The Health Benefits of Ketosis
The ketogenic diet has been around the medical landscape for about decades. Many professionals adapted this technique to treat drug-resistant epilepsy in children.
Today, the ketogenic diet, which is commonly known as the keto diet, is rapidly emerging in popularity. People deem it responsible for the weight loss success of those who have tried it. How it interacts with the body, however, is still baffling for some people.
What Is A Keto Diet?
A keto diet consists of three components: high fat, moderate protein, and extremely low carbohydrates. This type of diet drives your body to use a different fuel. Instead of making use of sugar from carbohydrates to start bodily processes, your body uses ketone bodies or the stored fat produced by the liver.
Reducing carbohydrate intake puts your body into a natural metabolic state called ketosis.
While this may sound easy, since you only need to cut down your carbohydrate intake, you have to slow down with your new diet routine before going into ketosis. Your current lifestyle habits will dictate you how long to get into ketosis, such as your activity level, eating schedule, carb intake, and a ton of other factors.
You might not even realize that your body is near the ketosis state. Hence, it is advisable to consult a dietitian before sticking into this regimen. To identify your current metabolic state, your ketone levels have to be measured through blood, urine, and breathing examinations.
6 Medical Reasons for Adding Ketosis in Your Diet
Nutritionists have established a love-hate relationship for this diet, but it’s time to shed light into what really constitutes the keto diet. Here are six science-backed health benefits of shifting into a ketogenic diet and achieving ketosis:
Promotes Weight Loss
The majority of people committing to a ketogenic diet aims to lose weight significantly through helping them lose more fat than ordinary dieting methods. The most effective way to lose weight is to cut down carb intake, and that’s what keto diet exactly aims to achieve. Ketogenic diet encourages your body to hasten up metabolism and reduce your appetite.
In order to reduce your appetite, you need to consume appetite suppressants strictly in a healthy and risk-free way. Keto diets mainly involve protein and healthful fats that can control your hunger. These types of foods reduce hunger-stimulating hormones, which consequently stops you from eating too much.
Compared to other types of diets, you will not feel hungry after a pre-set amount of calorie intake for a specific meal. Thus, you won’t be tempted to eat more and divert from your diet, since the keto diet is a satisfying, filling, and enjoyable way to be on diet. Also, you won’t have to keep track of your calorie intake in the keto diet, which many people find difficult to do so.
Moreover, people on the keto diet can burn more fat during exercise. Although, it can be difficult for people in keto to boost their performance in high-intensity exercises, like spinning and weight lifting. You can still burn more fat with steady aerobic exercises regardless of that. Cycling and distance running daily while on a keto diet speeds up the fat burn.
Treats Epilepsy and Reduces Seizures
Since the 1920s, the ketogenic diet has been one of the treatment options for epilepsy, especially in children. This neurological disorder is characterized by abnormal brain activity that causes seizures, unusual behavior, and loss of consciousness.
Although they can be easily controlled by anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs), some cases don’t. This is when the keto diet becomes useful.
Even though experts haven’t established clearly the association between keto diet and prevention of epilepsy, they believe that it has something to do with ketosis. The keto diet helps in epileptic conditions including:
- Dravet syndrome
- Infantile spasms
- Tuberous sclerosis complex
- Rett syndrome
- Lennox-Gastaut syndrome
- Myoclonic astatic epilepsy
- GLUT-1 deficiency syndrome
The keto diet treatment for these conditions has to be monitored by a dietitian. Children under this treatment can still continue to take AEDs as long as it’s under supervision. Eventually, children taking on the keto diet for at least two years have the opportunity to become seizure-free.
Since children and adult diet needs are different, a modified keto diet is developed for preventing epilepsy in adults, called the Modified Atkins Diet (MAD).
Improves Heart Health
Since the keto diet involves a lot of healthful fats instead of unhealthy ones, people on a keto diet can improve their heart health by reducing cholesterol.
Keep in mind that it will not strip you off of all kinds of fats, but keto diet only works on reducing bad cholesterol or low-density lipoprotein (LDL), as well as triglycerides. Also, it helps in increasing good cholesterol or high-density lipoprotein (HDL) levels in your body.
As keto diet reduces bad cholesterol in your body, you’re less likely to increase risks of developing cardiovascular diseases. Extreme carb consumption mainly drives the increase of triglyceride amounts in your body, because these fat molecules mainly put your heart at risk.
Along with these, cutting carbs in your keto diet helps in lowering your blood pressure or hypertension. High blood pressure is one of the significant factors of developing heart diseases.
Boosts Mental Health
The ketogenic diet is more than a weight-loss tool. In fact, it can offer health advantages for people suffering from various mental disorders, as well as stabilize the mood. But in what ways?
During the metabolic state of ketosis, your body increases its production of ‘feel good’ neurotransmitters called GABA. Take note that many anxiety disorders result from abnormal GABA activity. So, having a good balance of GABA levels in your brain encourages mental clarity, focus, and reduces stress and anxiety.
In a normal diet, a sugar derived from carb consumption is used by the brain as fuel for many neurological processes. Since your carb intake is replaced by healthy fat intake, the brain will use your ketone bodies as fuel instead. In fact, this alternative is more beneficial, since ketone bodies like beta-hydroxybutyrate are a more efficient fuel for bolstering brainpower.
You’re well aware that mitochondria are the powerhouse of cells in your body, and they’re also accountable for powering up your brain. Having plenty of ketone bodies in your system increases mitochondrial content that powers up content, expression, and activity of mitochondrial proteins, especially in your brain cells.
Moreover, your brain’s function can improve through ketosis, through reducing inflammation and oxidative stress in your brain cells. Since brain inflammation is reduced, lower inflammation levels combined with ketone bodies are great brain fuels for improved brain function.
Another reason why a keto diet can prevent seizures is that it increases levels of a major antioxidant known as glutathione. While it’s usually associated with whitening the skin, glutathione is a good source of protection against oxidative stress.
Along with boosting mental health in these ways mentioned, keto diets can help in a number of mental conditions such as:
- Depression
- Dementia
- Bipolar disorder
- Schizophrenia
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Parkinson’s disease
Reduces Acne
Some people suffering from acne only look at the condition of their skin to treat them. No matter how much skincare tips you swear by to treat your acne-prone skin, you might be looking at the wrong place. Your diet and gut health play a huge role in your skin health.
Acne develops due to abnormality in the normal processes and interactions happening in your skin. Diets involving high sugar levels and refined carb intake are the main culprit of acne.
A diet composed of too many carbohydrates powers up insulin production. Consequently, increased insulin levels encourage the production of sebum, an oily substance for hair and skin cell lubrication.
Excessive sebum buildup on your face can lead to your pores being clogged. It leads to bacteria growth such as the Propionibacterium acnes that causes cysts, pustules, and whiteheads.
In ketogenic diets, your body is subjected to ketosis which involves cutting down your carb intake. As you lower down carb levels in your body, your insulin production plummets down as well, dramatically reducing the production of acne.
But, you still have to be careful in consuming low-carb foods during your keto diet because this might cause you to break out more. You’re not limited to these keto-approved foods like salmon, eggs, nuts, olive and coconut oils, avocados, and more. However, make sure to focus on whole foods that are produced in high quality and minimally processed, like bacon, cheese, and butter.
Many keto-friendly foods also affect your gut health positively. Your gut has a lot to do with preventing immunity-related conditions like dermatitis, eczema, and acne, so pack up with keto-friendly foods to improve your skin conditions. These gut-boosting foods have anti-inflammatory properties that stop acne progression, like:
- Avocados
- Kimchi
- Butter
- Coconut oil
- Leafy greens
Bonus: Improve Symptoms of PCOS
Almost 10% of the women population struggle from polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). It is a hormonal disorder that causes menstrual irregularities, extreme androgen levels, and worst, infertility. While the exact causes of PCOS aren’t established yet, it can be pointed to genetic predisposition and insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance causes the body to gain more weight, which is why most women with PCOS are overweight or obese, and the majority of infertile overweight women have PCOS. Did you see the association between weight gain, PCOS, and infertility?
While there aren’t enough clinical studies to prove that a ketogenic diet can treat PCOS, it otherwise improved several markers of PCOS mentioned. It has significantly improved symptoms surrounding PCOS, which are:
- Achieve hormonal balance
- Reduce insulin concentrations
- Improve insulin sensitivity
- Stabilize ratios of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH)
- Especially, weight loss
Conclusion
Ketogenic diets aren’t just weight loss solutions, but they offer far more important health benefits for people suffering from these health conditions.
Since your current diet isn’t the same with others, make sure that you consult with a diet expert first before directly starting your own keto diet.
A ketogenic diet isn’t a one-size-fits-all dietary approach for everyone. Once you’ve started your own keto diet, these are the health benefits that you can achieve.