Dom D'Agostino — The Power of the Ketogenic Diet (#172)

Hi,

I always thought that Ketosis would be a beneficial metabolic state to achieve for a certain time/period until I read the following statement in The Food Hourglass… “Ketosis is a state whereby the body makes large amounts of ‘sugar’ itself. But this is no ordinary sugar, this is a ‘super sugar’, called methylglyoxal. Methylglyoxal is 40,000 times more reactive than normal sugar and makes proteins stick together like a mad Pritt stick.”

The author – Dr Kris Verburgh – being a medical doctor and gerontologist, I have always taken his advice seriously. Also, the fact that high protein intake accelerates ageing is something that kind of messes with my head since I have been following (s)low carb for ages now…

Can you please advise… I am confused :-S

Cheers

Greg

Tim, ever try allowing water to surround your breathing channels (nose, mouth) in the shower to activate the stress response and adjust with your comfort levels?

So love everything ketogenic 🙂 Love the science and all the details!

Thank you Dominic and Tim for this episode! I’m a ketogenic diet fan – absolutely love this hunger free lean lifestyle – never felt better physically, emotionally, mentally. I tried most diet practices out there – atkins, vegan, raw vegan, low cal, paleo, frequent meals, IF etc.

Ketogenic + IF so far is my favorite protocol. It’s actually liberating for me. I don’t feel that I restrict myself or suffer socially plus I don’t feel dependent on food anymore.

I prefer cycling ketogenic diet though. Sometimes (especially after periods of intense training) I feel my body needs more carbs to recover. But those carbs always come from fresh fruits, non-starchy vegetables, nuts and seeds.

One thought about research of ketogenic diet protocols.

Have you thought of getting volunteers-enthusiasts who are willing to try different protocols and do necessary tests etc.? There are many people like myself willing to be a part of some experiment, getting necessary equipment, doing tests etc. Might be an option instead of waiting for funding.

Anyway. Thanks a lot! Loved it! Loved the one with Rhonda Patrick too!

It would seem Four Sigmatic is not set up to support the offer of your European listeners as it bounce us off the /Tim page to their normal landing page?

Tim I do and listen and agree with lots of your shows but this guy, although intelligent was so “tone-stiff” I had to switch off and put Baldwins podcast on. You got to cut into those long winded answers before your listeners tune out!! #engage

Tim, in terms of overall health and wellbeing; focus sing on mega-trends such as CV health, obesity/diabetes; inflammatory/autoimmune disease, and Cancer – have you heard of Synergy Worldwide.

Their flagship product, ProArgi9+, enhances Nitric Oxide production and longevity in the blood, which improves the CV system and therefore the transport system to all other major organs. This has the potential to help the body heal wherever it needs most urgently. I, for example, had a 3.5 day turnaround in pain from hip osteoarthritis, having been suffering for 2.5 years and considering giving up being a PT.

Hi Tim and Dom. I’d like to hear your thoughts/comments on the recent Kevin Hall study results that question the potential benefits of the ketogenic diet. He might be a good guest to have on the podcast to provide an alternative perspective. Love the podcast – keep it up!

Fascinating! Thank you Dom and thank you Tim. I made tons of notes, I can’t wait to follow-up, I appreciate the show notes as well 🙂

Dom, any correlation between PMS and a Modified Ketogenic Diet?

Regarding the Dom D’Agostino podcast… I have a two-word request Tim: “Layman’s Terms”. I tried sooo hard to hang in there, but after 35 minutes of medical Chinese with no dumbing down for non-medical professionals, I had to give up. Other than that, I enjoy some of your podcasts greatly and appreciate what you do. Thanks.

Did Dom provide a recommendation for the best exogenous ketone product for a newbie to try out?

He clearly commented on a few products but I wasn’t sure if there was one that he spoke to as an ideal starter product.

This is a great insight into the value of the Ketogenic Diet.. I have been experimenting with Intermittent Fasting for 4 months now ( 7 days per week ). Since I am a full time Personal Trainer.. my first objective was for fat loss and muscle gain.. besides gaining 3 lbs. of muscle while losing 9 lbs. of fat and over 3 inches of fat off my stomach… I felt amazing health benefits.. like more real energy and focus in the morning… joints feeling better… I actually skipped a hip replacement surgery.. Because of these amazing benefits that I realized as a drug, hormone, and ped free for life athlete attempting to role model the fountain of youth.. I started to personalize Intermittent Fasting nutrition plans for my Fat loss clients.. men and woman.. The results are very assuring that a personalized Intermittent Fasting nutrition plan is the fountain of youth.. and can be tweaked to gain muscle while losing fat while still realizing the obvious enhanced cognitive / brain health, health and longevity benefits of fasting..

Hello Dom, Great round 2! Any thoughts and/or evidence on what type of ketogenic diet and/or supplements will help lower high blood pressure? I lost weight, taken supplements (fish oil, CoQ10, magnesium), taken meds, and just started TM, all with no results. Thanks! John R.

I wonder if you could have gotten the same results or better on a raw food diet. I would be interested in knowing your average ph levels but suspect you are eating a lot of greens??

Tim,

Dom IS financially affiliated with several of the ketone salt products he is promoting. He very craftily dodged that part of the question twice. Claimed no interest in the University of South Florida patent which is most likely not true. Very dishonest, especially as he implied that Dr. Veech has his own commercial interests. Absolutely imperative that you get full disclosures from your guests when they promote their own and trash others’ technologies, especially when peoples’ health is at stake.

Very interesting. Glad that there was a follow up after the first. Can’t wait to listen to the 3rd!

After listening to this (and then everything else I can find by Dr. Dom), I’m left with one nagging problem. He mentioned roughly 1/3 of people can’t process a ketogenic diet. It just doesn’t work for them. Realizing you’re not a doctor and don’t play one on TV, I’m still going to ask how one would know which group they fall into. Is giving it a try the only way to know for sure, or is there some kind of screening or indicator?

Hey Tim I was wondering if you know whether its possible to use exogenous ketones as an alternate energy source to preserve your carbohydrate intake to further facilitate muscle growth?

Hey, I was wondering how do you measure triglycerides? does the precision xtra do that as well?

I’ve heard this interview a couple of times and it never sunk in. Once I read Tools of Titans, it finally set in. I jumped into Ketosis after a 3 day fast and I haven’t looked back. Excited to see the results after my first 3 months is over.

You guys should check out this research study being done on diets, it’s finishing up in May. I’m a participant!

http://www.fs2foodstudy.org

First, this comment is not at all about bashing any diet type, keto, cico, HCG, or, any person who is on these diets and are proponents of these diets. – I am always concerned first and foremost with HEALTHY – and a good healthy plan will ultimately lead to weight loss and to keeping that weight off forever.

But whether it’s losing weight, trying to be healthy, or both – we need to do it safely – that is key to what I am about and what I will strive to research for and push for. Safety.

So here we have in america and around the world maybe a hundred different diet types from atkins to Paleo and so on and so forth – most of them are variations on the same few diet themes we all are familiar with- eat less exercise more, less sugar, less carbs etc etc etc.

Every once in a while we come across a diet that may appear to be extreme – but is rather docile and ends up being one of those variations on the themes I just mentioned. But we don’t and wont know that always – unless we investigate.

More than any other diet it seems that people have had quite serious questions about the KETO diet. And for good reason – and not the reason you think at first. At first, i am sure that everyone reads the words High Fat and raises and eyebrow – a collective What you Talkin bout Willis!? It is that HF in HFLC that has many highly curious and cautious and needing to get some answers.

The problem is – on many websites, the answers are not quite clear, somewhat contradictory, and all over the place as far as science is concerned. Again, I’m not mocking when i say this next part; it could be in the best interest for whomever of the keto folk, to regroup among yourselves and come up with a better mission statement if you will for the keto evangelism that exists on the internet.

And this mission statement should have all manner of clear and precise bullet points, including windows for modifications which is fine, and including most if not all of the potential health issues related with this type of diet – a “diet” which had it’s origins in trying to treat people with medical conditions – seizures in particular. A diet which was and is largely done under hyper medical care – at least in the early stages.

Extending on the mission statement, we can eliminate any what may seem like huge contradictory statements – like when some keto people say “eat fat, it triggers appetite suppression and makes the body lose weight.”

So to that we have the “fat” thing to consider. This fat molecule many speak of that will do the triggering, that will cause you to lose weight – and thus we need a lot of it – “HIGH FAT DIET”. That needs to be made absolutely clear, honed down, and mentioned in the mission statement exactly which fat molecule (s) are you talking about – just like when we speak about vitamins – we say C will prevent colds and scurvy, or A will prevent blindness…list the fat molecule(s) that will do the trick or do what ever it is keto is saying it will do and thus we need copious amounts in our diets – or else we can’t achieve weight loss or some state of ketosis (more on that later).

But the problem with identifying this fat molecule might require some basic chemistry – or not – but it will get tricky as we push further into trying to understand how eating a lot of this molecule has some effect on anything; Basic chem or not – a triglyceride can be considered – that for the most part is what fat is.

Triglycerides are the main constituents of body fat in animals, vegetables (plants) and, this is key – humans – remember that later – that we already have tryglycerides (I always say “so you want us to eat fat from something else, to lose our fat?).

Anyhoo – so lets start with being clear about what type or types of fat are we talking about here, what types of fats do you want us to consume in high amounts – or is it all of them? How about the MCT ones – which some say is the safer way to go? Please make that distinction for us. And please, also understand and add the the bullet points that; so many things can and will alter that molecule – before it has a chance to “work” for you; heat, light, time (decay), oxygen.

So, and this is where knowing a wee bit of chemistry comes in, once you know how molecules change, and once changed they can no longer do what you wish for them to do, what you say they will do when recommending a high fat diet, you have to tell people thus – not to change the molecule.

Which means you’ll be telling people in the mission statement, that cooked foods are out, oxidized oils are out (olive oil, coconut and vegetable oil etc.), and rancid fats are out.

Which means the keto diet in the mission statement will no longer include steak, eggs, hot dogs, ham sandwiches, ice cream, butter – and my all time fav, Bacon. Or you can mention in the keto mission statement that you can still have and enjoy bacon and butter but that those items have nothing to do with the ketogenic process, cause chemistry and biology says they don’t.

Chemistry and biology, along with physiology, also says that even a perfect intact molecule of fat eaten, will no longer be that same molecule once met with digestive enzymes. And this is what I meant by remember that we humans make our own fat molecules, just like the pig we eat or avocado we eat.

So, at this point – half a mind is starting to realize that there is no food that will help to lose weight or trigger some appetite suppressant thing. Cocaine I guess though could be one food group/plant that suppresses the appetite (cue the sexy music :).

So, fat is now out of the equation. And as many in science and medicine are realizing about ketogenics, for seizures, the seizures, “it’s mainly a high carb problem”. And also when researching, we see that this “diet” has been tweaked and modified a plenty over the hundred years of it’s existence. And a more recent modification has been to suggest the MCT keto diet due to a significant lowered risk of health problems associated with a common ketogenic diet (mention that in the statement).

It is important to mention that in the statement because as I mentioned – All this recommending stuff, there needs to be accountability and that means we must always be uber aware of the dangers of doing some diet or another. For instance;

A person with a disorder of fatty acid oxidation is unable to metabolize fatty acids, which replace carbohydrates as the major energy source on the diet. On the ketogenic diet, their body would consume its own protein for fuel, leading to ketoacidosis, and eventually coma and death.

So now, the average but rare bloke reading so much here on the internet probably won’t come across that little ditty. And they most likely wouldn’t other wise think to consider it – since everyone seems to be fine. And then, when they are feeling like crap and a keto spokesperson says that is the way you’re supposed to feel, like crap (the Keto flu), the bloke says okay, I’ll ride it out…and then they continue, not knowing they have this fatty acids oxidation disorder – dot dot dot (include that in the mission statement).

And lets include this about kidney stones – Kidney stone formation (nephrolithiasis) is associated with the ketogenic diet for three reasons:

Excess calcium in the urine (hypercalciuria) occurs due to increased bone demineralisation with acidosis. Bones are mainly composed of calcium phosphate. The phosphate reacts with the acid, and the calcium is excreted by the kidneys.Hypocitraturia: the urine has an abnormally low concentration of citrate, which normally helps to dissolve free calcium.The urine has a low pH, which stops uric acid from dissolving, leading to crystals that act as a nidus for calcium stone formation.

And lets throw this into the mission statement: Ketogenics diets for adults can bring about constipation, raised cholesterol levels and, in women, menstrual irregularities including amenorrhoea.

And again, as I mentioned before – Because of the risk of complications during ketogenic diet, most hospitals begin the diet under close medical supervision.

Now, we can say this about a lot of things, plenty of diets perhaps. We can also find bad news about breathing and drinking water… The choices will always be yours but the best choices made are the ones that are the most informed.

They are also finding out now, 2012, – as opposed to the crude science of the early days of ketogenic study (1920’s) – that it is not a ketone, or fat molecule or sugar but a specific protein that had to do with seizures. and of course we make that protein ourselves in our bodies – or in a lab.

As for this state of ketosis – having higher levels of ketones in your blood does not mean you are in a state of ketosis. And it does not mean that now you are running on fat and not glucose – this is not the case. And all the symptoms or pre symptoms of this “state” are not consistent with all people – as well there is no clear identifiable characteristic of this state of ketosis – like say when you smoke a joint, there is a clear and distinct new ‘state of being’, so too with booze or Quaaludes etc.

Also, no one online or anywhere here who has claimed to be in a “state of ketosis”, perhaps cause their keto meter blood reading told them they were, has ever been in a hospital under close monitoring – to actually verify some type of metabolic transferring of fuel types – from glucose running things to now fat running things or ketones running things.

But the problem with that will always be that there will always be glucose in the body. Even the early days of keto, 1920 those patients never were without blood sugar, sugar in the cells and body tissue and sugar in the brain – science of the 1920, was lacking in many things, especially hyper microscopic in vivo study of patients.

Even without any glucose intake or intake of foods that will convert to glucose – we will still make glucose – we can not get around that – and we don’t want to get around that- or we are dead- glucose molecules equal life.

And i will put this in bold type for those who think a ketone is replacing glucose as the fuel source; THE KETONES YOU REFER TO ARE OF THE CARBOHYDRATE FAMILY! Yes, it will always be a sugar molecule doing the fueling. The end of the energy train, ATP, has a sugar component. Your fat molecule will always, if used for fuel, end up as a ribose.

Even DNA/RNA dynamics don’t happen without a sugar molecule – a chemist would quickly tell you that RNA – of DNA/RNA dynamics – the key to, starting point of, our personal genetics and making everything that is our physical, chemical and biological selves – is a sugar molecule – RNA is Ribonucleic acid – a ribose sugar.

And to that, many contradictions abound (which is normal in the evolution of science and medical study); low blood sugar can cause seizures… ???

+++++++++++++++

But back to fasting, Fasting folk don’t have these horrid symptoms that some Keto persons describe. None of them And no person that I have ever known, and I know plenty, has experienced this – even the first time fasters.

What I can conclude, in addition to safety first of course – is that most things, many industries, like all manner of convoluted – it somehow makes it seem more of a vast study, more significant than it really is or needs to be, one.

Two, a keto diet would do better to first lose the high fat part, from the name and from the diet. It does come down to carbs in and carbs out. Three, anything extreme, should always be met with caution and every question about it should be answered fully and without iffyness. Run fast away from the iffyness – and of course, iffyness can include youtube videos and diet and fitness gurus – no matter how educated some of them are.

Four, if there is any mention that a hospital is usually where a diet type is initiated – then also back away.

And for those who say, it worked for me, even more reason to back away – and head towards something that is more consistent and working for more people more of the time. Better safe than sorry. Or we can investigate and see why it worked for that person. And then look into why the same exact diet is not working for so many more. Why are thousands doing this diet yet only the smallest fraction of people are having any success? All things being equal, everyone doing the exact same things eating the same things on the keto menu. ???

And if the answer comes up – “everyone is different” then that would tell half a brain guy that it ain’t the diet at all but rather how that person responds to a low carb diet. And lastly, it is all about and only about a low carb diet – the only difference with keto is that it is a very low carb diet – and that could work if eased into it. Humans have been led to believe over this past century that we need so many calories daily – we do not. We need not even half the amount that is currently recommended. Always, for athletes and couch potatoes alike, the less food we eat the more energy we will have.

Oliver

Weight loss is not rocket science – yes there is some science to it but far less convoluted than all the weight loss folk make it seem. Barring surgery or drugs, if humans want to lose weight they simply have to burn more calories than they consume.

I’m about to listen to both videos and wonder if each will answer my questions. Does Dom workout out at higher heart rate intensities while on a ketogenic diet such as zero carb? Or does he meal time with loading carbohydrates solely for the workout and no other time of the day, or few carbs the rest of the day? I think guys that follow a ketogenic diet usually work out at lower intensities also while lifting heavy so they don’t burn as much glycogen because they have zero carb. I think caffeine hurts a ketogenic diet because it sets the metabolism too high to burn too much protein but I don’t know what Dom would say on this, I also need to study Mark Bell’s videos because he has like 100 hours worth of videos on I think losing 100 pounds of fat with a ketogenic diet. He does seem to have kind of funky energy on a ketogenic diet especially when workout out. Does Dom go zero or low carb and still work out at higher intensities such as intense weightlifting and 155 heart beats a minute + running including all out sprints. I think someone can go zero carb and still lift heavy because there’s long rest periods inbetween 1-4 rep max sets and so the heart rate isn’t that high so ketogenic diet might be popular with powerlifters. Bodybuilders might be scared of ketogenic diets on the other hand.