A recent UCSF study shows how ketogenic diets keep us healthier by reducing inflammation.

Ketogenic diets such as the Atkins diet restrict carbohydrates and have been controversial in their approach.  It was once thought that these diets couldn’t possibly be healthy for us except that people who were on these types of higher protein and low carb consumption diets often had a better cardiovascular function, epilepsy and other neurological illnesses.  Ketogenic diet critics often state that their diets are healthier and better for us.  Are they really, or do their diets reduce weight without improving health? Where is their proof? A recent study shows why a keto diet may have some significant health benefits by lowering inflammation in the body.

A few years ago were all told to stay away from fat, and began to eat low-fat foods loaded with sugar, courtesy of the large food conglomerates?  This great experiment, led by the current food pyramid at the time created a large population of diabetics and a proliferation of other diseases, most likely linked to inflammation.  Sugar, by the way is highly inflammatory when consumed in large quantities, as well as flour.

It has been known for quite some time that inflammation is the most common cause of most diseases. Naturopaths and other holistic practitioners have treated the gut and diet to improve health by lowering inflammation in the body.   The mainstream health care community and insurance carriers have largely ignored this approach and have continued to treat symptoms and blood tests on a per symptom basis, with medications from big pharma. Is controlling cholesterol with a statin that is poisonous to the liver a good idea, when the problem is one of a metabolic nature affecting multiple systems resulting in inflammation?

The evidence supports the idea that disease and inflammation are intertwined.   Recently, drug companies have been coming up with their own allopathic approach to inflammation as you can read here.

The science is now beginning to catch up to the diet.   Scientists at USCF have found that a molecular key may be switched on by the diet.

If a ketogenic diet is better for us, why don’t more of us get on a diet like this?  You can read about these latest findings regarding ketogenic diets below.

Ketogenic Diets Reduce Inflammation – And Now Researchers Understand How

Blocking a Protein in Glucose Metabolism Could Have the Same Effect as the Diet

By Devika G Bansal

Ketogenic diets – extreme low-carbohydrate, high-fat regimens that have long been known to benefit epilepsy and other neurological illnesses – may work by lowering inflammation in the brain, according to new research by UC San Francisco scientists.

The UCSF team has discovered a molecular key to the diet’s apparent effects, opening the door for new therapies that could reduce harmful brain inflammation following stroke and brain trauma by mimicking the beneficial effects of an extreme low-carb diet.

“It’s a key issue in the field – how to suppress inflammation in brain after injury,” said Raymond Swanson, MD, a professor of neurology at UCSF, chief of the neurology service at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and senior author of the new study.

In the paper, published online Sept. 22, 2017, in the journal Nature Communications, Swanson and his colleagues found the previously undiscovered mechanism by which a low carbohydrate diet reduces inflammation in the brain. Importantly, the team identified a pivotal protein that links the diet to inflammatory genes, which, if blocked, could mirror the anti-inflammatory effects of ketogenic diets.

Read more here