What is Ketosis?

If you look into different strategies to lose weight, you’ll come across a variety of diets and lifestyle changes that may transform your body into a fat-burning powerhouse. Increasing the intensity and regularity of your workout regimen is one method for losing body fat and trimming difficult places, but it is not the only method. You can also burn more fat by entering a metabolic state known as ketosis, which is the mechanism underlying several low-carb diets such as the ketogenic and Atkins diets. Understanding what ketosis is and how to attain it will help you get your body in shape. However, before you attempt to attain ketosis, you should be aware of the process’s possible health dangers. Food is your body’s principal source of energy, and three major nutrients in meals provide this energy to your body. Carbohydrates, fat, and protein are the three types. Typically, your body will break down carbs from meals first, followed by fat and protein. Ketosis is a normal metabolic condition that happens when your body lacks carbohydrates (or glucose) for energy and instead burns fat. When your carbohydrate intake is minimal, you enter ketosis. When your body breaks down fat, it generates an acid called ketones which serves as the primary source of energy for your body and brain. Because ketosis changes your metabolism and relies on fat for energy, your body may burn fat more quickly. Translation? You might be able to attain your weight reduction target sooner than if you didn’t limit carbohydrates at all.

How Do You Achieve Ketosis Successfully?

It’s not exactly simple to get your body into a state of ketosis and keep it there. To get there and remain there, you must significantly reduce your carbohydrate consumption; aim for no more than 20 to 50 grams (g) each day. Even items that aren’t often thought of as rich in carbohydrates, such as nuts and non-starchy vegetables, nonetheless include a modest quantity of carbohydrates and must thus be restricted or avoided on this diet. One medium pear, for instance, has 26 g of carbohydrates. You will need protein if you’re on the keto diet, but you should keep your intake to no more than 20% of your daily caloric intake. This is crucial because when you eat more protein than you require, your body uses a process known as gluconeogenesis to turn the extra protein into carbohydrates. Your body is forced out of ketosis by this process. Intermittent fasting is a different dietary strategy that is becoming increasingly popular nowadays. It is focused on missing meals for certain, predetermined amounts of time. You can’t enter ketosis alone through intermittent fasting. Some people mix intermittent fasting with a ketogenic diet, but you should be aware that that strategy has not been tested nor shown to be effective.

Signs and Symptoms That You Are In Ketosis?

One approach to determine if you’re in ketosis is to check your ketone level. This metabolic state often begins after three or four days of reducing your carbohydrate consumption, this metabolic state often begins. To determine your level, you do not need to see a doctor. Use a blood sugar meter that can measure ketones, or get a ketone urine test at a nearby drugstore. Under 0.6 mmol/L of millimoles of ketone per liter (mmol/L) is considered normal.  A condition of ketosis can be detected at any level greater than this. Weight reduction, hunger loss, increased energy (though energy may be lessened in the first few weeks on a diet), fruity-smelling breath (halitosis), and constipation or diarrhea are among the physical indications and symptoms of ketosis. Many of these symptoms refer to what people call the “keto flu”.

What Is The Keto Flu?

A set of symptoms known as the “keto flu” may emerge two to seven days after beginning a ketogenic diet. Some of the symptoms of this ailment, which are not recognised by medicine, include headache, fuzzy thinking, exhaustion, irritability, nausea, trouble sleeping, and constipation. On the database of indexed medical research articles known as PubMed, a search for this phrase returns zero results. On the other side, thousands of blogs and articles regarding the keto flu may be found online. Since we are just left with our views and experiences, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what occurs following diet modification. These symptoms might not even be specific to the ketogenic diet; some of my patients report experiencing a similar range of symptoms after reducing their intake of processed foods or choosing to follow an anti-inflammatory or elimination diet. Why some people feel so awful following this dietary adjustment is a mystery to us. Is there a detox component involved? Is it a withdrawal from carbohydrates? Perhaps an immunologic response? Or is this a result of the gut microbiota changing? Whatever the cause, it appears that some individuals may experience the symptoms associated with the keto flu after “cleaning up” their diet.

How Does The Keto Diet Work?

Despite all the excitement, few people—including those following the ketogenic diet—could pinpoint the precise mechanism by which it causes weight reduction. After a few days, the body enters ketosis, also known as fat-burning, when you maintain your carb consumption in the keto-required 20 to 50 grammes per day range, which isn’t much (one apple contains approximately 15 grammes of carbohydrates), and replace those missing carbs with a high quantity of fat (70% to 80% of calories). Because protein may also be turned by your body into glucose, making it a preferred fuel source and preventing your body from staying in ketosis, the amount of protein on the keto diet is also maintained fairly low. Additionally, protein raises insulin secretion, which prevents ketosis. The precise ratios of the keto diet mean that any carb “cheating”—a cookie here, a bowl of rice there—will cause you to fall out of ketosis, undermining the chemical reaction that is the foundation of the diet. This is in contrast to many other diets, which allow flexibility in how you divide your carbs, protein, and fat content (possibly focusing more on calories, portion sizes, or quality of carbs).

Exogenous Ketones: Another Avenue

We can ingest ketones and ketogenic precursors exogenously in place of going ketogenic (generating our ketones from body fat storage). Regardless of how you got there, you are in ketosis if your blood ketones are above 0.5mM. Even without a ketogenic diet, carbohydrate restriction, or fasting, exogenous ketones offer a means to enter ketosis. Although the path to ketosis differs, exogenous vs. endogenous ketones have almost identical signaling effects; BHB and AcAc produced naturally by the liver are structurally identical to BHB and AcAc taken as supplements. Exogenous ketones can be utilized by people who are fasting or following a ketogenic diet to intensify ketosis and assist them reach greater blood ketone levels than might otherwise be feasible.

Awakened Labz: Keto Boost

This cutting-edge ketones booster can help your body enter a state of ketosis considerably more quickly. Normal ketone level raising can take weeks or months, but Keto Boost’s special mix and 6 grams of sodium BHB (beta-hydroxybutyrate) in each meal speed up the process to 15 minutes. Keto Boost is a delightful beverage created to increase ketone levels, energy, and athletic performance.

One of the first real full-spectrum ketones boosters, Keto Boost is made to meet all of your demands for ketosis. Beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) sodium (6 grams) and raspberry ketone (300 mg) are both used in this product to assist you to enter a state of ketosis and reduce cravings. There are many refreshing flavors to choose from!

Benefits of Keto

A large portion of the popularity of the keto diet can be attributed to the well-liked Netflix documentary The Magic Pill, which highlights several promising ketogenic health advantages. The ketogenic diet has been scientifically shown to reduce children’s epileptic seizures. In fact, since the 1920s, doctors have been utilizing keto therapeutically for this reason. According to the Epilepsy Foundation, keto is frequently advised for kids with certain diseases (such as Lennox-Gastaut syndrome or Rett syndrome) who don’t react to seizure medications. They see that keto can reduce the frequency of these kids’ seizures by half, with 10 to 15% of them being seizure-free.

Nearly 12% of Americans suffer from migraines, a persistent kind of headache that may be extremely painful. Therefore, it makes sense that individuals who suffer from migraines are eager to attempt the majority of remedies to get rid of them. Although many migraine sufferers on the keto diet have experienced a considerable decrease in migraines, including, in some cases, becoming migraine free, even if migraines may not have been their main motivation for adopting the ketogenic diet.

One early study, which was released in October 2012 in the journal Neurocase, revealed that the ketogenic diet may be even more successful than medication at stabilizing mood in persons with type 2 bipolar illness. According to small research that appeared in the February 2013 issue of the journal Neurobiology of Ageing, older, higher-risk persons who followed a ketogenic diet showed improved memory performance after just six weeks. To slow down brain aging and perhaps Alzheimer’s disease, the most prevalent type of dementia, several specialists, like Richard Isaacson, MD, head of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian in New York City, advocate low-carb diets for patients. Because these patients are more likely to develop dementia, researchers such as Robert Krikorian, Ph.D., professor of clinical psychiatry and director of the division of psychology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in Ohio, are investigating how nutritional ketosis can be used to preserve cognitive functioning. Specific Cancers Some studies, notably one published in the journal Oncology in November 2018, have shown that keto may be used in conjunction with chemotherapy and radiation. However, further research is needed to understand whether keto can play a role in cancer therapy, and whether patients should not use it as a stand-alone treatment or without a doctor’s approval.

When following the ketogenic diet, it is critical to eat nutritious meals. Some data suggest that consuming healthy fats like avocados instead of unhealthy fats like pig rinds might assist improve heart health by lowering cholesterol. According to a 2017 review of animal and human keto diet studies, some people experienced a significant drop in total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or bad cholesterol, and triglycerides, as well as an increase in high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or “good” cholesterol. High cholesterol levels can raise the risk of cardiovascular disease. Because a keto diet lowers cholesterol, it may lower a person’s risk of cardiac issues.

The Takeaway

The ketogenic diet provides considerable health advantages for several reasons, including metabolic, cardiovascular, and neurological health. There will for sure be additional discoveries of the advantages of the high-fat, moderate-protein, low-carb ketogenic lifestyle as research proceeds and more is learned about the body’s response to the ketogenic diet and how it may be used for a range of health endeavors. Nevertheless, before making significant dietary changes, always consult a dietician or your primary care physician.