Keto Clarity: Your Definitive Guide to the Benefits of a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet (12 page)

Given that their audience is composed of the people most at risk for ketoacidosis, the ADA’s concern is understandable. But as long as their blood sugar stays low, diabetics have nothing to fear from ketosis—and since research shows that it can be hugely beneficial in controlling diabetes (again, more on that in chapter 16), they may actually have a lot to gain.

Source: Diabetes.org

Our studies suggest that the major protective effect of ketosis is a significant reduction in glucose metabolism. This is the opposite of diabetes.

– Dr. Charles Mobbs

Just as all these highly regarded organizations—each considered a major authority on health—have formed a united front on cholesterol as the cause of heart disease, (as we shared in
Cholesterol Clarity
), so too have they ganged up on ketosis, describing it as something that is both undesirable and dangerous. These messages from doctors, dietitians, and know-it-all gurus are totally bogus. That’s why we decided to write this book: to present the arguments for ketosis that are nearly the exact opposite of what all these health groups are saying.

A ketogenic diet has been shown to produce certain therapeutic effects that have led many doctors and other health professionals to recognize it as even more beneficial than the most advanced medications on the market today. In the next chapter, we’ll learn more about medical practitioners whose patients are following low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic diets, with some rather stunning results.

Key Keto Clarity Concepts

• Mainstream health organizations often use hyperbolic rhetoric to describe ketosis.
  
• Most information we hear about ketosis is incorrect.
  
• Confusion about the difference between ketosis and ketoacidosis is a major issue.
  
• Major health authorities are united in their opposition to ketosis.
  

Humans went into ketosis every winter for thousands of generations. Being in a low level of ketosis is the more natural state for our metabolism. We do have metabolic flexibility and can operate on amino acids, glucose, or fat.

– Dr. Terry Wahls

When you hear the leading health authorities say all those negative things about ketosis that we shared in the last chapter, it may lead you to the conclusion that no physician would ever want a patient to be put on a ketogenic diet. But the truth is that plenty of doctors are prescribing a low-carb, high-fat nutritional approach for patients who are dealing with a wide variety of chronic health problems, and they are seeing dramatic improvements on the diet. (I created a resource at LowCarbDoctors.blogspot.com to help connect patients to people in the medical profession who are willing to think outside the box to make them healthier.) In this chapter, we’ll highlight a few of them and show how the low-carb, high-fat diet is working for their patients.

When Littleton, Colorado–based family physician Dr. Jeffry Gerber began teaching his patients about the connection between their illnesses and their diets of refined and processed foods, he got their attention fast. Unlike many of his medical colleagues, though, Dr. Gerber didn’t pull out his prescription pad and advise his patients to take medications. Instead, he encouraged them to embrace a lifestyle change that included a significant reduction in carbohydrate consumption and a deliberate increase in natural dietary fats (including saturated fat). These changes, he explained, would help them control their hunger, promote weight loss, and ultimately heal the particular health calamity they were facing.

Carbohydrate overconsumption has created the walking dead.

– Stephanie Person

Dr. Gerber doesn’t leave his patients to their own devices with this information. Instead, he tracks their changes in weight, cardio-metabolic markers, and other key health parameters to see how the shift to a ketogenic diet is working for them. Obesity and type 2 diabetes are two obvious signs of metabolic disease and inflammation brought on by a substandard diet. Dr. Gerber does not subscribe to the notion that we get fat and unhealthy by eating too much. He describes this as “shortsighted” and points instead to the
quality,
not
quantity
, of calories that come from a diet of whole, unprocessed, nutrient-dense foods, like those our early ancestors ate.

What’s more, Dr. Gerber says, a large part of skyrocketing health-care costs stems from using ineffective therapies for chronic health problems, including the overuse of drugs, surgeries, and other treatments that never address the underlying issues. Making nutritional therapies, such as the ketogenic diet, the first step in treatment would save costs and perhaps even result in better patient outcomes than if we continued to do things the same way we always have. This may sound like a simple solution, but its advocates have had a difficult time spreading the message in the face of the federal government’s nutritional guidelines and the heavy lobbying by the processed food industry, which stands to lose billions of dollars in annual revenue if people begin cleaning up their diets.

Unfortunately, conventional nutritional guidelines continue to support the concept that carbohydrates are required for life and health. The most recently updated American Diabetes Association dietary guidelines, for example, urge Americans, with or without diabetes, to get at least 130 grams of carbohydrates per day to provide sufficient nutrition for the brain. But this runs contrary to the science and real-life experiences in which humans have survived without dietary carbohydrates for months, even years.

– Dr. William Davis

Interestingly, Dr. Gerber notes that there have been many clinical trials in recent years showing that a low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic diet results in greater, more sustainable weight loss, improved cholesterol markers, and better blood sugar control than the standard low-fat, high-carb diet. It really comes down to understanding the role of insulin metabolism and that dietary carbohydrates, not saturated fat, drive the increase in insulin production and inflammation that are at the heart of virtually every chronic health problem people are dealing with today—including heart disease, which is the result of inflammation and oxidative stress, not high cholesterol. (Our book
Cholesterol Clarity
explores this idea in detail.) The scientific evidence is a major reason Dr. Gerber is so enthusiastic about using ketogenic diets with his sick patients. And having seen how much his patients improve on a ketogenic diet, he knows from experience that it’s the therapy that will work best for them. He’s not alone.

Dr. Sue Wolver, an internist based in Richmond, Virginia, has been practicing medicine for twenty-five years and once dished out the standard low-fat diet advice that has become so many doctors’ default position on nutrition. When her patients failed to see the kind of health improvements she was expecting, she just assumed they weren’t following her advice very well. But after watching patient after patient fail to lose weight or improve their health despite frequent conversations she had with them about diet and exercise, Dr. Wolver knew there had to be a better way.