WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF THE KETO DIET?

No keto diet guide would be complete without covering the many benefits of this

science supported diet. The main benefits of the keto diet include weight loss, a boost in energy, clearer brain function and blood sugar regulation. But these are just a few things that keto has to offer.

You may be wondering how being in ketosis can help people lose weight or battle various ailments.

1. WEIGHT LOSS

Overweight and obese people can benefit most from the keto diet compared to others. After switching over to using fat for energy, your body burns your own fat for energy, not just the fats you eat.

High-fat, low-carb diets help you lose weight faster than low-fat diets .

A lot of people find that keto diet weight loss helps get rid of stubborn fat they just couldn’t lose on other eating plans.

Plus, transitioning into ketosis can kill cravings for unhealthy foods . Fixing your appetite woes can also help you keep weight off once it’s gone.

2. HEART HEALTH

Concerned about your high cholesterol? Conventional advice has told us to cut out all the high-fat foods we eat. But that advice has long been debunked.

Turns out, your body wants healthy fats and your heart needs them to work optimally.

Sure, losing extra weight can improve your heart health overall. However, keto actually improves specific markers of heart health. A high-fat diet can :

• Decrease total and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels
• Increase the size of LDL particles (the smaller the particles, the more your risk of heart disease goes up)
• Lower insulin which activates cholesterol enzymes
• Lower high triglycerides

Drastically reducing carbs also helps fight metabolic syndrome . This cluster of symptoms (high blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal triglycerides/cholesterol) increase your chances of developing both heart disease anddiabetes.

3. LOWER RISK OF AND/OR TREATMENT FOR TYPE 2 DIABETES

Because keto transitions your body out of using glucose for energy, it is a great way to control blood sugar levels and stabilize your insulin usage.

Insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes, happens when you don’t respond normally to your body releasing insulin to counteract sugar you eat.

You may have guessed this already, but using ketones rather than glucose for energy greatly fights insulin resistance (8). Keto lets your body re-adjust to using insulin again, the rightway.

It’s not just theory, either — a 2008 clinical trial saw improvements in all diabetes markers over 24 weeks in subjects on the keto diet (9). By the end of the trial, subjects had:

• Lower A1c levels
• Lower fasting glucose
• Lower fasting insulin
• Lower body weight (an average of about 24 pounds)
• Higher HDL (“good”) cholesterol

If all that wasn’t enough, an overwhelming 95.2 percent of people in the trial were able to reduce or totally eliminate their medications!

4. LESS INFLAMMATION & OXIDATIVE STRESS

Inflammation is at the root of most chronic diseases. It’s been linked to diseases like cancer, arthritis, heart disease, diabetes and more.

The keto diet can help to reduce the chronic inflammation that tanks your immune system’s ability to fight disease and even inflammatory pain (10).

When you utilize ketones, not glucose (one of the most inflammatory substances on the planet!), your body experiences less oxidative stress . That drop in oxidative stress equals a drop in inflammation.

Although not limited there, the keto diet’s impact on inflammation is especially prevalent in the brain. That’s why it’s been proposed as a dietary way to deal with brain issues like epilepsy, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease .

5. CANCER FIGHTING POWER

One of the most fascinating possible benefits of the keto diet is how it may fight cancer progression.

While keto lowers oxidative stress for healthy cells, it may act the opposite way for cancer cells .

So far, research has discovered that the ketogenic diet:

• Can extend survival in metastatic (multi-organ) cancer 
• May slow or stop the growth of certain cancers 
• Could improve quality of life in advanced-stage cancer 

Again, the brain is a clear target. Brain cells are unique compared to cells in the rest of your body because they can only derive energy from one of two sources: glucose or ketones. All other cells can also utilize fatty acids. (That’s also where keto flu symptoms come from — they’re all in your head! But more on that later…)

Because of the unique energy needs of brain cells, cancer cells in the brain may be most susceptible to the anti-cancer power of keto (18).

An extraordinary case report follows an unnamed 65-year-old woman with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), an aggressive type of malignant brain tumor. For two months, the patient went on a calorie-restricted ketogenic diet.

Her tumor was gone after two months. 10 weeks after stopping the ketogenic diet, the tumor came back (19).

6. INCREASED ENERGY & LESS BRAIN FOG

We all know that 2 PM crash hits hard on a Wednesday… so why not get rid of the energy dips altogether?

When you’re not relying on glucose, the ebb and flow of energy levels out. You may even wake up feeling more rested!

(Don’t worry… I’m not recommending you get rid of the coffee.)

You’ll probably notice after your initial transition into ketosis that your brain feels less foggy. Personally, I’ve seen a marked improvement in my ability to work efficiently and think more clearly when on the keto diet.

7. IMPROVEMENT IN NEUROLOGICAL DISEASE AND BRAIN TRAUMA

The keto diet is a major breakthrough in the science of neurological disease. As ketosis improves the health of your mitochondria (the “energy powerhouse” of the cells in your body), your risk for neurodegenerative disease, or progression of such a disease, drops (20).

Alzheimer’s disease: Human and animal studies have heralded the great benefits of the keto diet for Alzheimer’s symptoms. Not only does the protection of mitochondria help slow the development of Alzheimer’s, but keto helps to stop amyloid beta from forming. Amyloid beta is the plaque that builds up in Alzheimer’s-riddled brains.

Parkinson’s disease: Even though it’s far from being a total cure, trying the ketogenic diet has helped many Parkinson’s patients improve their symptoms.

Epilepsy: People using keto to treat their epilepsy tend to have even high amounts of fat in their diet and only the smallest number of carbs each day. While results vary, seizures tend to be reduced by between 30-40 percent in some patients.

Brain trauma: In the past, researchers have accepted that trauma to the brain is mostly irreversible. However, the keto diet has been found to help patients improve cognition and motor skills after trauma. It has also shown success in reducing the size of bruises on the brain.

8. LONGEVITY

Reducing your carbohydrate intake is a potentially great way to lengthen your life. A huge review of adults over many years recently declared that high-carbohydrate diets were associated with the highest risk of death by any cause.

Unlike you may have heard in the past, total fat intake and the types of fat you eat were not associated with any heart issues or death from heart disease (21).

9. IMPROVEMENT IN PCOS

Problems with your blood sugar aren’t just related to your risk for diabetes — they can impact certain hormonal conditions, too.

Women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) struggle with insulin resistance and obesity. This condition is one of the most common causes of female infertility.

Several studies have observed what happens when women with PCOS go on a low-carb, high-fat diet like the keto diet. All of them show similar results (22,23,24):

• Patients lose weight. This is remarkable for PCOS, because losing just 5-10 percent of total body weight can majorly improve fertility. PCOS sufferers often have trouble losing weight by normal means.

• Menstrual cycles begin to regulate again. In PCOS, a normal period is nearly impossible.

• Free testosterone goes down. Most of the time, women with PCOS have high testosterone levels which lead to issues like hirsutism, or male-pattern hair growth on the body and face.

• The LH/FSH ratio improves. These hormones are necessary for ovulation.

• Insulin levels go down. One of the main features of PCOS, insulin resistance on the keto diet decreases significantly.

We’ll get into other considerations for women later on in this keto diet guide, but for now, just know that going keto can be very powerful for women experience chronic issues related to imbalanced hormones.

10. LESS ACNE BREAKOUTS

We’ve already touched on some of why keto can reduce acne. For one, being in ketosis lowers your inflammation levels — and acne is an inflammatory condition of the skin.

Plus, going keto fights insulin resistance. You may be surprised to hear this, but insulin resistance does affect acne.

When your body secretes insulin, it also stimulates the production of androgens. These hormones are what cause hormonal acne. If you’re overproducing insulin because your body doesn’t respond to it the right way, you’ll also produce too many androgen hormones and can experience breakouts as a result.

That means keto’s insulin-balancing impact extends to reducing acne breakouts (20).

11. A HEALTHIER LIFE

Finally, one of the most significant ways the keto diet is beneficial is by jump starting a healthier lifestyle than you’ve ever lived.

When you eat keto, you naturally stop eating as many processed foods and empty (white) carbohydrates.

Even if you choose to “carb cycle” or go to another dietary model entirely, taking some time to try the keto diet can help you get rid of some of your worst habits. The ketogenic diet, in its purest form, encourages not only eating the right kinds of foods but also getting rid of some of the worst ones.

For example, on keto, you can technically have low-quality fats or processed meats without falling out of ketosis… but any person who has truly looked into this diet knows that these are discouraged because they aren’t healthful.

Instead, you should be eating more fresh produce, healthy fats and high quality meats/proteins.

Find yourself struggling to “eat right?” Do yourself a favor: try the keto diet.

https://elevays.com/keto/