By Dr. Mercola
Humans suffer more chronic and debilitating diseases today than ever before; more than half of all Americans struggle with chronic illness,
and 1 in 5 deaths in the U.S. are obesity-related. These discouraging
statistics are largely the result of an inappropriate diet.
Most of us eat far too much sugar and grains, and far too little healthy fat. Many also eat too much protein,
and most of it of poor quality processed food to boot. Unfortunately,
the notion that glucose is the preferred fuel for your body is a
pervasive one.
Everyone from diabetics to top athletes are advised to make sure they
eat "enough" carbs to keep their systems from crashing. This misguided
advice is at the heart of many of our current health failures. It's also
a driving factor in our diabetes, heart disease and cancer epidemics.
Dietary fats are actually the preferred fuel of human metabolism, and
this can be traced back to our evolutionary roots. One of the keys to
long-term weight management and good health is healthy mitochondrial function, and for that you need to get your net carb, protein and fat ratios correct.
This is the focus of my latest book, "Fat for Fuel."
It's by far the most important book I've ever written, and the one I've
poured the most heart and soul into because I believe this information
has the power to reverse the cancer epidemic and save countless lives.
Shipments of "Fat for Fuel"
will begin on May 16. Reserving your copy now will entitle you to six
free bonuses. Preordering will also help push the book onto the best
seller list, which will go a long way toward informing and educating
others.
How to Improve Mitochondrial Function Through Diet
To improve your mitochondrial function through diet, the key is to eat
in such a way that your body is able to burn fat as its primary fuel
rather than sugars. Ketogenic diets are very effective for this, as is intermittent fasting and longer water fasts for those who are overweight.
An important yet rarely discussed facet of nutritional ketosis that I explain in "Fat for Fuel"
is feast-and-famine cycling. The reason for this has to do with the
fact that continuous, long-term nutritional ketosis can actually be
counterproductive.
Long-term uninterrupted use of a ketogenic diet can trigger a rise in
blood sugar by driving your insulin level too low. This paradoxical
situation can arise because the primary function of insulin is not to
drive sugar into the cell, but to suppress the production of glucose by
your liver (hepatic gluconeogenesis).
If your blood sugar is high due to chronically and excessively low
insulin, eating a piece of fruit or other sugar-containing food will
actually lower your blood sugar rather than raise it.
All of this can be avoided by cycling in and out of nutritional
ketosis, basically going through a one-day-per-week fast and one or two
days a week of feasting, where you eat double or quadruple the amount of
net carbs.
Your body is designed to have the metabolic flexibility to use both
glucose and fat for fuel. The problem is, most people lack the ability
to burn fat. This metabolic inflexibility is the direct result of eating
a high-carb diet for a long period of time.
As a result, they struggle with weight issues and poor health. Even
if they are not overweight they may be "skinny fat" with loads of excess
dangerous visceral body fat. Feast-and-famine cycling helps reestablish
the metabolic flexibility to burn fat. Another important dietary factor
is avoiding late-night eating.
Feeding your body at a time when it needs the least amount of energy
will simply result in cellular damage due to the excess production of
free radicals. For this reason, I often suggest limiting your eating to
breakfast and lunch — a "Peak Fasting" strategy that allows you to fast
for 16 or more hours each day.
Having the Metabolic Flexibility to Burn Fat for Fuel Is Key for Optimal Health
When your body is able to burn fat for fuel, your liver creates
water-soluble fats called ketones that burn far more efficiently than
carbs, thus creating far less reactive oxygen species and secondary free
radicals that can damage your cellular and mitochondrial cell
membranes, proteins and DNA.
This is why being an efficient fat burner is so crucial for optimal
health. Ketones also mimic the life span extending properties of calorie
restriction (fasting), which includes improved glucose metabolism and
reduced inflammation. As noted in a recent study1 on this topic:
"The extension of life span by caloric restriction has been
studied across species from yeast and Caenorhabditis elegans to primates
… Here, we propose that the life expansion produced by caloric
restriction can be duplicated by the metabolic changes induced by
ketosis …
[E]xtension of life span results from decreased signaling through
the insulin/insulin-like growth factor receptor signaling (IIS) pathway
… An effective method for combating free radical damage occurs through
the metabolism of ketone bodies …
A dietary ketone ester also decreases circulating glucose and
insulin leading to decreased IIS … [K]etosis results in transcription of
the enzymes of the antioxidant pathways.
In addition, the metabolism of ketone bodies results in a more
negative redox potential of the NADP antioxidant system, which is a
terminal destructor of oxygen free radicals."
Good Fats Improve Glucose Metabolism and Reduce Inflammation
The importance of good fats is also evidenced in another recent study,2
which shows animal-based omega-3 fats reduce the autoimmune responses
associated with type 1 diabetes (aka insulin-dependent diabetes), an
autoimmune disorder in which your body attacks and destroys the beta
cells responsible for creating insulin.
Here, omega-3s were actually found to help regenerate these beta
cells in non-obese mice with type 1 diabetes, significantly improving
glucose metabolism and lowering inflammatory markers, decreasing the
overall incidence of the disease. As reported by Medical News Today:3
"Both nutritional supplementation and genetic therapy normalized
blood sugar and insulin levels for a minimum of 182 days, stopped the
development of autoimmunity, blocked the lymphocytes from entering the
regenerated islets in the pancreas, and drastically increased the levels
of beta cell markers.
These results suggest that omega-3 PUFAs may serve as a new therapy for type 1 diabetes."
Fasting Also Helps Regenerate the Diabetic Pancreas
Other recent research shows that fasting can have a similar
influence, actually triggering the regeneration of the pancreas in both
type 1 and type 2 diabetics.4 As reported by the BBC:5
"In the experiments, mice were put on a modified form of the
"fasting-mimicking diet." It is like the human form of the diet when
people spend five days on a low-calorie, low-protein, low-carbohydrate
but high unsaturated-fat diet … with around 800 to 1,100 calories a day.
Then they have 25 days eating what they want — so overall it mimics
periods of feast and famine. [A]nimal experiments showed the diet
regenerated a special type of cell in the pancreas called a beta cell.
These are the cells that detect sugar in the blood and release the
hormone insulin if it gets too high.
Dr. Valter Longo, from the University of Southern California, said:
'Our conclusion is that by pushing the mice into an extreme state and
then bringing them back — by starving them and then feeding them again —
the cells in the pancreas are triggered to use some kind of
developmental reprogramming that rebuilds the part of the organ that's
no longer functioning.'"
Fasting May Reverse Type 2 Diabetes
Another researcher specializing in fasting is diabetes expert Dr. Roy
Taylor. In a recent calorie restriction trial, type 2 diabetics ate just
600 calories a day for eight weeks. All were disease-free by the end of
their fast. Three months later, after returning to their regular diet,
seven of the 11 participants were still disease-free. Taylor's team is
now testing this type of fasting regimen on a much larger group of 300
people with type 2 diabetes. As reported by The Guardian:6
"… Taylor, who leads the group, thinks that fasting is beneficial
because it gets rid of dangerous fat in and around your organs,
including two that are important in sugar control — the pancreas and the
liver … 'If you have fat around these organs it clogs up the way they
work and your body can't control its blood sugars,' says Taylor.
After about 12 hours of fasting, he says, the body uses up all the
glycogen in the liver, its go-to source of energy, and starts to dip
into its fat deposits. 'The first type of fat to go is that dangerous
fat around the organs, freeing them up to do their job properly.' He
stresses that people with diabetes should not fast without consulting
their doctor — a combination of insulin drugs and fasting can be
lethal."
Intermittent Fasting Promotes Health and Longevity
Longo's team has also looked at the health effects of a fasting
mimicking diet (FMD) in humans. One hundred participants did three
cycles of FMD, which involves semi-fasting for five days each month. The
FMD diet is low in calories, sugars and protein, but high in healthy
unsaturated fats. After three months, the participants had:7
Lost an average of 7.5 pounds and had reduced visceral fat and waist circumference
Lower levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), a hormone linked to cancer and aging
Lower levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), an inflammatory marker
Lower blood pressure
Sports medicine doctor and fitness guru Dr. Gabe Mirkin also recently wrote an article in The Epoch Times8
describing different intermittent fasting regimens, and how
intermittent fasting has benefited his and his wife's health. For
starters, his wife, Diana, lost 15 pounds in six weeks, and Gabe lost 30
pounds over the course of a few months.
Historically speaking, net carbohydrate intake (total carbs minus fiber)
has always been quite low. Likewise, the diseases we now know are
associated with insulin resistance — which is primarily caused by excess
consumption of refined carbs — have been quite rare.
Switching from a high-carb diet to one high in healthy fat with
moderate protein and low in net carbs helps rebalance your body's
chemistry. A natural side effect of this is weight loss, and improved
weight management, once you're at an ideal weight. One explanation for
this is that you don't actually get fat from eating too much and
exercising too little. Nor do you get fat from eating healthy fat.
Obesity is typically the result of a high-carb diet, which over time
leads to an inability to burn fat for fuel.
Fructose Is a Major Culprit in Obesity and Ill Health
Diets high in refined fructose are particularly troublesome, as
fructose activates the enzyme fructokinase, which in turn activates
another enzyme that causes cells to accumulate fat. When this enzyme is
blocked, fat cannot be stored in the cell. In essence, fructose is the
dietary ingredient that causes cells to accumulate fat. Dietary
carbohydrates, especially fructose, are also the primary source of a
substance called glycerol-3-phosphate, which causes fat to become fixed
in fat tissue.
At the same time, high carb intake raises your insulin levels, which
also prevents fat from being released. Furthermore, no amount of
exercise can compensate for this. This is why it can seem nearly
impossible to lose weight when you're eating a lot of refined carbs and
foods containing high fructose corn syrup, and why cutting carbs is so
critical when you're trying to lose weight.
Keep in mind that when we're talking about harmful excess carbs (aka
excess net carbs), we're only referring to grains and sugars, not
vegetable carbs. Vegetables contain valuable fiber, and when you cut
grain/sugar carbs you actually need to radically increase the amount of
vegetables you eat.
You also need to dramatically increase healthful fats such as
avocados, coconut oil, egg yolks, raw grass fed organic butter, olives,
and nuts like macadamias and pecans that are both low in protein and
carbs and high in healthy fat.
The Importance of Fiber Carbs
Fiber from vegetables are important for several reasons, including
building a healthier gut microbiome, stabilizing your blood sugar and
improving fat burning.9
Fiber is in fact a carbohydrate, but unlike sugars and starches you
don't digest it. However, your gut bacteria do, and benefit from it.
This is one of the reasons why vegetables, which are low in net carbs,
will typically not take you out of ketosis, and you can eat as many
veggies as you want.
Fiber can be broadly divided into soluble and insoluble types, and
ideally you want to get plenty of both. Soluble fiber helps your body
extract and absorb more nutrients from the foods you eat, subdues blood
sugar and insulin spikes after eating and keeps you feeling full longer.
Insoluble fiber curbs ghrelin, the hunger hormone, thereby preventing
hunger pangs from setting in and lowering the risk of overeating. It
also boosts your body's fat burning ability by nourishing gut bacteria
involved in metabolism.
A third category of fiber, which includes both soluble and insoluble
fiber, is prebiotic fiber and digestive-resistant starches. These
provide nourishment for beneficial gut bacteria that ferment the fiber,
breaking it down into short-chain fatty acids that have potent
anti-inflammatory properties and help maintain the structural integrity
of the lining in your gut. Raw garlic, leeks, Jerusalem artichoke, green bananas and unripe papaya or mango are good sources.
How to Implement a Ketogenic Diet
To implement a ketogenic diet (a diet high in healthy fats, adequate
in protein and low in net carbs), the first step is to eliminate
packaged, processed foods. The emphasis is on real whole foods, plenty
of healthy fats and as few net carbs (total carbs minus fiber) as
possible. This typically involves dramatically reducing or temporarily
eliminating all grains and any food high in sugar, particularly
fructose, but also galactose (found in milk) and other sugars — both
added and naturally-occurring.
As a general rule, you'll want to reduce your net carbs to 20 to 50
grams a day or less, and restrict protein to 1 gram per kilogram of lean
body mass. To make sure you're actually meeting your nutritional
requirements and maintaining the ideal nutrient ratios, a nutrient
tracker can be an invaluable tool.
I believe www.cronometer.com/mercola
is the most accurate and best nutrient tracker available. Like my
nutrition plan, this nutrient tracker is completely free. It's set up
for nutritional ketosis, so based on the base parameters you enter, such
as height, weight, body fat percentage and waist circumference, it will
automatically calculate the ideal ratios of net carbs, protein and
healthy fats (including your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio) to put you into
nutritional ketosis.
This is what will allow your body to start burning fat as its primary
fuel rather than sugar, which in turn will help optimize your
mitochondrial function and overall health and fitness. Another key to
success on a high-fat, low-carb diet is to eat high-quality healthy
fats, not the fats most commonly found in the American diet (the
processed fats and vegetable oils used in processed foods and fried
restaurant meals). Examples of high-quality healthy fats include:
Olives and olive oil (make sure it's third party certified, as 80 percent of olive oils are adulterated with vegetable oils.
Also avoid cooking with olive oil. Use it cold)
Coconuts and coconut oil (excellent for cooking as it can withstand higher temperatures without oxidizing)
Animal-based omega-3 fat from fatty fish low in mercury like wild caught Alaskan salmon, sardines, anchovies and/or krill oil
Ghee (clarified butter); lard and tallow (excellent for cooking)
Raw cacao butter
Organic, pastured egg yolks
To Learn More, Join Me at My Upcoming Live Lecture
There are many professionals or others who would like to dive deep into
the details, and if you fall into that category, I want to offer you
some opportunities to learn more. On June 14 and 15, 2017, I will be in
Colorado Springs for the SopMed's third medical ozone and ultraviolet light therapy training. The 14th I will be giving a three-hour course that goes into many of the details that are not discussed in my new book "Fat for Fuel," either because I learned of them later or there was not room to fit them in the book.
I am also speaking in Florida in November. If you are a physician and
are interested in learning about how you can use the ketogenic diet and
other therapies for cancer, heart disease, Lyme and neurodegenerative
diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, please be sure and come to
our ACIM conference in Orlando, Florida, on November 2 through 4 at the wonderful Florida Conference and Hotel Center.
If you are a patient, there will be a separate and less expensive
track on the same date and location. However, you will need to come back
to this page in a few days as the registration page for the event is
still not up.
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