From my reading I don’t think it is possible, but I’m open to learning how one can achieve a zero carbohydrate diet using only plant foods. @[email protected] has graciously offered to look into the matter.
Motivation - Why zero carb matters:
- Carbohydrates end up in the blood stream as glucose
- blood glucose is a direct driver of insulin
- persistently elevated insulin is a serious health concern
- cancers can only metabolize glucose, and cannot perform oxidative phosphorylation - i.e. they only run on glucose, so carbohydrates feed cancers.
why chronic hyperinsulinemia is bad:
- type 2 diabetes
- high blood pressure
- atherosclerosis
- pcos
- visceral fat
- ectopic fat (i.e. snoring)
Functional differences between pbf and abf:
- plant sterols interfere with human cholesterol signaling, we are made of cholesterol, this leads to higher inflammation and lower ldl (that is actually a bad thing)
- lectins and inflammation - most pbf have lectins inside of them, these lectins bind to cells throughout the body which leads to autoimmune responses (from mild inflammation, to full anaphylactic shock)
nice to have’s on a zero carb diet:
- local food that doesn’t have to be shipped around the world
- regenerative agriculture, there is no top soil without ruminants
- farming without external inputs like industrial fertilizer
- food without pesticide residue
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My body disagrees that low carb stops insulin secretion. Every morning humans boost blood sugar and then uses insulin to reduce it to normal
It worries our doctors when we get blood drawn around dawn
You can see it in us because it’s not drowned out by exogenous sugars like it is on other diets
Thanks for that paper, I’ll read it now.
Mice study, 90% energy from fat… but i’ll respond in detail when i’m done
Glucose Tolerance - We see human’s exhibit similar glucose tolerance issues on a keto diet. Just as with the mice in this study, reintroducing glucose resolve the glucose tolerance sensitivity. In humans, at least, the pancreas keeps a reserve of insulin ready when in demand, and in a persistent ketogenic state this reserve isn’t required - so when exogenous glucose is reintroduced it takes a day or two to refill the reserve and get “normal” glucose response. The authors of this study even demonstrated reversal of glucose tolerance in mice when keto was discontinued (consistent with the behavior in humans) https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1102798 BUT they didn’t document this in the paper… calling this glucose dysregulation is disingenuous - The fact they don’t mention the human equivalent studies on this topic is telling.
Adam Wolfberg, MD, MPH, Chief Medical Officer at Virta, who was not involved in this study, emphasized that “mice are not small humans.“
Mice have very different metabolism then humans, they produce ketones using different pathways with different feedback loops.
Who thought it was a good idea to give mice a 90% fat diet? This isn’t the practice in human ketogenic diets. And the fat source is industrial seed oils, thats a huge confounder as previous studies have demonstrated seed oils by themselves can impact fat metabolism.
Regardless the hyperlipidemia and liver dysfunction are mechanisms we don’t see in humans on keto - in fact human studies show the opposite - total resolution of NAFLD, and the researches replicated the same issue on a non-keto 90% fat diet in mice… that suggests keto is not the key mechanism of action in this mouse study… so the mice are behaving totally different then the humans.
MD Schur also covered this paper - https://youtu.be/-eA42CbEB8k
TLDR - This study is interesting in mice, but the applicability to humans is minimal, especially as it contradicts already established human studies using a well formulated ketogenic diet (i.e. not 90% fat). I imagine if we put humans on a 90% fat diet this study could be more relevant, but no one is suggesting that.
Thank you for the paper, I think its a good exercise to see how the literature can be weaponized to say things like :
I wouldn’t recommend low carb diets for the long term. If you don’t use the insulin secretion mechanism for a long time, it stops working.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3488544/
As a model of human obesity and insulin resistance, however, it suffers from the severe, if under-emphasized, limitation that high-fat diets do not generally cause these conditions in humans unless the diets are also high in carbohydrate.
Mice physiology differs considerably from humans, especially C57Bl/6.
Here is a narrative review of the KD in human beings with Type 2 Diabetes. The effects seen in mice are not typically observed: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12899706/
The primary concern is muscle loss.
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If we look up the mouse diet used - D16062902
- 90% of calories from fat
- Fat source dominated by soybean oil (very high in linoleic acid, omega-6 PUFA)
- Extremely poor omega-6:omega-3 ratio
- 10% protein (low for mice)
- Virtually no carbs and no fiber
I don’t think a high PUFA diet really is in the universe of anyone doing nutritional ketosis.
This study is really a study of a 90% industrial seed oil on mice…
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I never claimed the glucose intolerance was permanent. I even gave my reason why it’s not ideal (though temporary)
If you don’t use the insulin secretion mechanism for a long time, it stops working. - https://quokk.au/comment/4376475
I may not be the best at English, but yes, you did.
I said if you are not metabolically flexible even mundane things like tasting a donut on a long term keto diet can be dangerous.
If your not consuming blood glucose spiking food, you don’t need the extra insulin. The total area under the curve of elevation is the key to glycation damage in the body - so low overall blood glucose is better then constantly spike your blood glucose (since there will be more time of elevated blood glucose). The fact people rebuild their insulin cache when eating carbs isn’t some dangerous thing in a healthy metabolic context. However, I’ll concede this is a matter of opinion.
Why do you still keep posting it so many times?
2 days ago, you are the one necroing a old post to continue a unproductive discussion.
Regardless, even though I have found the last few of our interactions frustrating and unproductive - I respect you, and I want to thank you for taking the time to raise your concerns.
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I didn’t say it stops working permanently. At least that was my intention.
That is the tricky part about communication, it’s not what is intended.
It’s nice in theory but you have to prove that it’s significant on a wfpb diets which I am on and significant among all other factors that are working to age you and kill you. Spoilers: it’s not.
I’m not against wfpb, I’m not saying anything about pbf. I’m talking about elevated glucose.
Same.
Great!
conclusions drawn by the actual scientists writing the papers over the “analysis and rebuttals” some drunk down the street.
The problem is your implying that the people writing papers that show benefit to keto are the “drunks down the street”, the references I gave you are the people writing papers, peer reviewed, medical doctors and everything, but this type of rebuttle is dismissive and a bit insulting.
Which you conveniently skipped past.
I didn’t skip past, I provided you other experts meeting your criteria, which you didn’t acknowledge. Which should at least demonstrate people involved in this publishing space are of at least two minds.
So I assume you’re not an expert in this field. You are likely an IT with some data science or ml background if I were to guess.
If your not willing to discuss things with me openly and honestly, why are you here? Sure you can point out the pbf group nutrition facts.org doesn’t like keto. I acknowledge they don’t like it. Fair enough, but I also have a bevy of research scientists and medical doctors who are seeing measurable benefits in human patient populations, and I’m happy to talk about that. But if we can’t talk about the papers, or data, and only pointing to third parties… why are we here in a discussion group?
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Great. Btw if you don’t like studies on mice there are many human studies cited on wikipedia.
I’ll read any paper you have read, so we can talk about it.
I do believe that humans are built for high carb, whole food diets, less frequent eating, and endurance. So the issue isn’t in carbs but the lack of the rest in modern man.
I agree on whole food diets, frequency, and endurance. Humans CAN use high carb, but its not essential.
Once people are sick, however, fixing hyperinsulinemia is essential, which means removing the carbs.
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I haven’t read any one of them in detail but we can discuss any one of them you like. I just read the abstract, result, and conclusions mostly.
Do any of the papers cover WHY they think carbs are essential? Something like …
If we posit that keto is dangerous, that directly implies there is such a thing as an essential carbohydrate in human health. What would the mechanism of action be to require such a essential carbohydrate?
If the body is able to make glucose on demand (gluconeogenesis in the liver being the most famous), why can’t that suffice for the potential mechanism of the essential carbohydrate?
FWIW: here is a resource I very much respect, they cite all their sources extensively - https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/skeptical-doctors
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My understanding is that gluconeogenesis occurs during starvation and intense exercise.
Actually, its always happening, even if your eating a bunch of carbs.
We never had low carb diets during evolution. So we never got efficient and clean at digesting and metabolizing fats and proteins into carbs / energy.
Intuit are a example of a low carb population that was studied in modern times. Also, think in a paleo context, not main grains to have on a daily basis, fruit would only be seasonal and winter would have almost no plant based options.
Most of the long term harm is due to accumulation of metabolites, stress on the liver and kidneys.
Why would metabolites accumulate? The kidneys are functioning. We see on keto that liver and kidney issues resolve quickly
And you eventually develop glucose intolerance because of the law of use and disuse.
I don’t know if you saw my big writeup of your paper in this post, but keto 100% does not create glucose intolerance. The pancreas stops keeping a cache of insulin for quick release in long term keto metabolism, but it quickly refills the pool when carbs are reintroduced (1-2 days).
Update:
Case study in humans about the necessity of introducing carbohydrates for 3 days before a OGTT: https://doi.org/10.1210/jendso/bvab049 - note she was not doing keto, she just skipped dinner the day before. You will note the mice study you provided did not do the 3 day carb loading protocol for the OGTT.
How long is long term? The term of the study in mice is ‘almost one year’
well, for a mouse that is like 1/3 of their life. But… mice are not little humans, heh
One of my concerns for trying to do low-carb with only plants would be vitamin B12. Perhaps the first step to going low-carb entails eating only the parts of the plants that are above-ground (i.e. no roots and tubers) and that aren’t fruit. Would this enable vegans to go below 20g/day, or would the nutritional requirements result in a higher dose of carbohydrates no matter what?
Diet doctor has a whole section on vegan keto and they are about 150g a day. It would be challenging to maintain nutritional ketosis over 20g/day.
I’m not sure it can be done
I suppose you could call fasting a form of vegan keto, but it’s not sustainable.
150g is better than 300g a day, but it’s not exactly low-carb either, plus I suspect that the commensurate intake of oxalates and various other plant toxins would cause issues down the road.
The consumption of fat is a requirement for the effective absorption of vitamins A, D, E, and K. People on vegan keto would still be consuming all three macronutrients leading to the continued activation of the Randall Cycle (not a cycle), which means they will still have higher levels of inflammation. Since the fat being consumed in question would be mostly polyunsaturated and of plant origin, as you mentioned in the OP it will be more inflammatory, even if we avoided all industrially refined oils.
I’m really not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze. It looks to me like a choice of your long term health or your ideology, but not both.
Yeah on balance of what I know so far, it isn’t a good tradeoff.
Especially given that the only demonstrated benefit is philosophical.
@[email protected] FWIW here is my thought process in selecting carnivore in the first place: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/51992319
