Understanding The Ketogenic Diet.
Welcome to Ketogenic World website. Ketogenic World is a whole new world on its own. We use food as medicine to bring healing to an ailing world. Our goal is to cut down on highly processed and refined carbohydrate foods in order to heal our bodies and optimize our health.
In a Ketogenic World, we follow a pattern of eating that allows us to eat good low carbohydrate, moderate protein, and a healthy high fat diet. This pattern of eating enables the liver to produce a molecule called ketone which is used as fuel/energy in place of glucose which is the normal and preferred energy source of the body.
To better understand ketones, it's very important to understand glucose first. Glucose is a simple sugar that is the body's preferred energy source. For the most part, the diet people consume normally contain a high amount of carbohydrate, so when high carbohydrate is consumed, the body breaks it down and converts it into a simple form of sugar known as glucose which is to be used as energy/fuel to run the body.
Though the body is able to use an alternate energy source, glucose is easier to use than any other energy source. Before the body can use glucose for energy, it must be processed and transported around the body by a hormone called insulin. Insulin is not only responsible for driving glucose into our cells and stabilizing blood sugar, it is responsible for storing fat as well.
It helps to store glucose in the form of glycogen and fat in the form of triglycerides. Even when leftover glycogen can no longer be stored in the liver and muscles, they are converted into fat and stored.
Insulin is also responsible for a host of other things but we will stay on track and focus so that we can get to ketones. The constant stimulation of insulin to help stabilize blood sugar due to high carbohydrate consumption prevents the efficient use of fat and the effect of this is fat storage in cells and organs which ultimately causes metabolic diseases and obesity.
Obesity is a risk factor for heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and much more. When an individual decides to switch up their diet and follow the Ketogenic diet, they have also decided to switch to a different energy source. They will now drop the use of glucose as energy and start using ketones.
However, to start using ketones as energy, the individual must have a plan and deliberately eat in a pattern that allows that to happen. This is where the Ketogenic diet comes in. The question is how can we switch up fuel/energy source? Switching from running on glucose to running on ketones requires major carbohydrate restriction on diet to achieve that.
When an individual restricts the amount of carbohydrate they eat to 20 grams or less a day, they reduce or inhibit the stimulation of the hormone insulin and keep it at bay. The body, in trying to lay its hands on a fuel source reaches into stored body fat and begins to break them down.
Breaking down stored fat leads to the production of a molecule called ketones by the liver. When this fat breakdown occurs, we say the body has achieved the state of ketosis and running on ketone energy source instead of glucose. The brain loves ketones and runs very efficiently on it. A body running on ketones activates tons of health- benefits as it utilizes its own fat for fuel.
Simply put, a body in ketosis turns into a fat burning machine, breaking down fat and optimizing health. The state where the body breaks down stored fat because it cannot access glucose like before is known as the state of ketosis. This state is desirable for anyone following the ketogenic diet.
The breakdown of the stored body fat is the genesis of ketone production, the new energy source. This is a desirable state for many people following the ketogenic lifestyle because it activates a whole new world they never knew existed. Again, welcome to Ketogenic World where all things are possible. This world teaches us that all carbohydrate, fat, and protein are not equal.
