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Hi pmiguel, many thanks for taking the time to review the study and article, and also for your insight.after reading the study at source thanks to your link I totally agree with you, I should be less naive when reading press releases in future, it’s interesting that a number of UK newspapers published similar articles denouncing a ketogenic diet on the back of this study yesterday, after reading the study it’s evident the articles are disingenuous. I wonder what is the agenda for someone to feed a flawed analysis to multiple national press outlets to discredit a diet that has immediate weight loss benefits when the lay person tries it.
Yes, I remember some years back reports in a ketogenic diet site of a British expose on the Ketogenic Diet. The reporters took one pair of twin brothers and put one of them on a ketogenic diet. Not sure if the manage to get the KD twin to fail an OGT, but to the extent they were just trying to smear KDs, they were remiss if they did not.
Hi Magonrag,
I think the medicalxpress.com coverage of this paper:
https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/JP275173
is poor. Actually it is probably just click-bait.
The paper itself doesn’t promote the perennial canard “KD makes you T2D!” After a cursory look at it, I think it is looking at the metabolic differences between a KD and the so-called HFD.
Of course mice aren’t just tiny humans and this isn’t their natural diet. But neither is mice chow. And very few human eat anything approximating a natural diet.
It would be good to see Rhonda’s view on this, I’ve noticed a number of studies on mice with ketogenic diets that come to the same conclusion as this study. The key failure point for me is that fat is not a natural diet for mice, does the study have any relevance for humans or is it designed for failure?
@Magonrag@pmiguel There is a really interesting phenomenon that occurs in rodent studies given a ketogenic diet. Many of them tend to overeat unless they are given a calorie cap. In the literature, mice given a ketogenic diet that are allowed to eat ad libitum will develop obesity and metabolic problems. Mice that are fed a ketogenic diet that has a restricted calorie cap actually have improved healthspan and lifespan. I discuss this with Dr. Eric Verdin. I do not understand why rodents are not satiated on a ketogenic diet.
@rhonda@Magonrag Yes and if the “KD causes T2D” meme was based on this phenomenon I would have some sympathy for it. But it is typically based only on the fact that a perfectly healthy animal in ketosis will be insulin resistant and eventually undergo some atrophy of its Pancreatic islet beta cells. But this atrophy and the insulin resistance is easily reversed by eating carbs for a few days as demonstrated here:
https://doi.org/10.1210/en.2010-0175
So Magonrag’s initial link was just someone click-baiting the internet.
However it was based on the mice failing oral glucose tolerance tests and showing atrophy of pancreatic beta cells after being on a KD. It’s conclusions generated a rebuttal:
Irritatingly, the rat paper did not cite a previous study in mice showing the same effect. Perhaps because the study in mice showed that all the “T2D-like” symptoms were reversed when carbs were added back to the mice diets:
So the T2D diabetes that one gets from a KD can be reversed by eating carbs for a few days. Not really an issue, is it? The only real danger there is that you might fail an OGT test if you had been in sustained ketosis for a sufficient period of time–an issue frequently mentioned on ketogenic diet sites.
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Pmiguel, once again, thanks for your information. Some very good points and advice.
Hi pmiguel, many thanks for taking the time to review the study and article, and also for your insight.after reading the study at source thanks to your link I totally agree with you, I should be less naive when reading press releases in future, it’s interesting that a number of UK newspapers published similar articles denouncing a ketogenic diet on the back of this study yesterday, after reading the study it’s evident the articles are disingenuous. I wonder what is the agenda for someone to feed a flawed analysis to multiple national press outlets to discredit a diet that has immediate weight loss benefits when the lay person tries it.
Yes, I remember some years back reports in a ketogenic diet site of a British expose on the Ketogenic Diet. The reporters took one pair of twin brothers and put one of them on a ketogenic diet. Not sure if the manage to get the KD twin to fail an OGT, but to the extent they were just trying to smear KDs, they were remiss if they did not.
Hi Magonrag, I think the medicalxpress.com coverage of this paper: https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/JP275173 is poor. Actually it is probably just click-bait. The paper itself doesn’t promote the perennial canard “KD makes you T2D!” After a cursory look at it, I think it is looking at the metabolic differences between a KD and the so-called HFD. Of course mice aren’t just tiny humans and this isn’t their natural diet. But neither is mice chow. And very few human eat anything approximating a natural diet.
It would be good to see Rhonda’s view on this, I’ve noticed a number of studies on mice with ketogenic diets that come to the same conclusion as this study. The key failure point for me is that fat is not a natural diet for mice, does the study have any relevance for humans or is it designed for failure?
@Magonrag @pmiguel There is a really interesting phenomenon that occurs in rodent studies given a ketogenic diet. Many of them tend to overeat unless they are given a calorie cap. In the literature, mice given a ketogenic diet that are allowed to eat ad libitum will develop obesity and metabolic problems. Mice that are fed a ketogenic diet that has a restricted calorie cap actually have improved healthspan and lifespan. I discuss this with Dr. Eric Verdin. I do not understand why rodents are not satiated on a ketogenic diet.
Thanks for the link Rhonda, I really appreciate your work.
Thanks for the link Rhonda, I really appreciate your work.
@rhonda @Magonrag Yes and if the “KD causes T2D” meme was based on this phenomenon I would have some sympathy for it. But it is typically based only on the fact that a perfectly healthy animal in ketosis will be insulin resistant and eventually undergo some atrophy of its Pancreatic islet beta cells. But this atrophy and the insulin resistance is easily reversed by eating carbs for a few days as demonstrated here: https://doi.org/10.1210/en.2010-0175 So Magonrag’s initial link was just someone click-baiting the internet.
The paper referenced by the medicalxpress.com article doesn’t come to the conclusion that the click-bait title suggests.
I have seen another rat experiment that did:
https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpendo.00208.2013
However it was based on the mice failing oral glucose tolerance tests and showing atrophy of pancreatic beta cells after being on a KD. It’s conclusions generated a rebuttal:
https://www.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajpendo.00580.2013
Irritatingly, the rat paper did not cite a previous study in mice showing the same effect. Perhaps because the study in mice showed that all the “T2D-like” symptoms were reversed when carbs were added back to the mice diets:
https://doi.org/10.1210/en.2010-0175
So the T2D diabetes that one gets from a KD can be reversed by eating carbs for a few days. Not really an issue, is it? The only real danger there is that you might fail an OGT test if you had been in sustained ketosis for a sufficient period of time–an issue frequently mentioned on ketogenic diet sites.