The Top 5 Health Benefits of a Ketogenic Diet

Implementing the ketogenic diet in your life could completely change your body’s physique and your thoughts about the impact of the food you eat.

Costea Lestoc

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Are you feeling lethargic and low on energy? Do you feel bloated and suffer from issues such as indigestion and other disorders such as IBS? Have you ever stopped to consider that it might be the food you are eating, having this impact on your body?

Today’s modern diet features refined foods high in sugar, salt, and trans-saturated fats. These nutrients are detrimental to your health and are the leading dietary cause of heart disease, obesity, and hormonal disorders.

Cases of obesity and diabetes have risen to record levels, with a large percentage of the western populations classified as overweight or obese. Changing these statistics requires better knowledge and understanding of the effects of diet on the body and what we can do to turn our diets from rubbish into rocket fuel.

Understanding Ketosis

The modified ketogenic diet emerged in the late nineties as a re-work of the original ketogenic diet. The original ketogenic diet was inspired by the Atkins diet of the early to mid-nineties, which saw practitioners eliminate any form of carbohydrates from their food intake. These practitioners relied solely on fat and protein as their macronutrients.

This concept was previously unthinkable as modern nutritional science was led to believe that the body’s metabolism relied on gluconeogenesis to create ATP as energy for the body’s metabolic processes. Glycogen derives from dietary carbohydrate intake, so by removing it from the diet, nutritionists expected devastating health results to emerge in practitioners of the diet.

However, the complete opposite occurred, practitioners began to lose excess body fat, feel healthier, and in some cases, issues of diabetes even began to subside. Nutritionists began to study the effect of a fat-based diet and its impact on human health, years later; the modified ketogenic diet emerged from the research and had been used with success in modern society.

Inducing the Ketogenic State

Depriving the body of dietary carbohydrates for a period, long enough to deplete the body of its glycogen reserves, produces a ketogenic state. This depletion typically takes three to seven days to occur. During this time, you will notice that your energy level becomes consistently diminished as your body consumes energy with no new source of fuel added. You will also find that you begin to drop water weight, as glycogen is bound to water and then excreted.

After the depletion phase, your body will enter a survival mode where it starts to signal the liver to produce ketones from available dietary fat sources and body fat stores. These ketones will replace glycogen as the body’s fuel source in the absence of glycogen. The body will go back to burning glycogen for energy when you start eating carbs again.

The Health Benefits of a Ketogenic Diet

Eliminate Inflammation

Remove the carbs and kill the inflammation that’s associated with gastronomical disorders such as IBS, or lactose intolerance. Improve your digestion and assimilation of nutrients by your gut biomes and experience increased energy levels and strengthened immune system response.

Improve Your Blood Work

Drop your total cholesterol count and improve the ratio of HDL (good cholesterol) to LDL (Bad cholesterol).

Lean Out

Lose adipose body fat fast as ketones mobilize fat cells for metabolic fuel.

Improve Insulin Sensitivity

Eating less sugar and carbs means that you will barely ever spike insulin production. This fact improves insulin sensitivity and helps people with diabetes manage their disease and in some cases, reverse the disorder altogether.

Clear Your Mind

Less inflammation and better assimilation lead to improved blood flow to the brain. You can expect clearer thoughts and better decision-making abilities.

Wrapping Up

Implementing the ketogenic diet in your life could completely change your body’s physique and your thoughts about the impact of the food you eat. Give it a try for sixty to ninety days and log your results. To learn more about the ketogenic diet, visit the best Keto resource available.