Keto Clarity: Your Definitive Guide to the Benefits of a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet (43 page)

People often experience health benefits from going into ketosis. However, if they do not eat sufficient amounts of micronutrients, especially vitamins C, K, and E and plant-based antioxidants, they are likely to develop insufficiency of these nutrients after two or three years of ketosis, as the stores of these nutrients are used up. It is possible to maintain intake of antioxidants and vitamins C, K, and E while in ketosis by eating more organ meats, greens, and sulfur-rich vegetables such as onions, mushrooms, and cabbages.

– Dr. Terry Wahls

Some registered dietitians promote the idea that eating a very low-carb, ketogenic diet will leave you deficient in some key nutrients. What’s ironic about this notion is that a healthy low-carb diet includes some of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet, filled with so many essential vitamins and minerals to help your body thrive. While fruits and vegetables are often assumed to be the sole source of this nutrition, the fact is, plenty of low-carb, high-fat foods are also rich in nutrients.

Ketogenic diet staples such as red meat, eggs, cheese, fish, and nuts offer up something that is completely lacking in a low-fat diet: fat-soluble vitamins! These can only be absorbed when you eat fat, and they’re essential for your health. So instead of creating nutrient deficiencies, a low-carb, high-fat diet is actually providing even
more
nutrition than you’ve probably ever experienced before.

8. On a ketogenic diet, you can develop scurvy due to lack of vitamin C.

Two explorers, Vilhjalmur Stefansson and K. Andersen, lived and traveled with the Inuit for nine years while eating the Inuit’s animal-based, low-carb, high-fat diet. These two explorers were later studied for one year at Bellevue Hospital in New York on the all-meat (including organ meat and bone broth) ketogenic diet, and the results were published in 1930. They remained healthy during the one-year study and didn’t develop scurvy or any other nutritional deficiencies, as had been predicted by the leading nutritionists of the day.

– Dr. Keith Runyan

The scaremongering continues with the claim that being in a state of ketosis doesn’t allow your body to absorb enough vitamin C, which leads to scurvy, a condition that manifests with symptoms of extreme fatigue, spots on the skin, sore and bleeding gums, and depression.

Those who are not extremely sensitive to carbohydrates have the option of eating plenty of excellent, low-carb, non-starchy vegetables that are packed with vitamin C, such as broccoli, kale, and green peppers, for example. But even if these vegetables aren’t a major part of your ketogenic diet, there’s another key point to remember: because carbs deplete the amount of vitamin C in your body, you won’t
need
as much vitamin C when you cut carbs. So eating a high-carb diet full of sugar, grains, and starchy foods actually means you need more vitamin C than when you are in a state of ketosis.

Finally, vitamin C is found in animal-based foods as well, as Arctic explorer and researcher Vilhjalmur Stefansson proved. He studied the nutritional habits of the Inuit population in Alaska for nine years in the early 1900s, and he noticed their diet was mostly fat and protein, with very little carbohydrate consumption for most of the year. In other words, these people are most certainly in ketosis most of the time. After Stefansson returned home and shared his findings, the medical establishment refused to believe he could have been healthy surviving on mostly fat, moderate amounts of protein, and very few carbohydrates.

So he agreed to do a one-year metabolic ward study in which he was locked in a hospital ward so that all of his food intake could be tracked and his health analyzed. At the end of that experiment, during which he consumed a virtually all-meat diet, he exhibited no signs of any health problems and had no vitamin deficiencies. The results of that study were published in the
Journal of Biological Chemistry
in 1930.

So much for trying to scare people away from keto with scurvy fears!

DOCTOR’S NOTE FROM DR. ERIC WESTMAN: I heard a talk given by an expert on the health of the Inuit. She explained that the Inuit never developed scurvy because there was plenty of vitamin C in the foods that they ate. Of course, it was so cold where the traditional Inuit lived that they
never
ate fruits or vegetables—just animal products. Just to show you how ingrained the importance of fruit and vegetables is in our culture, at the end of her talk she reminded us that, despite this information, we should
still
eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day. Go figure.

9. Consuming a very low-carb diet will increase the occurrence of kidney stones.

The common misinformation that ketosis and low-carb diets cause kidney damage and kidney stones has not been seen in clinical practice, nor has it been demonstrated in the numerous studies done over the last fifteen years or so. Instead, the results we’ve seen have all been positive.

– Jackie Eberstein

This is another common criticism of very low-carb diets that has no basis in reality. The claim is that people who consume a ketogenic diet are 500 times more likely to develop kidney stones composed of uric acid and 50 times more likely to develop the more common calcium oxalate kidney stones. What is their proposed solution? Eat more carbohydrates like white rice and potatoes.

If a person is uncomfortably symptomatic in some way, then they need to dig deep with a qualified, knowledgeable, and capable professional to determine the underlying problem. Here’s one hint: it has nothing to do with a “starch deficiency.” Dig deeper! One cannot consume so-called safe starches like white rice and potatoes and expect to maintain a healthy ketogenic state.

– Nora Gedgaudas

Just like the fears about dry eyes and mouth discussed earlier, this could be an example of blaming a ketogenic diet when someone is predisposed to having kidney stones anyway. To help prevent kidney stones, make sure you are properly hydrated, supplement your diet with magnesium and potassium citrate, eliminate soda from your diet (it’s full of phosphates that contribute to stone formation), and keep an eye on the pH balance of your urine (you can test it with strips available in any health store and tinker with your diet to get it more alkaline than acidic). One thing to keep in mind is that kidney stone formation is more common on a high-carb diet, not a low-carb one, as shared in a
British Journal of Urology
study published in December 1978.

It’s also important to note that many who embark on a low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic diet tend to be those who are dealing with obesity, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, all of which are contributing factors in the development of kidney stones. And if your low-carb diet contains higher levels of protein than you need, that, too, can raise your uric acid excretion, which leads to kidney stones (yet another reason to moderate your protein intake and increase the amount of fat you consume). While blood levels of uric acid do indeed increase when you first go ketogenic, those levels normalize within four to eight weeks.

10. Very low-carb diets induce insulin resistance and a “glucose dficiency.”

There is no such thing as a “glucose deficiency.” This cannot be found in any medical textbook on the planet.

– Nora Gedgaudas

Quite frankly, this is the most laughable criticism of all. The argument is that eating a very low-carb diet leads to a “glucose deficiency,” which brings on insulin resistance (in which the body cannot utilize insulin efficiently, leading to blood sugar dysregulation and other weight and health problems). People who say this believe that insulin resistance occurs on a ketogenic diet as a means of protecting glucose for the brain to function properly. Where do you start with such nonsense?

Let’s just say right away that there is no such thing as a “glucose deficiency.” Your body and brain function perfectly well using ketones as a fuel source. Because fatty acids and ketones are replacing glucose, blood sugar levels fall below what we might consider the “normal” range. But this isn’t a bad thing at all.

In fact, the lower need for glucose actually preserves muscle mass, and the hormonal mechanism for blood sugar regulation is inhibited by the presence of fatty acids and ketones, making them an adequate substitute for glucose. Keep in mind that being in a state of ketosis actually
protects
against insulin resistance, which could come on with a vengeance if you began consuming carbohydrates again. This is why if you eat a low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic diet, you should never take an oral glucose tolerance test—the glucose syrup concoction they give you will overload the body and not give an accurate picture of what is actually happening in the body.

The bottom line is this: consuming a diet that is very low in carbohydrates and high in fat
prevents
insulin resistance. The presence of beta-
hydroxybutyrate (the ketone body in the blood) increases your resistance to oxidative stress and acts as an anti-inflammatory agent (a very good thing for your overall health!).

Try as they may, the people who are opposed to a healthy ketogenic diet cannot prevent the truth about its incredible therapeutic effects from getting out.

Coming up in the next three chapters, we’ll examine the scientific evidence in support of low-carb, moderate-protein, high-fat diets in three waves: what we have solid evidence for, what we have reasonably good evidence for, and what are emerging areas of interest. If a study has shown that ketosis helps with a particular condition, then you’ll read about it in the following chapters. Get ready to be amazed!