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Comment by msluyter | Hacker News Reader

Side note: I've been on a ketogenic diet (high fat, very low carb) for a couple of months now and, cognitively, I feel far sharper and more alert than at any point I can recall. And more stable -- no more post lunch slump.

So there's one anecdote for you.

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I also feel much more sharp on coffee. But as a heavy coffee drinker, pretty much every available study shows that I am just as sharp as I would be without the black stuff.

Turns out my own feelings about sharpness has absolutely nothing to do with congnitive ability. Who would have thought?

That conclusion is way too strong. Your feelings about sharpness on coffee has nothing to do with cognitive ability. On a ketogenic/low-carb diet, maybe they do? (I hope, but doubt, that there are studies on this.)

Sure, anything is possible, but let's not pretend it holds true unless tested. Make that unless rigorously tested, since it would be an outlier among cognitive self-assessments.

In my case, ketosis was great to fix my metabolism and kickstart fat loss when I was overweight. However, after a couple of years in ketosis, I started to get some worrying symptoms (mainly brain fog and constipation).

Now I am eating about 200g/day of carbs (mainly from rice and veggies) and I feel much better. My weight remains the same.

This is a good intro to the potential problems of chronic ketosis [1].

[1] http://freetheanimal.com/2014/02/ketogenic-diets-news.html

I had the same experience on a keto diet. There's also nothing like the euphoria of having so much energy after a long day (I work construction) that at 2am you have to get out of bed, still wide awake, and go down stairs to do a hundred push ups to burn off some energy.

Great, we can just go ahead and file that in the garbage with the rest of the anecdotes. Notice how everyone who is happy with their diet says the same thing you just said, no matter what their diet is?

Unfortunately there is not a whole lot of research on ketogenic diets outside of treating cognitive diseases. But it can be argued that if it helps prevent them in people with declining brain functionality, it improves brain functioning in healthy people.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2367001/

That could be argued, but the counter argument would be "that's a completely baseless and unfounded argument". And there isn't evidence that it helps prevent disease in people with declining brain functionality. Your link says "we should do some research on that" not "there has been research on that".

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