According to a Yale study, but negative effects after about a week.
The results offer early indications that the keto diet could, over limited time periods, improve our health. They also represent a crucial initiative toward possible clinical trials in humans.
The keto diet has become increasingly popular as celebrities have touted it as a weight-loss regimen.
In the Yale study, published on January 20, 2020, issued by Nature Metabolism, researchers found that the positive and negative effects of the diet both relate to immune cells called gamma delta T-cells, tissue-protective cells that lower diabetes risk and inflammation.
A keto diet tricks the body into burning fat. When the body’s glucose level is reduced, it acts as if it’s during a starvation state, although it’s not. It begins burning fats rather than carbohydrates. This process successively yields chemicals called ketone bodies as an alternate source of fuel. When the body burns ketone bodies, tissue-protective gamma delta T-cells expand throughout the body.
This reduces diabetes risk and inflammation and improves the body’s metabolism. After every week on the keto diet mice show a decrease in glucose levels and inflammation.
But when the body is during this “starving-not-starving” mode, fat storage is additionally happening simultaneously with fat breakdown. When mice still eat the high-fat, low-carb diet beyond one week, they consume more fat than they will burn, and develop diabetes and obesity. They lose the protective gamma delta T-cells within the fat.
Long-term clinical studies in humans are still necessary to validate the anecdotal claims of keto’s health benefits.
“Before such a diet is often prescribed, an outsized clinical test in controlled conditions is important to know the mechanism behind metabolic and immunological benefits or any potential harm to individuals who are overweight and pre-diabetic,” Dixit said.
There are good reasons to pursue further study: consistent with the Centers for Disease Control, approximately 84 million American adults — or quite one out of three — have prediabetes (increased blood glucose levels), putting them at higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a heart condition, and stroke. 90% of individuals with this condition don’t know they need it.
Obesity and type 2 diabetes are lifestyle diseases. Diet allows people on how to be on top of things.
With the newest findings, researchers now better understand the mechanisms at work in bodies sustained on the keto diet. Why the diet may bring health benefits over limited time periods.
The perfect length of the diet for health benefits may be a subject for later studies. Discovering that keto is best in small doses is sweet news. Who wants to get on a diet forever?
XOXO
