Is this actually true? Having done the ketogenic diet and bringing carbohydrates down to almost nothing, my brain definitely didn't starve. In fact, running on ketones was amazing.
It kinda depends on what exactly they mean. Is it true that if you had zero glucose available in your bloodstream at all your brain would be unable to function? Yes. Is it true that if nothing you ate contained any glucose your brain would starve? No. There's a process called gluconeogenesis which produces more than enough glucose for your brain to function no matter how few carbs you eat.
The amount of glucose you need in your blood stream to keep everything running smoothly is a very small amount easily produced by your body through a process called gluconeogenesis.
I went 60 days sans any calories and my body self regulated glucose just fine.
I also adhered to a strict no coffee/tea policy.
In my case I tend to feel less hungry after drinking lots of flavored water (e.g., lemon juice or flavored electrolyte powder [1]), but I haven't yet done long fasting. I want to try soon.
Also, have you noticed any cognitive decline when you were fasting for weeks? Difficulty concentrating, memory loss, lightheadedness, mood, ability to interact with people?
water, black coffee, and salt do not produce this reaction.
And no, no cognitive decline whatsoever. If anything I had more energy. Also, I was supplementing electrolytes, and I ended my fast at like 25% bodyfat though, so keep that in mind.
Eating is definitely optional if you have the body fat.
http://contests.npcnewsonline.com/contests/2018/npc_teen_col...
This is day 61, I'd estimate like 4k-ish calories.
07:51 - Woke to Alarm
08:34 - Weight 199.8 - Bodyfat 26.1
08:41 - Start First Meal - Handful of Spinach Wilted in 2 tbsp Butter - 5 Olives - 1 Dill Pickle Spear - 6 oz Pickle Juice
08:45 - End First Meal
08:50 - Drank 1/2 Liter Water
08:57 - Start Sauna 165.0 F
09:00 - Drank 1 Liter Water
09:12 - End Sauna 182.5 F
09:15 - Shower
10:23 - Finished 2nd Breakfast - Single Egg omelette, cheese, olive oil, more spinach wilted in butter and 3 pickle spears.
11:35 - Lunch /w Dave - Bunless Burger, Bacon, Cheese, Fried mushrooms, Onions, Pickles and a Fried Egg on top. Salad with blue cheese dressing.
12:18 - 16 oz nitro cold brew
13:25 - 32 oz San Peligrino Unflavored Zero-Cal
16:23 - 5 Guys Bacon Cheeseburger - 2 Patties - Bacon - Mushroom - Lettuce Wrap - Mayo - Side of Mayo
18:09 - 9 olives - 3 Servings
19:23 - 9 Jimmy Dean Sausage Links dipped in 6oz Chunky Blue Cheese dressing.Did your stomach not get upset with you the following day?
Most people break their fast with something really easy to digest like pickle juice etc.
One other negative experience but that was due to my own stupidity and I've since learned better.
Basically if you're above 15% bodyfat, you only need two things to live. Water and electrolytes.
If anyone has any questions, more than happy to answer e-mails.
Essentially got really really bad cramps in my legs each morning towards the end of the first 30 days. Fixed itself as soon as I added in the magnesium and potassium supplements. Likely caused because I drank too much water during the early parts of the fast.
Kinda kicking myself for not getting a good set of blood tests for the 'before' results.
Thanks for sharing your story!
I won't say fasting for 21 days was the most pleasant experience, but it is entirely doable by the average healthy person. Nice job going 60 days. The hardest part for me was the social aspect, family/friends' repeated concerns because I'm 'starving myself', sitting at the dinner table while everyone else eats, etc.
Ketones were always at or near the limit the meter is designed to test for. I think anything over 8.0 mmol/L and it would yell at me to see a doctor. Lowest I recorded was 7.0, and almost every reading was over 8.0. Felt fine the whole time.
Echo what you said about the hardest part being social though.
For the remainder:
I felt tired, cranky, cold (especially at night), and on occasion I would have trouble getting to sleep. My inflammation was markedly decreased. I have dermatographia (skin writing) where I can use my fingernail to draw a line on my arm (for example) and within a couple of minutes it will swell up like an allergic reaction. After about 5 minutes it goes away. I tried doing this halfway into my fast and while the inflammation was still there, it was much much much less noticeable (and not puffed up.)
As far as overall goal, aside from losing some weight was trying to reset my immune system which has been out of sorts for the past couple of years. I've been through a battery of tests to figure out why I've been feeling less than normal (brain fog, neuropathy, etc.) for the past 2-3 years and I was hoping it would help. Alas it did not. I lost 31lb and gained about half of it back after a couple of months. I wasn't following any particular diet after the fast, particularly because when I experience these bouts of brain fog/malaise, I don't feel motivated to stay on track.
I've started walking 5-7 miles a day and exercising over the past couple of months and have noticed some improvement. I did a 3 day water fast a few weeks ago, who knows if that was a factor. I'm maybe 85% of the old me, which is a massive improvement from where I was coming from. Hopefully things continue to improve (or simply doesn't get worse.)
The fact that humans can fast for weeks or months isn't evidence in favor of:
> The amount of carbohydrates you need in your diet to survive is exactly zero.
This is a lot of work to go to in order to hang on to a pet diet that is shown to cause arterial injury and doesn't lead to greater weight loss than less harmful diets.
http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf
> Two normal men volunteered to live solely on meat for one year, which gave us an unusual opportunity of studying the effects of this diet. The term “meat,” as used by us, included both the lean and the fat portions of animals. The subjects derived most of their calories from fat and the diet was quite different from what one, who uses the term “meat” as including chiefly lean muscle, would expect.
...
> 11. In these trained subjects, the clinical observations and laboratory studies gave no evidence that any ill effects had occurred from the prolonged use of the exclusive meat diet.
People in the Arctic circle like the Inuit always lived almost entirely off of meat and Mongolians and other steppe pastoralists come very close, adding dairy.
> These studies were supported in part by a research grant from the Institute of American Meat Packers.
Inuit populations suffering lower incidence of heart disease is a myth.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12535749
> The mortality from all cardiovascular diseases combined is not lower among the Inuit than in white comparison populations. If the mortality from IHD is low, it seems not to be associated with a low prevalence of general atherosclerosis. A decreasing trend in mortality from IHD in Inuit populations undergoing rapid westernization supports the need for a critical rethinking of cardiovascular epidemiology among the Inuit and the role of a marine diet in this population.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25064579
> Most studies found that the Greenland Eskimos and the Canadian and Alaskan Inuit have CAD as often as the non-Eskimo populations. Notably, Bang and Dyerberg's studies from the 1970s did not investigate the prevalence of CAD in this population; however, their reports are still routinely cited as evidence for the cardioprotective effect of the "Eskimo diet."
They don't have lower incidence of ischemic heart disease than white westerners, they don't have lower levels of atherosclerosis, and these have actually improved as their diets have become more western and less traditional.
No malnourishment in the linked study or in Inuit populations.
> Inuit populations suffering lower incidence of heart disease is a myth.
I never claimed they did. I was responding to your claim that you don’t see how a long term all meat diet can be healthy and that malnourishment is certain with an all meat diet. If the Inuit incidence of cardiovascular disease is not lower I presume it’s also not higher or it’d have been mentioned.
The claim was not that an all meat diet was healthier, but that it was roughly as healthy. If their incidence ischemic heart disease and atherosclerosis is no lower than white westerners but they don’t get diabetes because they don’t eat carbs that’s (incredibly weak) evidence of health benefits.
Again, I’m not saying the diet is healthier, I’m showing evidence that it is healthy in the long run and that malnourishment is not a certainty.
Were you working during this period or off work? Sometimes starting the fast is troublesome when one knows there's going to be energy level issues.
I like the idea of avoiding coffee/tea, that's something I think could help in the long run.
> "If you do not consume enough carbohydrates in your diet, your body will synthesize the glucose you need."
>If you do not consume enough carbohydrates in your diet, your body will synthesize the glucose you need.
the body would preferentially reserve all glucose for the brain
The brain does use ketones in starvation sitautions, but it always needs to use some glucose, so over time the available glucose ends up redirected there.
From what I can find it appears that the heart does utilize ketone bodies for fuel, contrary to what you are asserting. There is correlation to heart failure, possibly from stress in utilizing an energy source with less efficient bioavailability.
For simplicity here's the wiki link as a summary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketone_bodies
I'd love to see the research that shows your point in more detail.
your hypothesis seems to be that a lack of carbohydrates (read: sugar) caused an individual to develop diabetes, but "diabetes" generalizes down to:
- the body (pancreas) does not produced insulin at all (type I)
- the body's cells are resistant to the produced insulin (type II)
we should be able to basically rule out type II because there should have largely been no insulin produced by this individual (glucagon would take priority due to low blood sugar), so insulin resistance seems super unlikely. and type I has a mix of factors but they are largely all autoimmune, where various pancreatic cells are destroyed by the body itself, causes generally unknown.
"losing the ability to process sugar" seems really sketchy, because those are all critical cellular processes that don't just go away. i realize you're probably not biologically trained but that statement doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
so which form of diabetes did this individual get diagnosed with?
I have no idea as to the validity of this anecdote but the idea isn't unprecedented. For example, correcting an iodine deficiency can cause the same thyroid issues that a deficiency can cause.
They're simply not, the body can manufacture all the glucose it needs.
The ketogenic diet is glucose sparing, that is your insulin levels are dramatically lowered since the very small amount of glucose you're eating should go to the tissues that require it, not into your fat cells.
So if you're on a ketogenic diet and then eat a lot of glucose, your body takes a little while to ramp back up insulin. That's not the same thing as insulin resistance or impaired insulin production in diabetics.
Your brain would literally starve without it. If you do not consume enough carbohydrates in your diet, your body will synthesize the glucose you need.