News
Keto Against Diabetes?
Is it just another fad diet or a scientifically-backed way to heal your health? Touted as a cure for diabetes, epilepsy and doomed New Year's resolutions to lose weight, the low-carb, high-fat Keto diet is taking off in popularity.
The diet has been around under different names since the 1920s and is called keto or "ketogenic" because it makes ketones in the body.
When you drastically drop the carbohydrates you're taking in and replace them with fat, the body burns fat instead, putting it into a state known as ketosis. This state raises the levels of ketones - chemicals made in your liver. People who are on the ketogenic diet are most likely eating 5 percent carbohydrates, 25 percent protein and 70 percent fat.
But when it comes to proving whether the keto diet is effective in putting diabetes into remission, researchers are asking whether it's keto, or if any other diet that helps a person lose weight that could work. Otago University Medical School (New Zealand) researcher and Wellington Hospital endocrinologist, Professor Jeremy Krebs says there is very little evidence that the keto diet can reverse diabetes. Krebs says the diet is controversial, and as yet unproven.
"Most of the studies that have been done have been very short term and in very small numbers of people and in very highly controlled situations, so I don't think we yet have adequate evidence."
Prof. Krebs says the potential harm of taking on a high-fat, low-fibre diet in the long-term needs to be explored.
The diet has been around under different names since the 1920s and is called keto or "ketogenic" because it makes ketones in the body.
When you drastically drop the carbohydrates you're taking in and replace them with fat, the body burns fat instead, putting it into a state known as ketosis. This state raises the levels of ketones - chemicals made in your liver. People who are on the ketogenic diet are most likely eating 5 percent carbohydrates, 25 percent protein and 70 percent fat.
But when it comes to proving whether the keto diet is effective in putting diabetes into remission, researchers are asking whether it's keto, or if any other diet that helps a person lose weight that could work. Otago University Medical School (New Zealand) researcher and Wellington Hospital endocrinologist, Professor Jeremy Krebs says there is very little evidence that the keto diet can reverse diabetes. Krebs says the diet is controversial, and as yet unproven.
"Most of the studies that have been done have been very short term and in very small numbers of people and in very highly controlled situations, so I don't think we yet have adequate evidence."
Prof. Krebs says the potential harm of taking on a high-fat, low-fibre diet in the long-term needs to be explored.