Keto is ketones. We have heard about the ketogenic diet and just shortened it as “Keto”, but ketones are made by your body when you metabolize fat and something that's called beta oxidation that happens in the liver and you create this fuel for the body called ketones. What's interesting is that it's an alternate fuel source.
We've all been told glucose and carbohydrate is where we get fuel from and that's true - blood glucose is important for fuel - but there's an alternative fuel source called KETONES.
And the brain actually prefers it! Ketones are an incredible source of energy from fat.
Keto, you may think, "Oh, that's a new fad thing." At least half of the time, if we went back to the caveman days, we would have been in a ketogenic state producing ketones for several reasons.
- Carbohydrates weren't processed like they are now.
- We didn't have cakes, cookies and crackers.
- The carbohydrates were low glycemic, which means produces a low amount of blood sugar and therefore a low amount of insulin required to deal with it.
But beyond that, a lot of those carbohydrates would have been what's called resistant starches. Things like bananas that were green, things like potatoes or roots that would be raw. They have little to no impact on the blood sugar. You could stay in ketosis on them.
Beyond that, we would have been fasting. Back then, it was called starving. We were looking for food, right? Working for food. Planting food. Digging it up. Cooking it. All those kinds of things require caloric expenditure. We expend calories and energy, on that food. And if we're in a caloric deficit, we can be in ketosis.
If we are eating meat during the winter, we're hunting animals because there isn't plants around, where in ketosis. So a lot of the time we could have been in ketosis. And I believe that we're meant to be dual fuel.
We were adapted for this, to be using glucose and ketones for fuel.
But now, because we have vending machines and all these companies delivering our food 24/7...we have ultra processed food and we don't take a day where we don't eat, we have food every three hours. Then we're never in ketosis. We're always having elevated blood glucose (blood sugar) and having elevated insulin to deal with that. Then we all become type two diabetic and what's called metabolic syndrome, where we deal with obesity and all these scenarios.
My goal is to continue to create educational content to empower your decisions around ingredients! Whether you follow a Keto diet or not, you may still want to boost your ketone levels and learn more about this lifestyle!
During the month of May, I'll be highlighting Keto supplements - so stay tuned!
Stay connected with Shawn Wells:
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