Can you not image a day with bread, pasta, rice, cereal, potatoes, or dessert? Do you feel like you have low energy when you try to eat a low carbohydrate diet? Do you not feel satisfied after your meals, and crave something more? If so you may be a carboholic.Contrary to popular beliefs and images such as the food pyramid, grains are not necessarily a healthy part of our daily diet. Yet, majority of us have become addicted to these foods and our bodies have grown custom to using carbohydrates as an energy source. Carbohydrates provide the body with quick energy, where as fats and protein provide a more stable long term energy source. If people truly want to strive to become healthy they will soon learn that eliminating these foods from their diet will be the key.
All carbohydrates- simple or complex, natural or refined are broken down into sugar once they are consumed. By eating carbohydrates you force your body to either burn them and/or store them for fuel, because in order to keep homeostasis in your body, the body needs to keep your blood sugar low and is then driven to process sugar quickly. "Carb Junkies," therefore create a dependency for this source of energy, which although we may feel that this is what our bodies need, they were really designed to be dependent on fats and fatty acids- called ketones as our primary source of fuel. Fat is an even, long burning, readily stored and aerobic source of fuel for the body. Sugar is anaerobic, rapidly metabolized source of fuel, that was designed to be used in emergencies. This concept is different than what is now seen today in the typical diet.
As long as you continue to eat a high carb, low fat diet your carb cravings will remain, breaking this habit will be hard at first, but after a few days your body will remember how to use fats, and fat stores as energy instead.
I mentioned ketones earlier, but what exactly are they? Ketones are compounds created by the body when it burns fat stores for energy. When blood sugar is low due to a low carbohydrate diet, the body responds by converting fatty acids in the liver to ketones. As long as the blood sugar stays low, ketones will be used as the main energy source in the body. Our ancestors lived mainly in a ketosis state, until the introduction of grains, so this isn't a foreign concept for human physiology. After ketones are produced they circulate throughout the bloodstream waiting to be picked up by cells that need to use them for energy. Cardiac and skeletal muscles and brain cells actually prefer ketones over glucose for energy.
Low carb diets have gotten such a bad rap over the last few years, especially after the death of Dr. Atkins, but this is because many of these diets usually restrict carbohydrate intake too much; around 20g per day. Restricting carbs to less than 20 grams a day can cause an acidic build up in the body, it also prevents a healthy amount of fruits and vegetables in the diet. The main focus on the Atkins diet was only that of reducing carb intake without any concern about the types and sources of proteins and fats they should be consuming; such as salmon verse bacon.
To make sure that we still are able to reach a state of ketosis and receive an adequate amount of healthy fruits and vegetables, experts are suggesting restricting carbs to 50-100g if the goal is weight loss, and 100-150g if the goal is to maintain your weight.
In an article posted by Dr. Brasco, he mentions a study that looked at the health profiles of adults who had been treated during childhood with a ketogenic diet (ketogenic diets are used to treat refractory seizures in children). They found no evidence of adverse effects on cardiovascular function, including arteriosclerosis, hypertension or cardiac abnormalities. Blood cholesterol determinations were performed on these adults and all were normal. These studies thus fail to reveal any short term complication or long term sequelae associated with ketogenic diets.
Another study mentioned was done by an anthropologist, V. Stefansson, at Bellvue Hospital in New York City. He and a colleague consumed an all meat diet for a year. At the years end, to the surprise of the scientific community, both investigators were in excellent health. They demonstrated weight loss with reduction in body fat, normal kidney and liver function, and improvement in blood lipids.
These along with many other published research articles prove that the body can survive without carbs, or with the limitation of carbs. It also should be noted that not all carbs are created equal. So on a diet that reduces carb intake it is important to choose low glycemic fruits and vegetables as your carb source instead of grains.
Pura Vida!
Alica Ryan, NTP
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