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Has there been any more research into the long term health effects of Keto? I tried it years ago, but found it to be more of a pain than it's worth (I seem to

Has there been any more research into the long term health effects of Keto? I tried it years ago, but found it to be more of a pain than it's worth (I seem to have better luck with intense exercise 3x per week and avoiding sugar). And it seems like tons of meat and cheese is actually bad long term, in the sense it clogs your arteries or increases cancer risk. Atkins did not look like he was in good shape inside when he died. It strikes me as a body hack that bypasses a lot of bodily processes evolution may have counted on as we developed. But it seems like we know a fair amount about the chemistry and processes involved, so I'm curious.

nathanaldensr 10y ago
If by "meat and cheese" you mean "saturated fat," that myth has been thoroughly debunked. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009...
rotwoof 10y ago
>And it seems like tons of meat and cheese is actually bad long term, in the sense it clogs your arteries This is an inaccurate conclusion based on old studies where the subjects underwent a high-carbohydrate high-fat diet. Recent studies on ketogenic diets (low-carbohydrate, medium-protein, high-fat intake) shows that dietary fats and dietary cholesterol barely make any sort of impact on the subject's cholesterol. Rather it is dietary carbohydrates and genetics which are the primary contributor to raised cholesterol and arterial blockage. When it comes to arterial blockage, studies have found that there is no significant correlation between high dietary fat intake and cardiovascular disease. >or increases cancer risk Keto is primarily a high-fat diet, not a high-protein or high-carb diet. Studies have showed that a sugar found in red meats called Neu5Gc is primarily correlated with inflammation in the body and the development of certain cancers. If you're on keto you're less likely to develop cardiovascular disease, and while there is not enough data yet to draw a scientific conclusion preliminary research indicates that individuals who follow keto are at less risk of developing cancer due to restricting sugar intake. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/search?q=cancer&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/search?q=cancer&restric... All of these posts link to multiple, verified studies which go into details about what I just said.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  What you said about cancer risk or long term safety of the whole class of those diets. Especially anything related to mortality and morbidity endpoints. Cholesterol numbers are nowhere near the end of story, they're just markers. Rat and mice studies are useless for this purpose. Please correct me if I am wrong. Preferably with published larger studies. In humans.
- twayamznacct 10y ago
  >shows that dietary fats and dietary cholesterol barely make any sort of impact on the subject's cholesterol. >Rather it is dietary carbohydrates and genetics which are the primary contributor to raised cholesterol and arterial blockage. So what about APOE4 individuals, which compose at least 20% of the population, who will see massively spiking LDL with higher saturated fat intake? Yes, it's based on genetics, but also intrinsically tied to dietary (saturated) fat intake.
kefka 10y ago
1. Atkins died from slipping and falling on ice, not a heart attack. 2. He did have a heart attack based from a genetic predisposition. His cardiologist said his condition was impeccable, considerint his diet.
DigitalJack 10y ago
Some epileptics do keto long term, so I imagine there must be information out there. Rather than searching for it in the context of weightloss, searching in the context of epilepsy might give better and more studied results.
- lloyd-christmas 10y ago
  For a nudge in that direction, here's info from my doctor's charity: http://faces.med.nyu.edu/events-programs/keto-kids-club http://faces.med.nyu.edu/events-programs/keto-kids-club
CuriouslyC 10y ago
Keto is not a body hack that bypasses evolution. Almost all humans are descended from populations with seasonal eating patterns. Carb rich diet in spring/summer/fall, keto diet in winter. The paradox is that keto diets, in the short term, seem to have a lot of great health benefits, yet all the blue zone diets are carb rich. My gut feeling is that for most people, the optimal diet in terms of health would be primarily high carb diet (with an emphasis on fermented foods and legumes), with occasional periods of keto dieting.
- collyw 10y ago
  The reason I don't really buy into the paleo theory (yet) is that people have lived in all parts of the world, with vastly varying diets. I haven't seen any conclusive scientific evidence on it yet (to be fair I haven't been searching). Intermittent fasting would be something that I imagine that most humans experienced wherever they lived however, and rat studies seem promising.
  - bitstein 10y ago
    > people have lived in all parts of the world, with vastly varying diets Yes, though all of them ate animal products and highly valued various animal fats. That being said, we can find evidence of people eating all-meat diets in every corner of the globe, and often times if there were more agricultural people nearby, the carnivores were healthier and stronger (such as the Masai vs. the Kikuyu, the Sami vs. southern agricultural Swedes, etc.). Just because people were healthy eating one type of food does not mean they could have been even healthier eating another food if they had access to it.
  - dashoffset 10y ago
    Paleo diet is not necessarily Keto, though.
bitstein 10y ago
Research? Sort of. Experience? Yes. Owsley "The Bear" Stanley, the famous LSD manufacturer and Grateful Dead sound engineer, lived very healthily on an all-meat diet for over 50 years. (Note: he did have cancer, though likely due to HPV and years of secondhand cigarette smoke and firsthand marijuana smoke, and his diet probably helped him survive it, and he had a heart attack, but that was likely due to complications from his youth that became noticeable after putting on 30 pounds of muscle weightlifting in his 50s.) He posted all about it on a forum years ago. It's a very interesting read: http://activenocarber.myfreeforum.org/ftopic22-0-0-asc-.php http://activenocarber.myfreeforum.org/ftopic22-0-0-asc-.php Traditional Inuit also eat an all-meat diet with lots of fat. See Weston Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html#ch5 http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html#ch5), as well as the writings of Vilhjalmur Stefansson (http://highsteaks.com/carnivores-creed/vilhjalmur-stefansson/ http://highsteaks.com/carnivores-creed/vilhjalmur-stefansson... ). The Plains Indians, as well. See "Guts and Grease: The Diet of the Native Americans" (http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/guts-and-grease-the-diet-of-native-americans/ http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/guts-and-grease-th...) and this talk by Stephen Phinney, "The Aboriginal Argument" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayf4R-y_RYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayf4R-y_RYo). Phinney himself has been on a very low carb, ketogenic diet for, I believe, two decades. Some argue the Inuit were not ketogenic (http://freetheanimal.com/2014/03/reiterate-elevated-ketone.html http://freetheanimal.com/2014/03/reiterate-elevated-ketone.h...), but they tend to overestimate how long glycogen remains in muscles after death, as well as mistaking a lack of elevated ketones as meaning they weren't ketogenic (it's actually because they just use ketone bodies more effectively, which is why urine tests for ketosis only work during keto-adaptation). Dr. Michael Eades had a good article on this: https://proteinpower.com/drmike/2014/04/18/beware-confirmation-bias/ https://proteinpower.com/drmike/2014/04/18/beware-confirmati... Anyway, there's a lot more out there, but that'll get you started. I tend to believe an all-meat, ketogenic diet is the natural human diet, and I've had great success on it for the past year. Other sites of note: http://www.ketotic.org/ http://www.ketotic.org/ http://www.empiri.ca/ http://www.empiri.ca/ https://zerocarbzen.com/ https://zerocarbzen.com/ (There used to be an interview on this one with a family that has eaten nothing but ribeyes for the past 18 years. The whole family had tremendous health, and it even helped the mother overcome lyme disease. I thought it was fake the first time I read it. They unfortunately had to take it down because they were getting angry mail from angry vegans.)

nathanaldensr 10y ago

If by "meat and cheese" you mean "saturated fat," that myth has been thoroughly debunked. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009...

rotwoof 10y ago

>And it seems like tons of meat and cheese is actually bad long term, in the sense it clogs your arteries This is an inaccurate conclusion based on old studies where the subjects underwent a high-carbohydrate high-fat diet. Recent studies on ketogenic diets (low-carbohydrate, medium-protein, high-fat intake) shows that dietary fats and dietary cholesterol barely make any sort of impact on the subject's cholesterol. Rather it is dietary carbohydrates and genetics which are the primary contributor to raised cholesterol and arterial blockage. When it comes to arterial blockage, studies have found that there is no significant correlation between high dietary fat intake and cardiovascular disease. >or increases cancer risk Keto is primarily a high-fat diet, not a high-protein or high-carb diet. Studies have showed that a sugar found in red meats called Neu5Gc is primarily correlated with inflammation in the body and the development of certain cancers. If you're on keto you're less likely to develop cardiovascular disease, and while there is not enough data yet to draw a scientific conclusion preliminary research indicates that individuals who follow keto are at less risk of developing cancer due to restricting sugar intake. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/search?q=cancer&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/search?q=cancer&restric... All of these posts link to multiple, verified studies which go into details about what I just said.

AstralStorm 10y ago
What you said about cancer risk or long term safety of the whole class of those diets. Especially anything related to mortality and morbidity endpoints. Cholesterol numbers are nowhere near the end of story, they're just markers. Rat and mice studies are useless for this purpose. Please correct me if I am wrong. Preferably with published larger studies. In humans.
twayamznacct 10y ago
>shows that dietary fats and dietary cholesterol barely make any sort of impact on the subject's cholesterol. >Rather it is dietary carbohydrates and genetics which are the primary contributor to raised cholesterol and arterial blockage. So what about APOE4 individuals, which compose at least 20% of the population, who will see massively spiking LDL with higher saturated fat intake? Yes, it's based on genetics, but also intrinsically tied to dietary (saturated) fat intake.

kefka 10y ago

1. Atkins died from slipping and falling on ice, not a heart attack. 2. He did have a heart attack based from a genetic predisposition. His cardiologist said his condition was impeccable, considerint his diet.

DigitalJack 10y ago

Some epileptics do keto long term, so I imagine there must be information out there. Rather than searching for it in the context of weightloss, searching in the context of epilepsy might give better and more studied results.

lloyd-christmas 10y ago
For a nudge in that direction, here's info from my doctor's charity: http://faces.med.nyu.edu/events-programs/keto-kids-club http://faces.med.nyu.edu/events-programs/keto-kids-club

CuriouslyC 10y ago

Keto is not a body hack that bypasses evolution. Almost all humans are descended from populations with seasonal eating patterns. Carb rich diet in spring/summer/fall, keto diet in winter. The paradox is that keto diets, in the short term, seem to have a lot of great health benefits, yet all the blue zone diets are carb rich. My gut feeling is that for most people, the optimal diet in terms of health would be primarily high carb diet (with an emphasis on fermented foods and legumes), with occasional periods of keto dieting.

collyw 10y ago
The reason I don't really buy into the paleo theory (yet) is that people have lived in all parts of the world, with vastly varying diets. I haven't seen any conclusive scientific evidence on it yet (to be fair I haven't been searching). Intermittent fasting would be something that I imagine that most humans experienced wherever they lived however, and rat studies seem promising.
- bitstein 10y ago
  > people have lived in all parts of the world, with vastly varying diets Yes, though all of them ate animal products and highly valued various animal fats. That being said, we can find evidence of people eating all-meat diets in every corner of the globe, and often times if there were more agricultural people nearby, the carnivores were healthier and stronger (such as the Masai vs. the Kikuyu, the Sami vs. southern agricultural Swedes, etc.). Just because people were healthy eating one type of food does not mean they could have been even healthier eating another food if they had access to it.
- dashoffset 10y ago
  Paleo diet is not necessarily Keto, though.

bitstein 10y ago

Research? Sort of. Experience? Yes. Owsley "The Bear" Stanley, the famous LSD manufacturer and Grateful Dead sound engineer, lived very healthily on an all-meat diet for over 50 years. (Note: he did have cancer, though likely due to HPV and years of secondhand cigarette smoke and firsthand marijuana smoke, and his diet probably helped him survive it, and he had a heart attack, but that was likely due to complications from his youth that became noticeable after putting on 30 pounds of muscle weightlifting in his 50s.) He posted all about it on a forum years ago. It's a very interesting read: http://activenocarber.myfreeforum.org/ftopic22-0-0-asc-.php http://activenocarber.myfreeforum.org/ftopic22-0-0-asc-.php Traditional Inuit also eat an all-meat diet with lots of fat. See Weston Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html#ch5 http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html#ch5), as well as the writings of Vilhjalmur Stefansson (http://highsteaks.com/carnivores-creed/vilhjalmur-stefansson/ http://highsteaks.com/carnivores-creed/vilhjalmur-stefansson... ). The Plains Indians, as well. See "Guts and Grease: The Diet of the Native Americans" (http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/guts-and-grease-the-diet-of-native-americans/ http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/guts-and-grease-th...) and this talk by Stephen Phinney, "The Aboriginal Argument" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayf4R-y_RYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayf4R-y_RYo). Phinney himself has been on a very low carb, ketogenic diet for, I believe, two decades. Some argue the Inuit were not ketogenic (http://freetheanimal.com/2014/03/reiterate-elevated-ketone.html http://freetheanimal.com/2014/03/reiterate-elevated-ketone.h...), but they tend to overestimate how long glycogen remains in muscles after death, as well as mistaking a lack of elevated ketones as meaning they weren't ketogenic (it's actually because they just use ketone bodies more effectively, which is why urine tests for ketosis only work during keto-adaptation). Dr. Michael Eades had a good article on this: https://proteinpower.com/drmike/2014/04/18/beware-confirmation-bias/ https://proteinpower.com/drmike/2014/04/18/beware-confirmati... Anyway, there's a lot more out there, but that'll get you started. I tend to believe an all-meat, ketogenic diet is the natural human diet, and I've had great success on it for the past year. Other sites of note: http://www.ketotic.org/ http://www.ketotic.org/ http://www.empiri.ca/ http://www.empiri.ca/ https://zerocarbzen.com/ https://zerocarbzen.com/ (There used to be an interview on this one with a family that has eaten nothing but ribeyes for the past 18 years. The whole family had tremendous health, and it even helped the mother overcome lyme disease. I thought it was fake the first time I read it. They unfortunately had to take it down because they were getting angry mail from angry vegans.)