14 Ways to Tell if Keto Is Working for You Besides Weight Loss

 

Based on keto transformation pics on social media, it would be easy to think this very low-carb way of eating is used for just one thing: weight loss. And no doubt, the before and after pictures of people who’ve lost substantial amounts of weight are amazing. But low-carb and ketogenic diets are good for so many other things besides changing the size of your body. Some of these—like lower blood sugar, lower triglycerides, and lower blood pressure—can be shared via pictures of glucometers, home blood pressure cuffs, or printouts of your latest bloodwork. But what about the things we can’t see? What about all the great stuff keto does that you can’t capture in a picture? A picture speaks a thousand words, but what about the great things keto does that you can’t take a picture of? 

People use keto for fat loss, but what if you: 

A) Don’t want or need to lose weight, but you’re dealing with a laundry list of troubling health issues? 

B) Do want to lose body fat but you’re stuck in a stall and the scale hasn’t moved in a while? 

Well, if B is your issue, check out this article I wrote on how to stay motivated during a fat loss stall, and then grab a copy of my book, The Stall Slayer, to help break that stall. (I also encourage you to just stay off the scale altogether for a while.) 

 

Either way, here are 14 ways to know that keto’s working for you that have nothing to do with weight.

Presentation on Insulin -- Much More Than a Blood Sugar Hormone

Hey all!

Busy, busy, busy for the next few weeks. I’m speaking at Low Carb Houston this weekend, at the Wise Traditions conference (from the Weston A. Price Foundation) in mid-November, and at the keto event in Ontario on December 1. Yowza!

So it might be a few weeks before I can write more blog posts of substance, but I’ll try to pop in and at least post something before I get back to (what I hope are) more meaningful and educational posts.

In the meantime, I want to share a link to a presentation I gave on insulin and chronic hyperinsulinemia. If you enjoyed my 8-part series on insulin a while back (two more parts coming, by the way!), then I think you’ll like this video. The primary message is that insulin is much more than merely a “blood sugar hormone.” Insulin has effects far and wide throughout the whole body. There’s almost no organ, gland, or tissue system that insulin doesn’t affect in some way, including the brain. (Hence the book I wrote on Alzheimer’s disease, and the talks I give on “brain insulin resistance.”)

In this presentation, I talk about chronically high insulin as a driver of several conditions/disorders not typically thought of as metabolic in origin. Aside from type 2 diabetes and obesity (which are so intertwined in some cases that they’ve coined the phrase “diabesity”), there’s gout, hypertension, PCOS, erectile dysfunction, cardiovascular disease, skin tags, migraines, and more. (Possibly even Parkinson’s disease!)

I go into detail on hypertension and gout as two examples of conditions where the underlying cause (high insulin) is ignored in favor of things that often have little to nothing to do with how the disease actually develops (sodium in the case of hypertension, and red meat in the case of gout). But my favorite part is when I talk about insulin’s role in directly inhibiting lipolysis—the breakdown of fat. It explains so elegantly why so many of us had such a very hard time losing body fat when we were eating all the whole grains we were advised to consume, along with our skim milk, fat-free yogurt, and other low- and no-fat carbohydrates, and why things became much easier when we ate in such a way as to keep our insulin levels low for most of the day.

Please forgive the poor sound quality in the video. This was recorded at an event that was organized by one person, and it was her very first time organizing something like this. We’re lucky someone did us the favor of recording it at all! It’s a little bit hard to hear at first, but it gets somewhat better as the video goes on. Please don’t let that stop you from watching. I think it’s educational and might give you some new knowledge about the role of insulin not just in body weight, but in overall health and wellness.

Here’s the link: Insulin Resistance Presentation, Perth, Ontario (10/16/2018)

   

Disclaimer: Amy Berger, MS, CNS, NTP, is not a physician and Tuit Nutrition, LLC, is not a medical practice. The information contained on this site is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition and is not to be used as a substitute for the care and guidance of a physician. Links in this post and all others may direct you to amazon.com, where I will receive a small amount of the purchase price of any items you buy through my affiliate links.

Gout: Is it Meat, or Metabolic Syndrome?

I’ve never experienced a gout attack, but if common graphical representations are to be believed, it feels like there are shards of broken glass embedded in your joints, or like someone’s holding a flamethrower on full blast and aiming it right at your big toe. For whatever reason, the big toe seems to be the joint that suffers the worst in gout, but the condition can manifest in other joints as well.

Conventional medicine holds that animal proteins and alcohol are major triggers for gout, so typical advice for those who suffer from gout is to reduce consumption of alcohol and animal protein—red meat and seafood, in particular.

Part of the rationale for these recommendations is that gout results from an abnormal accumulation in the blood of a compound called uric acid. At high blood concentrations, uric acid can crystallize and be deposited in the joints, and these uric acid crystals are responsible for the pain, swelling, and other fun stuff that comes along with gout. And a major source of uric acid is the metabolism of purines, which are nitrogen-containing compounds found in proteins (and other substances). Some foods are higher in purines than others, hence the recommendations to eliminate or reduce red meat and seafood in the diet. Beer is also high in purines, and other plant foods are sources of purines as well.

But uric acid is a normal compound in the body. It’s not solely a metabolic waste product; it performs important functions as well. So we don’t want to get rid of uric acid entirely, and we certainly don’t want to eliminate protein from our diets.

So if the body normally produces uric acid, what’s really the problem in gout? Does the body produce too much uric acid, or is the uric acid not cleared away properly?

If it’s the latter, and the problem isn’t with overproduction, but rather, with impaired clearance, how is uric acid cleared from the body, and what impairs this?

Well, to cut right to the chase, the kidneys filter excess uric acid out of the blood so it can be excreted in the urine. And what impairs the kidneys’ ability to do this? Insulin. Yes, dear readers, our old friend insulin strikes again. (I mentioned this insulin and gout connection way back in the insulin series.) Alcohol also reduces the kidneys’ ability to excrete uric acid, so there might be some truth to cutting back on alcohol if you have gout.  

Mankind has been consuming animal proteins for a long time now, and gout is a relatively new disease. Well, “new” since about 300 years ago, which is when more accounts of it started being recorded. At that time, it occurred mainly among wealthy people—the people who could afford to eat rich meats and drink alcohol. But something else these “refined” individuals could afford that most common folk couldn’t, was sugar. Refined sugar.  ;-) 

Interesting, huh? 

Typical old-school representation of gout: a demon shooting fire at the toes.

Notice what appears to be a wealthy looking man eating what might be a meatball, and there’s alcohol on the table.

So what’s the real deal with gout? Is it caused by meat, or metabolic syndrome--that is, chronically elevated insulin?

Read all about it in my latest post for the KetoDiet Blog: Is Gout Caused by Red Meat or Metabolic Syndrome?  I think you’ll find the details interesting, and what’s really fascinating is that a few studies have shown that diets that are higher in protein can actually reduce uric acid levels and frequency of gout attacks—provided that the diets are also lower in carbs. Nice, huh?

If you or someone you know suffers from gout, and you think you’ve been relegated to a life without steaks and red wine (perish the thought!), check out the post to learn why it’s not meat, but rather, chronically high insulin, that causes gout.

As a personal aside, I have a friend who suffers from gout, and he’s a vegetarian. No red meat, but lots of fruit, fruit juice, and grains. And fructose, via its effects on the liver, can be a huge contributor to hyperinsulinemia and gout.

If you’d like to learn more, Georgia Ede, MD, has a fabulous post that covers all of this as well—gout, meat, insulin, alcohol, and fructose, and it’s a highly recommended read: Got Gout but Love Meat?

Also, the must-read book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes, originally included a chapter on gout, but it didn’t make it into the version that got published. Fortunately, this “lost chapter” is available online and it’s another educational read on the connections between insulin, fructose, and gout: Gout: The Missing Chapter from Good Calories, Bad Calories

Disclaimer: Amy Berger, MS, CNS, NTP, is not a physician and Tuit Nutrition, LLC, is not a medical practice. The information contained on this site is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition and is not to be used as a substitute for the care and guidance of a physician. Links in this post and all others may direct you to amazon.com, where I will receive a small amount of the purchase price of any items you buy through my affiliate links.