Ketogenic diets have been found to undermine exercise efforts and cause muscle shrinkage and bone loss.
An official position paper from the International Society of Sports Nutrition covering ketogenic diets grades the “ergolytic effect” of ketogenic diets in both high and low intensity training. Ergolytic is the opposite of ergogenic. Ergogenic means improving performance, while ergolytic means impairing performance.
For non-athletes, ketosis can also undermine exercise efforts. Ketosis was correlated with a greater sense of “perceived exercise exertion” and “was also significantly correlated with feelings of ‘fatigue’ and ‘overall mood disturbance'” during physical activity. “Taken together, these data suggest that the ability and desire to maintain sustained exercise may be negatively affected in people following ketogenic diets for weight loss.”
You may remember that I previously mentioned that measured muscle mass shrinkage has been reported among CrossFit practitioners. Therefore, a ketogenic diet may not only blunt the performance of endurance athletes, but also their strength training. As I analyze it in my video. Ketogenic diets: muscle growth and bone densitystudy participants done Eight weeks of a battery of standard upper- and lower-body training protocols, such as bench press, pull-ups, squats, and deadlifts, and there were no surprises. You increase muscle mass, unless you’re following a ketogenic diet, in which case there were no significant changes in muscle mass after all that effort. Those randomly assigned to a non-ketogenic diet added about three pounds of muscle mass, while the same amount of weight lifting on the ketogenic diet tended to subtract muscle mass by about 3.5 ounces on average. How else could you do eight weeks of weight training and not gain an ounce of muscle on a ketogenic diet? Even Ketogenic Diet Advocates call Bodybuilding on a ketogenic diet is an “oxymoron.”
What about bone loss? Unfortunately, bone fractures are one of the side effects that disproportionately affect plague children on ketogenic diets, along with slow growth and kidney stones. Ketogenic diets can cause a constant rate of bone loss measured in the spine, which is presumed to be because ketones are acidic, so ketogenic diets can put people in what is called a “chronic acidotic state.”
Some of the case reports of children following ketogenic diets are truly heartbreaking. A nine year old girl it seemed to suffer it all, including osteoporosis, bone fractures and kidney stones, then contracted pancreatitis and died. Pancreatitis can be triggered by having too much fat in the blood. As you can see in the graph below and at 2:48 in my videoA single high-fat meal can increase the triglycerides in your bloodstream fivefold within hours of consuming it, which can put you at risk for inflammation of the pancreas.
The young woman suffered from a rare genetic disorder called glucose transporter deficiency syndrome. She was born with a defect in the transport of blood sugar to the brain. This can lead to daily seizures that begin in childhood, but a ketogenic diet can be used as a way to introduce fuel to the brain, making the ketogenic diet a blessing for the 1 in 90,000 families affected by this disorder.
As with everything in medicine, it’s all about risks versus benefits. Up to 30 percent of epilepsy patients do not reply to anti-seizure medications. Unfortunately, the alternatives are not pretty and may include brain surgery that implants electrodes deep through the skull or even removes a lobe of the brain. This can obviously lead to serious side effects, but also having seizures every day. If a ketogenic diet can help with seizures, the advantages may far outweigh the disadvantages. However, for those who simply choose a diet to lose weight, the cost-benefit analysis seems to go the other way. Fortunately, you don’t need to mortgage your long-term health to lose weight in the short term. We can get the best of both worlds by choosing a healthy diet, as I discussed in my video. Flashback Friday: The Weight Loss Program That Got Better Over Time.
Remember the study that presented Weight loss was almost identical in those who had been told to follow the low-carb Atkins diet for a year and those who had been told to follow the low-fat Ornish diet, as seen below and at minute 4:18 in me video? The authors concluded“This supports the practice of recommending any diet a patient follows to lose weight.” That seems like terrible advice.
There are regimens like “The Last Chance Diet,” which consisted of a low-calorie liquid formula made with byproducts left over from a slaughterhouse. [that] “It was associated with approximately 60 deaths from cardiovascular disease-related events.” A subsequent failed suit by a widower established the precedent for First Amendment protection for those who produce deadly diet books.
it’s possible build a healthy low-carb diet or an unhealthy low-fat diet (a cotton candy diet would be fat-free), but the health effects of a typical low-carb ketogenic diet like Atkins are very different from a diet based on in low fat plants. like Ornish’s. As you can see in the graph below and at 5:26 in my videothey would have In theory, there are diametrically opposite effects on cardiovascular risk factors, based on the fiber, saturated fat, and cholesterol content of their representative eating plans.
And when they were really put to the test, low-carb diets were found to impair arterial function. Over time, blood flow to the heart muscle itself decreases. improved on an Ornish style diet and reduced with a low carb one, as shown below and at 5:44 in my video. Heart disease tends to progress following typical diets to lose weight and actively gets worse on low carbohydrate diets, but it can be invested by an Ornish style diet. Since heart disease is the leading cause of death among men and women, “recommending “any diet a patient follows to lose weight” seems irresponsible. Why not tell people to smoke? Cigarettes can also cause weight loss, as can tuberculosis and a methamphetamine habit. The goal of weight loss is not to lighten the load on pallbearers.
For more information on ketogenic diets, check out my videos in the subject. Interested in improving sports performance? Watch the related videos below.
