b) that the activation of mTOR by protein intake may depend on the level of carbohydrate intake in the diet (just as the insulin effect of protein intake depends on the level of carbohydrate intake).
My impression is that the human race ate meat and very little else over the vast majority of its two-million-year evolutionary history, so I doubt that there are bad effects from eating meat. People who reacted that way would have been weeded from the gene pool.
Look at animals who eat large animals in abundance. Lions, tigers, wolves, etcā¦ They all have short lifespans, small brains and small sexual organs.
Eicosanoids(Omega fatty acids), calorie restriction, magnesium and polyphenols are some things that have been shown to extend lifespan.