keto health benefits
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jmiller1028
Posts: 17 Member
Hey there.
Since practicing Keto, I have become aware of health problems that I have, resolving because of the diet. I am curious as to others that have had this experience. My acid reflux and related digestive problems seem to have resolved since eating this much bacon.
Since practicing Keto, I have become aware of health problems that I have, resolving because of the diet. I am curious as to others that have had this experience. My acid reflux and related digestive problems seem to have resolved since eating this much bacon.
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Same... Not just bacon consumption, but in general. Yes, most of my gastro and bowel issues are resolved or resolving. I was having problems nodding off after every single meal or snack, and that has resolved. My blood pressure is dropping naturally, and my hormones are balancing, etc. I posted a lab result post recently showing my improvements - oh and my cholesterol is getting better!0
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JM, I feel so much better. Truly. Autoimmune flare-ups are more calm...less frequent and less severe when they happen. Inflammation and pain associated with autoimmune diseases has decreased substantially (amen)! Blood sugars are more normalized, which in turn means that frequent (daily / multiple times daily) headaches are lessened - this means I eat less ibuprofen and other such meds...which means my guts aren't completely torn up. This also means that I don't have such wide swings in my numbers...up down up down....the swings are getting smaller...more steady. Major gastro issues, while not resolved are much calmed. I have no gall bladder, and have had lower GI issues most of my adult life, but they are much better now that I'm actually processing a higher percentage of what I eat. It was tough to be at work some days, without a network connection in the bathroom...sorry, TMI, i know..lol
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I have no gallbladder either, @nill4me. How horribly I remember the days of having about a 5 second warning to make it to the bathroom OR ELSE!!! So glad that's gone. Mostly.0
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it's funny when I went on this diet a lot of people I know were worried about my cholesterol etc. but at one point at the height of my ketosis (about 2 months in) I had a injury and had to go to the doctors, they did tests and things and were telling me how good all my numbers were and how healthy i was. They didn't know I was on Keto, but it was a great reassurance that it's definitely giving me some health benefits.0
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I'm in a moderately rapid state of weight loss, which I've been told can massively affect your LDL readings, which of course I didn't know until after they came back elevated. So as long as my trigs keep going down and my HDL keeps going up, I'm not going to worry about my LDL unless it doubles or something....0
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I used to get heart palpitations and night sweats which have now resolved themselves, tho I think they may have been more to do with magnesium deficiency. Also used to get pins and needles in my arms at night and this is getting a good bit better. I am also more alert during the day at work. Used to get quite dopey in the afternoons.0
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Main thing is my A1C that fell from 8.6 to 5.6 within 4 months. My fasting blood sugars were in the teens & post prandials were regularly elevated between 20-35 which is crazy high & this went on for more than 10 years. FBG this morning was 5.5. Have not seen post prandial past 7.5 in about 3 months.
My BP was around 160/100. Went on anti-hypertensive meds for about 2 weeks. Stopped when I started LCHF. Now 130/80 WITHOUT any exercise YET.
Did a liver scan (& obviously was diagnosed with NAFLD). Within about 4 months, all blood markers for fatty liver had at least halved. Haven't bothered to re-scan.
Lipid markers are interesting. Latest theory is that LDL-P is the best marker for CHD. Followed by what i think is the ambiguous "pattern size A/B". Then come the ratios Trigs/HDL-C & TC/HDL-C.
TC & LDL-C as solitary markers; it is now argued are poor indicators & oh..cholesterol is not actually bad..
I keep meaning to get the Apo(b) test which is a proxy for LDL-P.
I have followed my lipid profile at least on a monthly basis since I started LCHF.
My Total Cholesterol had doubled to about 10 (which is about 400). My LDL-C also doubled during that time to around 8+ (330). My HDL is relatively ok at 1.2 (46) BUT i really wish it was a lot higher. My Trigs though borderline acceptable at 1.7 (150) have actually gradually crept up from about 1.
So, my Trig/HDL ratio (despite the gradual increase in Trigs) has been good BUT TC/HDL-C ratio is showing highly elevated risk. My point is, taken in isolation lipid numbers can give very conflicting snapshots.
To put this in some context. Since LCHF, I have lost 35kgs; William Davis, Mark Sissons & Chris Masterjohn all posit that lipids go haywire during rapid/high weight loss and that you should wait around 3 months after weight has stabilised before doing a panel. I do not have that option yet as I still need to lose a truckload of weight. The question: as this is to be expected, do I then carry on with this extremely high risk marker for the 2-3 year time period that I have weight loss?
Also, as far as i have read, the fatty acid oxidation process is related to serum albumin carrying the cargo in the bloodstream and not the lipoproteins. I am NO expert & in no position with my limited understanding to question such luminaries but it is disconcerting that my liver keeps synthesizing when there is clearly excess of both fatty acids & cholesterol available.
It is quite possible that I am obviously still in deep metabolic dysregulation & the organs are still responding abnormally OR that 35+ years of carboholic pummeling requires significant cholesterol for healing.??
IT does not help that Thomas Dayspring; the noted Lipidologist is of the opinion that metabolic dysregulation causes low take-up/turnover of LDL-P which increases risk of oxidation & hence, risk of CHD. Until I do an Apo(b) test which is a good proxy, I am worried that could be an issue with me given the high LDL-C numbers I am exhibiting.
Finally, on a different tangent, I had been eating 4 eggs per day since starting keto. I stopped when my TC hit 10. I restarted around 4 weeks ago & my HDL jumped by 25% and is now past 1.5. So again, taken in isolation, eat more eggs!!
Sorry, that was a long one & has been floating around in my head for months. when the health question was raised, I could not resist.
Would love to hear any opinions or thoughts or resource recommendations on this.
Cheers.
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Correction.
What I should have said is that low take-up of LDL causes an increase in LDL-P concentration.0 -
That was a good read, msm. I haven't seen any studies that back the notion that weight loss caused lipid panel results to go haywire. Just about every weight loss study I've seen shows an improvement in risk markers.
If you haven't seen this yet, it's worth a read:
http://eatingacademy.com/cholesterol-2/random-finding-plus-pi
In one particularly interesting case, a patient in self-prescribed nutritional ketosis presented to me with an LDL-P of more than 3500 nmol/L (i.e., more particles than could be measured by the NMR machine so the report simply said “>3,500 nmol/L”) despite feeling, performing, and looking great. Based on his through-the-roof desmosterol and cholanstanol levels, and a curb-side consult from the Godfather I mean Dr. Tom Dayspring, I decided to try an experiment. You see, the logical thing to do in this setting would have been to start two drugs immediately (a potent statin to address the hypersynthesis and ezetimibe to address the hyperabsorption) or tell him to abandon ketosis altogether. But this patient was adamant about staying in ketosis given the other benefits, though obviously worried about the long-term coronary implications. So, we agreed that for a 3 month trial period he would reduce SFA to an average of 25 g/day (vs. about 75 to 100 g/day) and make up the difference with monounsaturated fat (MUFA). Parenthetically, we also reduced his omega-3 PUFA given very high RBC EPA and DHA levels.
So, on balance, he consumed about the same number of calories and even total quantity of fat, but his distribution of fat intake changed and he heavily swapped out SFA for MUFA.
The result?
His LDL-P fell from >3,500 nmol/L to about 1,300 nmol/L (about 55th percentile), and his CRP fell from 2.9 mg/L to <0.3 mg/L (and for the lipoprotein cognoscenti, both desmosterol and cholanstanol fell).0 -
Main thing is my A1C that fell from 8.6 to 5.6 within 4 months. My fasting blood sugars were in the teens & post prandials were regularly elevated between 20-35 which is crazy high & this went on for more than 10 years. FBG this morning was 5.5. Have not seen post prandial past 7.5 in about 3 months.
My BP was around 160/100. Went on anti-hypertensive meds for about 2 weeks. Stopped when I started LCHF. Now 130/80 WITHOUT any exercise YET.
Did a liver scan (& obviously was diagnosed with NAFLD). Within about 4 months, all blood markers for fatty liver had at least halved. Haven't bothered to re-scan.
Lipid markers are interesting. Latest theory is that LDL-P is the best marker for CHD. Followed by what i think is the ambiguous "pattern size A/B". Then come the ratios Trigs/HDL-C & TC/HDL-C.
TC & LDL-C as solitary markers; it is now argued are poor indicators & oh..cholesterol is not actually bad..
I keep meaning to get the Apo(b) test which is a proxy for LDL-P.
I have followed my lipid profile at least on a monthly basis since I started LCHF.
My Total Cholesterol had doubled to about 10 (which is about 400). My LDL-C also doubled during that time to around 8+ (330). My HDL is relatively ok at 1.2 (46) BUT i really wish it was a lot higher. My Trigs though borderline acceptable at 1.7 (150) have actually gradually crept up from about 1.
So, my Trig/HDL ratio (despite the gradual increase in Trigs) has been good BUT TC/HDL-C ratio is showing highly elevated risk. My point is, taken in isolation lipid numbers can give very conflicting snapshots.
To put this in some context. Since LCHF, I have lost 35kgs; William Davis, Mark Sissons & Chris Masterjohn all posit that lipids go haywire during rapid/high weight loss and that you should wait around 3 months after weight has stabilised before doing a panel. I do not have that option yet as I still need to lose a truckload of weight. The question: as this is to be expected, do I then carry on with this extremely high risk marker for the 2-3 year time period that I have weight loss?
Also, as far as i have read, the fatty acid oxidation process is related to serum albumin carrying the cargo in the bloodstream and not the lipoproteins. I am NO expert & in no position with my limited understanding to question such luminaries but it is disconcerting that my liver keeps synthesizing when there is clearly excess of both fatty acids & cholesterol available.
It is quite possible that I am obviously still in deep metabolic dysregulation & the organs are still responding abnormally OR that 35+ years of carboholic pummeling requires significant cholesterol for healing.??
IT does not help that Thomas Dayspring; the noted Lipidologist is of the opinion that metabolic dysregulation causes low take-up/turnover of LDL-P which increases risk of oxidation & hence, risk of CHD. Until I do an Apo(b) test which is a good proxy, I am worried that could be an issue with me given the high LDL-C numbers I am exhibiting.
Finally, on a different tangent, I had been eating 4 eggs per day since starting keto. I stopped when my TC hit 10. I restarted around 4 weeks ago & my HDL jumped by 25% and is now past 1.5. So again, taken in isolation, eat more eggs!!
Sorry, that was a long one & has been floating around in my head for months. when the health question was raised, I could not resist.
Would love to hear any opinions or thoughts or resource recommendations on this.
Cheers.
I haven't read all the resources, but I keep wondering what they quantify as rapid weight loss, because I agree, my numbers are all out of whack because of loss... My high numbers aren't as high as yours, and my trigs are lower, but my progressions are quite similar to yours as well...0 -
That was a good read, msm. I haven't seen any studies that back the notion that weight loss caused lipid panel results to go haywire. Just about every weight loss study I've seen shows an improvement in risk markers.
If you haven't seen this yet, it's worth a read:
http://eatingacademy.com/cholesterol-2/random-finding-plus-pi
In one particularly interesting case, a patient in self-prescribed nutritional ketosis presented to me with an LDL-P of more than 3500 nmol/L (i.e., more particles than could be measured by the NMR machine so the report simply said “>3,500 nmol/L”) despite feeling, performing, and looking great. Based on his through-the-roof desmosterol and cholanstanol levels, and a curb-side consult from the Godfather I mean Dr. Tom Dayspring, I decided to try an experiment. You see, the logical thing to do in this setting would have been to start two drugs immediately (a potent statin to address the hypersynthesis and ezetimibe to address the hyperabsorption) or tell him to abandon ketosis altogether. But this patient was adamant about staying in ketosis given the other benefits, though obviously worried about the long-term coronary implications. So, we agreed that for a 3 month trial period he would reduce SFA to an average of 25 g/day (vs. about 75 to 100 g/day) and make up the difference with monounsaturated fat (MUFA). Parenthetically, we also reduced his omega-3 PUFA given very high RBC EPA and DHA levels.
So, on balance, he consumed about the same number of calories and even total quantity of fat, but his distribution of fat intake changed and he heavily swapped out SFA for MUFA.
The result?
His LDL-P fell from >3,500 nmol/L to about 1,300 nmol/L (about 55th percentile), and his CRP fell from 2.9 mg/L to <0.3 mg/L (and for the lipoprotein cognoscenti, both desmosterol and cholanstanol fell).
That's interesting, because I have a friend on here who did a similar experiment to this above, but went mainly vegetarian and got a huge drop in her LDL in a short time frame. I'm simply not willing to do that. Until I get to a point where I'm maintaining a reasonably lowered weight, and unless my HDL drops and my trigs jump up hugely, I'm really not going to worry about my cholesterol for the time being.
Also, in the three months prior to testing, I was not using much, if any coconut oil. I now consume a few tablespoons a day, which naturally lowers my other fat consumption. I look forward to seeing this change's impact down the line.0 -
That was a good read, msm. I haven't seen any studies that back the notion that weight loss caused lipid panel results to go haywire. Just about every weight loss study I've seen shows an improvement in risk markers.
If you haven't seen this yet, it's worth a read:
http://eatingacademy.com/cholesterol-2/random-finding-plus-pi
In one particularly interesting case, a patient in self-prescribed nutritional ketosis presented to me with an LDL-P of more than 3500 nmol/L (i.e., more particles than could be measured by the NMR machine so the report simply said “>3,500 nmol/L”) despite feeling, performing, and looking great. Based on his through-the-roof desmosterol and cholanstanol levels, and a curb-side consult from the Godfather I mean Dr. Tom Dayspring, I decided to try an experiment. You see, the logical thing to do in this setting would have been to start two drugs immediately (a potent statin to address the hypersynthesis and ezetimibe to address the hyperabsorption) or tell him to abandon ketosis altogether. But this patient was adamant about staying in ketosis given the other benefits, though obviously worried about the long-term coronary implications. So, we agreed that for a 3 month trial period he would reduce SFA to an average of 25 g/day (vs. about 75 to 100 g/day) and make up the difference with monounsaturated fat (MUFA). Parenthetically, we also reduced his omega-3 PUFA given very high RBC EPA and DHA levels.
So, on balance, he consumed about the same number of calories and even total quantity of fat, but his distribution of fat intake changed and he heavily swapped out SFA for MUFA.
The result?
His LDL-P fell from >3,500 nmol/L to about 1,300 nmol/L (about 55th percentile), and his CRP fell from 2.9 mg/L to <0.3 mg/L (and for the lipoprotein cognoscenti, both desmosterol and cholanstanol fell).
Thanks for that wabmester!! Great read!! I do like Peter Attia because he is very honest & does admit to not having all the answers. fantastic!! Once again, thanks for that resource.
Based on that, I really, really should get my Apo(b) tested and take it from there...
As things stand, I consume approx 35gms of saturated fat per day from eggs & butter, so not far from the restricted level of 25mg in the case study. This could be much ado about nothing but no way to tell until I take the test.
Interestingly, I was planning to embark on a 30 day experiment in switching my primary food source from chicken to salmon. But as I have not measured my EPA/DHA, it may not be such a good idea.
Thanks for the feedback. Do revert if you come across any more interesting material.0 -
KnitOrMiss wrote: »I haven't read all the resources, but I keep wondering what they quantify as rapid weight loss, because I agree, my numbers are all out of whack because of loss... My high numbers aren't as high as yours, and my trigs are lower, but my progressions are quite similar to yours as well...
Absolutely. There is very little literature on this.I do not think that I have FH or that I am a hyper-absorber as my cholesterol though elevated was around 250 before starting LCHF & I always consumed a HC/HF diet.
As I mentioned earlier, the TC/HDL ratio is worrying. All the people I quoted make the statement in passing except Dr.Davis who actually wrote a whole blog on this. I am not entirely convinced.
And you are right. There is no range of numbers that quantify "rapid weight loss".
At least I now have some urgency to do that Apo(b) test. Been procrastinating for months...
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KnitOrMiss wrote: »I haven't read all the resources, but I keep wondering what they quantify as rapid weight loss, because I agree, my numbers are all out of whack because of loss... My high numbers aren't as high as yours, and my trigs are lower, but my progressions are quite similar to yours as well...
Absolutely. There is very little literature on this.I do not think that I have FH or that I am a hyper-absorber as my cholesterol though elevated was around 250 before starting LCHF & I always consumed a HC/HF diet.
As I mentioned earlier, the TC/HDL ratio is worrying. All the people I quoted make the statement in passing except Dr.Davis who actually wrote a whole blog on this. I am not entirely convinced.
And you are right. There is no range of numbers that quantify "rapid weight loss".
At least I now have some urgency to do that Apo(b) test. Been procrastinating for months...
I think I got that number, but having lost 20 pounds and 20 inches in the three months immediately prior to my testing, I think all my numbers ended up skewed.
My trigs were 97
HDL was 45
LDL was calculated at like 148, measured at 164
Apo B is 136
Lp(a)-P is 207
But I can't find anything explaining what my last two numbers should be close to...
Post I made about my results: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10152013/mostly-full-metabolic-results-panel#latest0 -
Spot on KnitMiss. Honestly, the more you learn, the less you know. the science on this is still in flux, i think. i've decided, so long as the weight keeps coming down & for me (being a diabetic), my sugar levels are under control, i will keep one eye on this trying not to worry too much. in fact, in the spirit of procrastination, i am holding back on my Apo(b). I'm sure the results will give me more headaches whatever the outcome; good or bad.. 0
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Personally keto or lchf will be the way I eat for the rest of my life. I have PCOS (an endocrine problem in case you don't know) and would go without a monthly cycle for a year or more unless on medication. Since changing to this way of eating I have had a regular 28 day cycle every month now for the last 18 months. After suffering with issues for over 20 years, this alone is enough to convince me its a great thing for me. Add to that an end to my GERD and moodiness, lack of energy and depression and 32 pounds and I'm a happy camper. Mind you I haven't had any blood work done and when I mentioned eating this way to my doctor almost 2 years ago she screwed up her face at me, but she is quick to complement me now on how well i'm doing. I just don't bother going into details0
