Well, Alcohol is an even more easily accessible fuel that your body can readily use for a variety of activities... but its negatives are well understood...
Just because something is less pleasant doesn't automatically mean it's good. On the surface, it would be weird for ketones to improve brain activity - after all "keto flu" is a thing, and it is definitely is not a state of high performance. And if ketones were that healthy then diabetics would the the healthiest people of all. Instead, they are poison, and this is well documented.
> On the surface, it would be weird for ketones to improve brain activity - after all "keto flu" is a thing, and it is definitely is not a state of high performance.
Keto flu is from a low level of ketones, not a high level. Once enough ketones become available there is no more keto flu. From there most people feel at least normal, and many feel a bit better than normal because the cycles of both energy and satiety are smoothed out by the change in fuel sources.
> And if ketones were that healthy then diabetics would the the healthiest people of all.
Diabetics have health complications precisely because they cannot moderate their blood glucose, with or without ketones. Ketones do not regulate blood glucose, insulin does. Unlike glucose, excess ketones are harmlessly urinated out, they do not need insulin to process them.
Glucose in the blood is toxic [1] if it isn't metabolised because of lack of insulin, and even most diabetics consume enough carbohydrates for this to be a risk. There is a clear relationship between availability of insulin and safe levels of glucose consumption, in fact injecting insulin is usually the first intervention if blood glucose is at dangerously high levels. Search for insulin in that paper.
Ketones don't enter into this picture at all as either a toxin or the solution to toxicity. Precisely the point is that ketones can substitute for most of your glucose needs without risking toxicity like glucose does.
If all of that isn't enough, diabetics often do better following a ketogenic diet [2], not worse. When you can't naturally produce enough insulin to process the glucose you consume for daily energy, producing ketones instead is a safe workaround which your body performs naturally. What part of that is evidence for ketones themselves being the problem?
Furthermore there is some indication that people experiencing type 2 diabetes are suffering from essentially a worn out pancreas. In other words their insulin resistance is a result of constantly eating more sugars/carbs than the organ can keep up with. Switching to a keto diet instead of supplementing insulin gives the organ a break where it can actually start to heal and return to a more normal insulin production routine, ultimately meaning that these people can eat a donut occasionally without requiring the insulin supplement like they otherwise would with a traditional treatment plan where their body hasn’t been given a break from the onslaught of glucose. This can be life changing for a type 2 diabetic, because their lifestyle returns to normal outside of paying attention to their diet.
Insulin resistance is a quality of the cells in your body which cease responding to insulin at their receptors. So higher levels of insulin fail to reduce blood sugar levels. This is the hallmark of T2D.
You are confusing this with beta cell function, which also becomes impaired in many T2D people, where the islet cells become damaged, insulin production is subsequently impaired as well, this is a later stage effect in T2D progression.
T2D likely manifests from prolonged energy surplus leading to oxidative damage to cells and accumulation of excess fat stores, particularly visceral fat stores in the organs - the cell damage and overfull visceral and sometimes subcutaneous fat stores both lead to hormonal and epigenetic changes and directly to insulin resistance.
That's still oversimplified, but it's a useful model.
> diabetics often do better following a ketogenic diet [2]
Your citation is a single case study over a short period of time. It does not support your claim of “often”. This is deceptive citation and undermines your arguments.
> The LCKD improved glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes such that diabetes medications were discontinued or reduced in most participants.
> LCD can improve blood glucose more than LFD in Chinese patients with T2DM. It can also regulate blood lipid, reduce BMI, and decrease insulin dose in patients with T2DM.
> The VLCK diet appears to control glycemia and decrease body weight for up to 6 months in people with obesity and diabetes. Beneficial changes in serum triglycerides and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, along with reductions in antidiabetic medications, continued in the VLCK group until 12 months. However, the quality of currently available evidence is not sufficient to recommend VLCK diets. A major limitation of the VLCK diet is patients' lack of adherence to carbohydrate restriction.
So sure, there are issues with adherence and the volume & quality of data here. That doesn't invalidate the trends seen across every study that looks into this. It's more than one study and, within each study, it indeed seems to benefit most participants.
Keto flu happens when you transition because of loosing too much water that was retained by carbs and electrolytes gets flushed with the water. Very easy to fix by taking a electrolyte supplement when starting keto (LMNT etc).
> then diabetics would the the healthiest people of all. Instead, they are poison, and this is well documented.
It is documented on T1D, where they make no insulin at all! Keto still helps on T1D, you will always need insulin, just less, and have more stable blood glucose (and all the benefits that entails with it).
For T2D, it's the best solution for it (see virtahealth.com for a great company that helps on this).
High blood glucose levels are literally toxic. This will damage every cell in your body. Your body can buffer sugar intake to an extent in order to maintain homeostasis but over time this tends to cause insulin resistance. A little sugar is fine but larger amounts are poisonous. The exact limit depends on a number of factors such as muscle mass and liver glucagon level.
It's perhaps more accurate to say sugars and simple carbs are easy to absorb whereas fats and complex carbs are harder to absorb. A single gram fat is the most calorie dense substance by weight that we can consume I think. It's just in practice it's hard to become fat by consuming only excess fat.
calories in / calories out is a foolproof way to track weight gain/loss over extended periods of time. So people tend to oversimplify nutrition and diet to this one number.
But it is indisputable that your body processes carbs, protein, and fat in very different ways. If you only eat donuts and bacon and candy consistently, in normal
caloric levels, then you will likely develop type 2 diabetes (or more precisely insulin resistance). Glucose in your blood is toxic. Are you really going to argue that this diet is perfectly safe?
> Are you really going to argue that this diet is perfectly safe?
I'm not sure that I ever claimed it was? All I'm saying is there's no point in vilifying those food types as they can be part of a perfectly healthy diet.
There is (and let’s not bey coy: arguing all calories are equal implies a sugar diet is perfectly healthy). People literally don’t understand how bad excessive sugar intake is because it’s not vilified enough. A mature adult understands that everyone has vices and all things are usually fine in moderation, and that’s how we should approach sugar. I strongly believe in 20 years sugar will be seen similar to tobacco. And that’s okay. You and I can still enjoy an occasional donut.
Sugar calories are not equal to say, calories in nuts. The sugar calories are indeed worse. One reason for this is the caloric energy in nuts are not fully absorbed like with sugar. So even though nuts are energy dense, they won’t cause obesity like sugar.
Calories are pretty much meaningless. The kind of food, proportions of carbohydrates, and other components is very critical. Nutrition =/= filling gas in a car.
There are calorie dense foods that are nutrition poor foods, and vice versa. In living things, it's not about energy only, the contents that help keep the body processing and regulating matter by a lot.
The quality of calories matters a lot too.
It won't be, ketone supplements are too expensive for that.
> My idea is that sugar in quantities we ingest nowadays damages all and makes more problems
This is nonsense. Sugar is an easily accessed fuel that your body can readily use for a variety of activities.