My daughter was diagnosed Medium-chain Acyl-CoA Dehydrogenase Deficiency (MCADD) as a baby. She takes high doses of levocarnitine and her doctors recommend high complex carbs and low mct. Can she still live a keto lifestyle? What food should she be consuming and what should she stay away from? What does Keto look like for her?
MCADD and Keto
ctviggen
(Bob M)
#2
That’s a tough question. Is she on a lower fat, higher carb diet? I ate a Pritikin diet for years, which is very low fat, high carb. It’s doable.
Why do you want to transition your daughter to keto?
This is a discussion of this malady:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/mcad-deficiency/symptoms-causes/syc-20353745
This shows what MCTs are:
Saturated fats from 6 to 12 carbons.
It’s complex, though. Check out this table of milk:
From here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259495733_Fatty_Acid_Profile_of_Milk_-_A_Review
If you want to lessen the amount of MCTs, cow milk is best but still has them (C6:0 to C12:0).
I think your daughter wouldn’t want to eat anything with coconut in it. I would think that keeping to meat should be good, as meat is mainly MUFA (monounsaturated fatty acid), then saturated fat. Milk might work, as would eggs.
The best way is to check the amount of MCTs in a food. @PaulL, what is the nice database from the government that lists fatty acids too?
ctviggen
(Bob M)
#3
This is it:
I thought it listed the fatty acids, but it doesn’t. This is what it lists for ribeye:
Nothing about actual fatty acids. But others have it:
https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/172599/nutrients
Weird
VirginiaEdie
(Edith)
#4
Hi @Jared_Stuemke. Welcome to the forum. I don’t know enough about how fats get broken down by the body. Can your daughter handle fatty food? Has she ever tried it? I would think working with a dietician would be very helpful in her circumstances.
lfod14
#5
Ketosis itself is hurt there, fatty acid oxidation is the start of it all, which she can only do to who knows what a level. Don’t see how that could be ideal vs eating how she is assuming food quality is being watched. Probably pretty hard to constantly identify the fatty acid breakdown of everything.
I guess it depends on what you’d want to accomplish, and realistically how old she is now. Because if you start trial and error, she won’t / most likely won’t enter ketosis right, or fast enough etc, and will start starving. I’d think at least you’d want exogenous ketones on hard as a supplement.
PaulL
(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing)
#6
In your next post, you put the link I was going to post.
The detail is variable for different foods. I have seen many foods with the individual fats listed, and some with just summaries. The only way is to check the data for each food. For example, the listing for California avocadoes contains a list of individual fats, whereas the listings for beef that I randomly checked do not.
I suspect that the difference in the reporting has to do with which data source was used. “Foundation foods” listings come from one data source, whereas “SR Legacy” data are from a different project. It just so happens that the beef lisings I checked were in “Foundation Foods,” whereas the avocado listing was from “SR Legacy.” That alone might be the difference.