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Comment by guntars | Hacker News Reader

Contrast this with the recent HN submission that found that a high fat diet altered mice microbiome and created changes in the signaling pathways in the brain related to anxiety:

High-fat diet, microbiome-gut-brain axis signaling, and anxiety-like behavior in male rats https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40801181

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I could not find their definition of a high-fat diet. Anecdotally I have often heard researchers of ketogenic diets complain that in animal studies "high-fat diets" typically contain high amounts of sugar as well, and thus do not induce a low-insulin state as we see in ketogenic diets.

From memory, the study I linked used 40ish percent fat as the high fat diet, so not keto by any means.

One also needs to be aware of the actual fatty acid profile of the lab feed used. The researchers may not even know (or be aware of the possible differences) until asked to track down what the specific feed was.

“Animal fat” that is highly unsaturated because it was from pigs fed polyunsatured seed meal byproduct, is going to have different health effects from the more saturated fat from a ruminant like a cow, which typically resist PUFA accumulation. Even breed and time of year will affect the fatty acid contents, so to be sure you always have to test. In this case, looks like the fat was a crisco (pig lard, maby), coconut oil (highly saturated) and corn oil (highly unsaturated) blend.

On a related note, on the labels of food you buy, the types of fat listed can be wildly different from what is actually in the food, simply because there is so much variation it’s not economical to test that much. Food items from smaller producers can also just use a generic label provided by the FDA, rather than actually testing themselves.

Anecdotally, everyone I know who has been on a keto diet always complained about brain fog and memory problems.

It is normal that you bonk when you start and run out of glycogen. Your body adapts after a few days.

Yes, everyone goes through the initial sluggishness getting into keto, but this only lasts a few days to a week and can be dealt with via exogenous ketones. One of the biggest benefits for me in keto was consistent even energy. It eliminated the post-lunch lethargy and gave me consistent energy throughout the day. I almost felt like I needed to sleep a bit less when I was on it. I'm not sure if that was better sleep or actually needing less sleep but my energy was great when I was doing keto.

As long as I’m weight lifting consistently, I have no post-lunch lethargy. If I pause for a few days, I almost pass out after lunch. This is consistent. Must be related to the glucose-insulin response

People really need to test whether they are actually making enough ketones.

That's temporary though. That's not from the keto diet directly, it's from your body adapting to the keto diet. After a few weeks, that goes away entirely. It's commonly refered to as "keto flu".

Also, yes to brain fog, but I've never heard of memory problems. It's really just feeling low-energy.

there is also internet belief that this happens because of lack of electrolytes, and can be mitigated by adding nutrition additions.

> the brain related to anxiety

anxiety likely may produce some healthy behaviour reaction: animal starts running/hunting/escaping more, which may increase health indicators. Many humans start overeating, which is bad.

Story from my life: when I was in some stressful life situation, I exercised much more driving my anxiety/fear in that direction, and got the best fitness results in my life.

May depend what kind of fat it is.

My one one rat experience was trying keto years back and having my glycogen reserves bottom out and my body had not switched to ketone body metabolism so I was thoroughly spaced when I was chairing a critical meeting where we had 20 members vote one way, 20 members vote the other way with one in the bathroom. Fortunately a friend helped delay a remote until the person got back from the bathroom who voted the way we wanted.

It seemed like a win at the time but it was the first of many votes like that that revealed our organization was non-viable.

What a weird non sequitur that was

Perhaps the commenter is still spaced out by their diet.

If its gut biome, its probably both hereditary and envirnomental and going to suffer from way too many convolutional variables.

Although the value of fecal transplants will probably rocket if you can isolate biomes which thrive in tge current.dietary environment.

A high-fat diet and ketogenic diet are NOT synonymous. Keto is high-fat but high-fat is not keto.

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