Watch the Pounds Roll Off
By Dr. Mercola
There’s emerging scientific evidence that a high-fat, low-net carb, moderate protein diet is an ideal diet for most people. However, compliance tends to be low for a number of reasons.
Discussing this is Randy Evans, who has a master’s degree in nutrition and works with Dr. Jeanne Drisko at the University of Kansas Integrative Medical Center. I recently interviewed Drisko on her clinical use of nutritional ketosis.
Evans grw up on a dairy farm in Southern Iowa at a time when agriculture was largely still organic. “I actually grew up eating mostly real whole foods,” he says, noting his interest in nutrition was an outgrowth of his upbringing. His interest in the ketogenic diet emerged when he began working with Drisko five years ago.
“Our goal with most patients is to push back on those low-fat guidelines we got in the ’80s … and to encourage people to incorporate healthy fats in every meal … We’re really just getting carbs from Mother Nature here,” he says.
The ketogenic diet or a high-fat diet is one of the best ways to experience that for yourself, because you will find that you’re eating probably more calories than you ever ate and you’re a lot happier and you may still lose weight. I think it creates leanness — that ability to switch between fuel sources is a very easy way to make somebody lean.”
High-Fat Diet Is Anti-Inflammatory
There are two basic fuels your body can use for energy: sugar and fat. One of the reasons why you want to burn fat is because it’s a “cleaner” fuel. While it’s a bit more complicated than this, a simple way to explain why fat is a preferable fuel over sugar is that it burns without creating a lot of pollution in the form of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and secondary free radicals. Sugar is a dirtier fuel in that it creates far more ROS. In excess, sugar causes inflammation and premature degeneration.
“To me, it’s very simple. A human being is made of fat. Our brain’s mostly fat. Our hormones are fat. We’re really fat machines in a lot of ways. It kind of makes sense that [fat] would work well for us,” Evans says.
“I usually tell patients [fat] is a very anti-inflammatory fuel [for your body] … It makes sense to me that we’re kind of programmed for that kind of fuel. To have variety in the diet, put fasting in there, and interval training. It’s a lot of those things that actually push those longevity genes that we hear so much about … It’s amazing how many of those natural stresses actually push your body in a good way.”
A Nutrient Tracker Is an Invaluable Tool
Using a nutrient tracker will radically improve your ability to understand your ketogenic diet nutrient targets and assess the nutrient value of your food choices. Ideally, you’d enter the foods you plan on eating before you actually eat. This way you can modify your meal if you find your nutrient ratios are off kilter.
The other component I place great value on is restricting protein to a certain level. I like to keep mine under 70 grams a day, as eating more protein than your body actually needs for muscle maintenance and repair will activate the mTOR pathway, which plays an important role in aging and cancer development.
There are a number of trackers available, but my first choice is Cronometer.com/Mercola. That’s my revision of the basic Cronometer tracker, and it’s already set to default to macronutrient levels that will support nutritional ketosis.
“We’re actually going to use that program as well,” Evans says. “We’ve used other programs. A lot of those [used] user generated data, [which is] a ballpark [estimate] at best. Our goal is to get our patients to switch over to Cronometer, which looks great and [is] certainly much more accurate.
That’s how we guide people toward the ketogenic or higher fat: using those numbers. It’s very important to have that. Again, it can be motivational for people looking at their days’ meals … You can actually think if you want to consider that ratio; we talked about comparing your grams of protein and net carbs to fat. That 1-to-1 ratio, for most people, is when they start to get ketones.”
More Information
You can find more information about the KU Medicine Center, where Evans works, on www.kumc.edu, including contact information should you want to make an appointment.
Dr. Drisko’s clinic finds that intravenous (IV) vitamin C can be an important adjunct along with the ketogenic diet during cancer care. IV vitamin C is a powerful prooxidative therapy that targets the unhealthy cancer cell and leaves the normal cell unharmed. When combined with ketogenic diet, IV C can be a “one-two knockout punch” to the cancer cell. To learn more about IV vitamin C, attend the University of Kansas Integrative Medicine conference www.kumc.edu/VitaminC.
I would also encourage you to attend the ACIM Conquering Cancer Conference in Orlando, September 22 through 24. I will be there along with a long list of other excellent speakers. There, you’ll learn more about how to implement a ketogenic diet and much more. Evans is one of the 10 people I’ve invited to a brainstorming session the day after the conference, to help improve the quality of information in the new book I’m writing on this topic.
Sources and References
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