Keto, Cortisol and Stress

wheatlessgirl66

If you're concerned about the keto diet increasing cortisol levels, read this. A good and reassuring explanation: http://www.ketotic.org/2012/07/ketogenic-diets-and-stress-part-i.html

kuranda10

HA. My cortisol levels increase very nicely all by themselves. Thank you very much ;-)
And my stress is actually LESS now!

wheatlessgirl66

Also found this one: http://www.ketotic.org/2014/02/the-ketogenic-diets-effect-on-cortisol.html

KarlaYP

Thank you @wheatlessgirl! Very interesting and good to know!

wabmester

I could post a couple of studies that counter that "myth" status, but I won't.

What matters more is that if you find yourself with signs of high cortisol, you know that you can tweak a couple parameters in your diet to see if the symptoms are alleviated. Try increasing calories and/or carbs to see if it helps.

wheatlessgirl66

wabmester wrote: »

I could post a couple of studies that counter that "myth" status, but I won't.

What matters more is that if you find yourself with signs of high cortisol, you know that you can tweak a couple parameters in your diet to see if the symptoms are alleviated. Try increasing calories and/or carbs to see if it helps.

Why not post them? We should read all sides of the story.

wabmester

I posted them in another thread, and people argued against them. One of them was rock-solid in my view, but it was too technical for most people. People want to believe that if low carb is good, lower must be better. It may be! But if you find yourself with, say, sleep problems after going lower, try going higher carb!

wheatlessgirl66

Thanks, @wabmester. I may have read/tried to read them earlier. I'm one of the ones who has trouble with the technical articles. I upped my carb macro to 40 a few days ago, but eating according to hunger/desire, still haven't eaten more than the 20 I had set before. But it's there if I want it.

GaleHawkins

blog.wellnessfx.com/2014/01/07/ben-greenfield-4-dangers-low-carb-high-fat-diet/

Head lines like this one drives me crazy some days because some high carbers will just read the headline and start preaching that message without reading the article. The comments do a good job of correcting the article title in my view.

I agree reading both sides to any story helps me get more informed so I can make my own decisions on eating lifestyles. Most anything taken to an extreme can be bad but common sense does not seem to common these days.

wabmester

FWIW, here's my post from the other thread:

wabmester wrote: »

Here's the most direct study of cortisol and LCHF I've seen:
http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jc.2007-0692

In both the ad libitum and isocaloric studies, rates of appearance (Ra) of endogenous cortisol and d3-cortisol during steady state of the deuterated cortisol infusion were higher on the HF-LC than the MF-MC diet.

Another one here:
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154

Twenty-four hour urinary cortisol excretion, a hormonal measure of stress, was highest with the very low-carbohydrate diet.

The first study is quite detailed, but it will confuse the hell out of you. They say things like "lower cortisol metabolites in the urine" which means "cortisol was not being broken down and is still circulating in the blood."