The complete guide to ketosis

Ketosis is a metabolic state in which your body uses fat as its primary source of energy.

Normally, the body uses glucose or sugar as its main fuel. When carbohydrate intake is low, your liver produces large amounts of ketones, a fat-like compound that your brain and other organs can use to replace glucose.

Ketosis can help you reduce hunger, promote weight loss, and possibly have other benefits.

Read on to learn everything you need to know about ketosis, including tips for successfully getting into ketosis and staying there.

What is ketosis?

Ketosis is a metabolic state in which your body uses fats and ketones instead of glucose (sugars) as its primary fuel source.

Glucose is stored in the liver and released when needed. However, after a day or two of extremely low carbohydrate intake, these glucose reserves are depleted. Your liver can make some glucose from amino acids, glycerin, and lactic acid through the process of gluconeogenesis, but it’s far from meeting all of the brain’s needs, which need a constant supply of fuel.

Fortunately, ketosis can provide you, especially your brain, with another source of energy.

Ketones, or ketones, are made up of fats that your liver eats from you and fats from your own body. These three ketone bodies are hydroxybutyrate (BHB), acetate, and acetone (although acetone is technically a breakdown product of acetoacetate).

Even if you eat a high-carb diet, your liver will produce ketones on a regular basis. This happens mostly at night when you sleep, but only in small amounts. However, when glucose and insulin levels drop, such as in carbohydrate-restricted diets, the liver increases ketone production, providing energy to the brain.

Once the level of ketones in your blood reaches a certain threshold, you are considered a nutritional ketosis. According to lead researchers on the ketogenic diet, Dr. Steve Phinney and Dr. Jeff Volek, the threshold for vegetative ketosis is a minimum of 0.5 mmol/L for BHB (ketone bodies measured in blood).

While both fasting and ketogenic diets can get you to ketosis, only the ketogenic diet is sustainable in the long term. In fact, it seems to be a healthy way to eat that people can follow indefinitely.

Does the brain need carbs?

There has long been a misconception that carbohydrates are necessary for normal brain function. In fact, if you ask some dietitian how many carbs you should eat, they may reply that you need at least 130 grams of carbs a day to make sure your brain has a steady supply of glucose.

However, this is not the case. In fact, even if you don’t eat any carbohydrates, your brain will remain healthy and functioning.

While your brain does need a lot of energy and needs some glucose, ketones can provide about 70 percent of the fuel your brain needs. The liver provides the remaining energy needed in the form of glucose, which is produced by gluconeogenesis (literally”making new glucose”

This system allowed our hunter-gatherer ancestors to skip eating for long periods of time because they could always get a source of fuel: stored body fat.

Ketosis does not have any adverse effects on brain function. Instead, many people report that they feel more mentally sharp when they are in a ketosis.

Benefits of ketosis

In addition to providing a sustainable source of energy, ketones — especially BHB — may help reduce inflammation and oxidative stress, which is thought to play a role in the development of many chronic diseases.

In fact, nutritional ketosis has several recognized benefits and potential benefits.

Established benefits:

• Appetite regulation: The first thing people with ketosis notice is that they don’t feel hungry very often. In fact, studies have shown that ketosis suppresses appetite. Studies have also shown that ghrelin (the so-called “hunger hormone”) is also reduced.
• Weight loss: When people limit their carbohydrate intake and allow enough fat and protein to satisfy their satiety, they naturally eat less. Because ketogenic diets suppress appetite, lower insulin levels, and increase fat burning, it’s no surprise that they’ve been shown to be superior to or equivalent to other weight loss diets.
• Reversal of diabetes and prediabetes: For people with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes, ketosis can help normalize blood sugar and improve insulin sensitivity, which can lead to discontinuation of diabetes medications.
• Potentially enhanced athletic performance: In the continuous exercise of high-level and recreational athletes, ketosis can provide an extremely long-lasting supply of fuel.
• Seizure management: Maintaining ketosis through a classic ketogenic diet or a less stringent modified Atkins diet (MAD) has been shown to be effective in controlling epilepsy in both children and adults who do not respond to anti-epilepsy drugs.

There’s also an exciting early study that suggests that keto can be good for many other diseases, such as reducing the frequency and severity of migraines, reversing polycystics, and perhaps enhancing traditional brain cancer treatments that may slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease and possibly help people live longer and healthier lives. While higher quality studies are needed to confirm these effects, most of the early studies are very encouraging.