Since ketones are a preferred fuel for the heart and the diaphragm, and because a state of ketosis may provide extreme focus and cognitive performance during difficult mental activities, a ketogenic diet can be extremely useful for endurance athletes such as triathletes, distance swimmers, cyclists, marathoners, ultra-runners, etc..
Problem is, there are not a ton of tools out there about how highly active people can really get into a state of ketosis.
In this guide, author, triathlete, and ketogenic expert extraordinaire Patricia Daly explains how to do things the ideal way. Patricia just finished writing an amazing publication called “Practical Keto Meal Plans For Endurance Athletes: Tips, Tricks And How To’s For Optimizing Performance Using A High Fat, Low Carb Meal Plan”, and she has a wealth of information on this topic.�So in this article, you’re going to get the top 10 mistakes low-carb athletes make.
Mistake #1: Being Scared of Fat
The ketogenic diet is quite different from other typical diets. The objective of your lifestyle is to teach the body to utilize ketone bodies rather than glucose as the primary source of energy. That is why the quantity is about 75 to 85+ percent of daily caloric consumption.
Quite simply, if you operate out quite a bit you probably eat about 2,900 calories a day, of which about 2,300 will come from fat should you follow a ketogenic diet. Fat contains 9 calories per gram, and you will eat 256g of fat daily, based on how much you train of course. To simplify this further: all your intake will be approximately 18 tablespoons, one tablespoon of olive oil, for example, weighs approximately 14g.
Mistake #2: Eating Too Much Protein
Another mistake novices make is to substitute most of the carbs they used to consume with protein instead of fat. This happen all of the time. The problem is that excess protein intake can result in gluconeogenesis, which is the conversion of amino acids to glucose. This is not what we need on a ketogenic diet, to the contrary, promote the creation of ketone bodies from fatty acids to keep glucose levels low.
A lot of men and women are amazed when they start weighing their food according to the proper meal plans and realize how small protein they actually must consume on a ketogenic dietplan. But fat is protein sparing, meaning that a high fat consumption is decreased with by your need for protein.
Mistake #3: Carbs Creeping In
Carbohydrates can quickly add up if you’re eager to get your veggies, herbs and spices in. They can in fact be found in products that you’d never think contained carbs.
Good examples are any processed foods, shop bought salad dressings, milk replacements (many almond and coconut milks have added sugar), tomato sauce, a few meats, such as duck confit, starchy vegetables and even herbal tea, to name only a few. Eating out can be challenging because most restaurants prefer to use dressings, sauces and dips that have added alternative or honey sources of sugar. It tastes nice but is not keto-friendly. Having strong, reliable information is key to carb restriction, especially in the first stages when metabolic alterations occur.
Mistake #4: Giving Up Too Early
The faster you enter nutritional ketosis, the more side effects you could suffer from initially. The metabolic changes may be striking because every single cell in the body wants to do the change from glucose. Insulin is influenced: Amounts return because of reduced consumption. Insulin allows the kidneys to hold on to sodium. If insulin is at a lower level, the body starts getting rid of excess sodium and also water.
This is why it’s so important to guarantee you add sufficient sodium to your diet and keep well hydrated, especially in the first few days of beginning to reduce carbohydrates. This will make certain that you don’t suffer from some of the symptoms of the dreaded “keto flu”: shivers, foggy mind, headaches or nausea are some of the possible symptoms. It is probably more appropriate to call them “carbohydrate withdrawal symptoms” because of the effects on hormonal and electrolyte balance.
Things that help to get over these initial obstacles are strong bone broth with good quality salt, a great deal of rest, no extreme exercise and plenty of mineral-rich water, e.g. San Pellegrino. However, the best advice I could give is to take things slowly and not to give up when you are feeling a bit off in the initial phases, provided you’ve done all of the suggested blood tests to exclude any underlying health issues before starting a ketogenic diet.
Mistake #5: Scared of the New; Eating the Same
Many people feel overwhelmed from the first phases of executing a low carb and ketogenic diet. And because they have very little experience with certain new foods, they still keep eating the same “safe” low-carb stuff. For instance bacon and eggs for breakfast and nuts for snacks.
Of course this means that you’re eating low carbohydrate but its often a first priority to always improve their wellness. And this is only possible using a healthy diet. Eating the same things over and over again is dull, it may set you up for having deficiencies and growing food intolerances. This happens quite frequently especially if you’re somewhat worried, your gut function is not optimal or if you’re using medications.
Food intolerances may have an effect not only on your stomach health by causing nausea, bloating, diarrhea, constipation or other symptoms, but also in your immune system. The best advice is to continue experimenting with new foods, even if they seem completely strange to you, such as (for example) chicken liver, that is way easier to find and prepare than you’d think. There is a wonderful recipe for each and every food.
Mistake #6: Eating Processed Foods
This is particularly common for people who have read about the Atkins diet and noticed the products that are sold online and in stores. Yes, they keep you inside the limits that you select and may make life easier but they are also full of artificial flavors, polydextrose, odor, sucralose and other artificial sweeteners that can mess with your psychological and physical health.
A rule of thumb: if you wouldn’t have the ability to bake or cook a meal depending on the components list (because you don’t recognize half of them or wouldn’t know where to buy them), then you should stay away from it. Hopefully, with a growing amount of research to verify the advantages of low carb and ketogenic diets there will be plenty of incentives for companies to create snacks based on real foods.
Mistake #7: Deficiency Of Planning (And Obsessing)
Both absence of preparation and obsessing too much could be stumbling stone. If you don’t plan you’re much more likely to “fail” and give up in your lifestyle modifications. You see, the challenge is that if you realize you haven’t got all you might not find them.
Some of the goods that are staples on a low carb or ketogenic diet like olive oil, olives, fatty fish or ghee can only be bought in health stores or on the internet. More and more supermarkets start to inventory them but this depends where you live. Planning makes it more easy to cook in bulk and save cash and time.
Evidently, it’s a different story for somebody who follows a ketogenic diet for medical reasons, for instance in the case of epilepsy, no mistakes could be made without a consequence and where the diet has to be nicely calculated. But occasionally people become stressed out about dietary modifications that they wake in the middle of the night and can not go back to sleep. They fear what their next meal could look like ketones could be further increased by them or what to eat on a vacation In cases like this, it’s time to choose a (big) step back, relax, try some recipes without weighing and counting and possibly give it another go after a couple of weeks with a great deal of preparation and support. Stressing about meals can cancel the positive effects of good nutrition out.
Mistake #8: Ignoring the Body’s Warning Signs
Trainers who obsess over dietary modifications can get caught up in measuring blood sugar and ketones, weighing their meals all the time, producing exact meal programs and they are able to get really scared of eating out where items are out of their hands. In experience, they are also likely candidates to ignore the warning signs of their body.
Please remember that you just know your body best and that no meal or instruction program can conquer your innate wisdom and intuition. Take warning signs since you have it in your head to adhere to a specific regime, and do not override them. Low carb and ketogenic diets are not for everybody and if you are feeling worse than before, even after getting over the first symptoms talked about before, then it is probably time to stop and reconsider.
Mistake #9: Social Pressure
Even years into following a ketogenic diet, many people get opinions from close friends and family regarding this specific nutritional plan and it can sometimes be difficult for individuals to follow their keto diet close when social pressure pushes them to eat a variety of foods outside of their meal plan.
Ketogenic diets are still very poorly known even by the medical profession. People don’t understand where a few treats are allowed in moderate quantities, that you can not follow the famous 80/20 rule. You are either in ketosis or you’re not.
Mistake #10: Bad Timing
And lastly, lets discuss when to start lowering your carbs or attempting to go into ketosis. Please don’t do it a week before your competition of the season or during a period when you’re super busy at the office.
The best period of the year to make key adjustments to lifestyle and diet is when you are “off season”. Another fantastic time is before a few preparatory competitions to build towards the most important race. That’s when you see how your body responds to intensity and if the diet doesn’t suit you, you have loads of time to make changes.
The scope of our information is limited to chiropractic and spinal injuries and conditions. To discuss options on the subject matter, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900 .�
By Dr. Alex Jimenez
Additional Topics: Wellness
Overall health and wellness are essential towards maintaining the proper mental and physical balance in the body. From eating a balanced nutrition as well as exercising and participating in physical activities, to sleeping a healthy amount of time on a regular basis, following the best health and wellness tips can ultimately help maintain overall well-being. Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables can go a long way towards helping people become healthy.
Only about 5 to 10 percent of cancer is hereditary, although most cancer scientists have thought that cancer was a disease, states Dr D’Agostino.
A metabolic disorder is one that interrupts normal metabolism, the process of converting food to energy on a cellular level. The mitochondria create the energy that our cells will need to perform their job, and these are usually known as the powerhouses of the cells.
When carbohydrates (composed of glucose) are consumed, they cause the blood glucose levels to rise. The hormone insulin, responsible for regulating energy use, is secreted by the pancreas because it damages the structure of all proteins, as a high blood sugar concentration is toxic for human tissues.
Based on Dr Fettke, we could simply metabolise about one teaspoon (4 grams) of glucose at once and the remainder is stored in the liver and muscles as glycogen, or if this cannot happen, it’s stored as fat.
The longer carbs are ingested, the more glucose is produced, the more our body becomes resistant.
Insulin resistance occurs when the body does not respond to insulin properly. This results in increased blood glucose levels, which can not be saved in muscles or the liver must store it as fat, as discussed by Prof Noakes.
Relation of Insulin and Health
Insulin is consequently the fat storing hormone, which leads to an expanding waist. In case a high carb diet is followed, and if unchecked, it can cause obesity, metabolic syndrome (a combination of hypertension, obesity and hypertension) and to type 2 Diabetes.
The long-term impairment which occurs in Diabetes is because of the effect of always high blood glucose levels on a lot of different organs. If blood glucose levels are high, so too will insulin amounts be, and will consequently add to the damage.
“The more I read the more I’m convinced of the connection between diet and cancer. A lot hinges on stimulating factors involved in metabolism and cellular division, says Dr Gary Fettkesaid
In his study, Dr Elio Riboli notes the higher risk of late onset breast cancer, colon, rectum, endometrial, oesophageal and kidney disorders together with obesity. He explains the link between endometrial cancer and obesity: “Essentially, endometrial cancer is quite closely connected with oestrogen levels. So the tissue there is, the more oestrogens. So there are two outcomes. One is that in the obese, oestrogens are produced by the tissue, converts androgens to oestrogens. The second one is that down-regulating sex hormone binding globulin, insulin, makes oestrogen more bioavailable.
According to Dr Gary Fettke, in his lecture at the LCHF Convention before this season, cancer could be tied up with sugar metabolism. Cancer cells cannot use any additional fuel for growth, except for sugar. Without sugar they starve to death. This theory is based upon the Warburg effect, by Dr Otto Warburg, who won the 1931 Nobel Prize for discovering aerobic glycolysis – a flaw in subcutaneous sugar metabolism which diverts glucose away from energy production to cell development and causes fermentation of sugar. In other words, he discovered that cancer cells thrive on glucose and have mitochondria. Dr Gary Fettke also thinks that the problem with modern cancer treatment is that it ignores the glucose metabolism.
“We also haven’t fully recognised the institution of diet in the causation of cancer. The problem is sugar, especially fructose, refined fats and polyunsaturated seed oils. The modern diet is inflammatory and it generates masses of oxygen free radicals.”
Ketogenic Diet Health Benefits
A low carb, high fat Ketogenic diet (that is in nature the Banting diet, but with carb consumption below 25g per day) has successfully treated many different ailments like obesity, epilepsy, Diabetes, Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease. Dr Seyfried requires it a single metabolic procedure for a profusion of ailments that are distinct.
By maintaining carbs below 25g a day, your system moves from a carb burning state to a fat burning state. Ketones are formed when the liver for energy breaks down fatty acids. Ketosis is reached when ketones are formed through withdrawal of carbs within the body. These compounds are generated throughout metabolism — and are a sign that your body is presently using fat for energy. This process forces the body. Prof Noakes explains this in more detail in the Beginner Banting Online Program, in which you may find the tools to stick to a way of life.
“Virtually all the wholesome cells in our body have the metabolic versatility to utilize glucose, fat and ketones to survive, but cancer cells lack this metabolic versatility and require large quantities of sugar and can’t survive on ketones. Therefore by limiting carbohydrates, we could reduce insulin and glucose, and thus limit the key fuel for cancer cell growth.” Says Dr Seyfried. Dr Gary Fettke has a vested interest in this study as he had brain cancer 15 decades ago. He switched to a diet plan and shattered the cancer.
Prof Noakes says, “When fighting cancer, just the finest will do. Grass-fed beef, pasture-reared chickens, organic vegetables, etc.. Since hormones and tainted foods have been fed to animals, pesticides sprayed on veg and genetically modified soya and corn is routinely fed to cows and livestock, one must be dedicated to quality in order to avoid the dangers of the substances, highly carcinogenic independently.”
What to eat and drink on a Ketogenic diet
Animal protein
Saturated fat
Olive oil
Avocado
Above the ground vegetables
Water
What to avoid on a Ketogenic diet
Processed food
Fizzy drinks
Toxic oils
Processed meat
Fast food
Cancer Fighting Foods
Tomatoes: cooking enhances cancer-fighting and anti inflammatory properties. Lycopene was found to prevent cancer cell growth in a study in Cancer and Nutrition.
Chilli: capsaicin that gives chillies their powerful, spicy personality is anti-bacterial, anti-carcinogenic and anti-diabetic.
Cruciferous vegetables: such as cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, Brussels sprouts and kale have powerful anti-carcinogens. Cabbage in particular contain anti-oxidants known to help protect against prostate, colon and breast cancers. Broccoli is the only one having a sizable quantity of sulforaphane, an especially potent chemical that boosts the body enzymes and flushes compounds out .
Mushrooms: include the amino acid ergothioneine, which is an anti-oxidant and an anti-inflammatory, it protects against free radicals and boosts the immune system.
Aubergine: that the epidermis is rich in anti-oxidants known as anthocyanins, which are believed to fight cancer, inflammation, aging and neurological diseases.
Turmeric: includes curcumin that’s a powerful anti-oxidant and anti inflammatory. According to Cancer Research UK, it seems to have the ability to kill cancer cells and stop more from growing. It’s the very best consequences on breast cancer, bowel cancer, stomach cancer and skin cancer cells.
Berries: the idea of berries as anticarcinogens began in the late 1980s, when it was discovered that berries, and specifically black peppers, comprised ellagic acid, which is believed to inhibited the genesis of tumours.
Garlic: belongs to the Allium class of bulb-shaped plants, which also includes onions, chives, leeks, and scallions. It’s an strong and excellent neutraliser of free radicals. It contains good levels of selenium and, in several studies, selenium has been shown to decrease cancers. Phytochemicals in garlic have been found to stop the formation of nitrosamines, carcinogens formed in the stomach.
In summary, from the evidence that we have collected from all of the various sources, it’s obvious to see that the link between diet and health is a serious one and that what we consume really has an impact in the long term. Dr D’Agostino goes as far as to state, “let food be thy medicine.”
The scope of our information is limited to chiropractic and spinal injuries and conditions. To discuss options on the subject matter, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900 .�
By Dr. Alex Jimenez
Additional Topics: Wellness
Overall health and wellness are essential towards maintaining the proper mental and physical balance in the body. From eating a balanced nutrition as well as exercising and participating in physical activities, to sleeping a healthy amount of time on a regular basis, following the best health and wellness tips can ultimately help maintain overall well-being. Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables can go a long way towards helping people become healthy.
The benefits that come from a ketogenic diet are much like those of any strict low-carb diet. The effect may be greater since protein is significantly more restricted. This raises ketones more, and reduces insulin (the fat-storing hormone).
Weight Loss
Turning your body to some fat-burning machine has clear benefits for weight loss. Fat burning is significantly increased while insulin, the hormone that focuses on fat-storing, drops considerably. This produces the perfect circumstances.
About 20 scientific research of the maximum category (RCTs) reveal that, compared to other diets, low-fat and ketogenic diets result in more effective weight reduction.
Reverse Type 2 Diabetes
A ketogenic diet is excellent for reversing type 2 diabetes, because it lowers blood-sugar levels as well as also helping to reverse the negative effect of elevated insulin levels from this condition.
Improved Mental Focus
Ketosis ends in a steady stream of gas (ketones) to the brain. And on a ketogenic diet you stay away from swings in blood glucose. This contributes to the experience of concentration and attention.
A lot of people use keto diets specifically for improved mental performance. Interestingly, there is a frequent misperception that eating a great deal of carbs6 is necessary for proper brain functioning. When ketones aren’t available but this is only true.
Following a couple of times (up to a week) of keto adaptation, through that people can experience some difficulty concentrating, have headaches and be easily irritated, both the human body and mind can run smoothly on ketones.
Inside this state, lots of men and women experience more energy and enhanced mental focus.
Increased physical endurance
Ketogenic diets may vastly increase your physical endurance, by giving you constant access to all of the energy of your own fat stores.
The body’s source of stored carbohydrates (glycogen) only lasts for a few hours of intense exercise, or less. But your fat stores hold sufficient energy to easily last for weeks or perhaps months.
When you’re accommodated to burning primarily carbs — like most individuals are now — that your fat stores aren’t readily accessible, and they can not fuel your brain. This results in needing to fill up by eating before, during and after exercise sessions that are longer. Or even simply to fuel your everyday activities and prevent “hanger” (hungry and irritable). On a ketogenic diet this dilemma is solved. As the body and brain can be fueled 24/7 from the stores that are powerful, you can keep going.
Whether you are competing in a bodily endurance event, or just trying to remain focused on reaching some other target, your body gets the fuel it needs to keep you going and going.
Two Problems
So how is it possible that the majority of people feel that carbohydrates are essential to do exercise? There are just two reasons. Not, and to unlock the power of ketogenic diets for bodily endurance rather suffer reduced performance, you’ll need:
Enough fluid and salt
Fourteen days of adaptation into burning fat — it does not happen immediately
Metabolic Syndrome
There are many studies demonstrating that low-carb diets improve markers of metabolic syndrome, such as blood lipids, insulin levels, HDL-cholesterol, LDL particle size and fasting blood sugar levels. Improvements have been demonstrated to be greater when carbs and protein are limited to some the point of becoming.
Epilepsy
The ketogenic diet is a proven medical therapy for epilepsy that’s been utilized since the 1920s. Traditionally it has been used in children with uncontrolled epilepsy despite drugs.
More recently it has also been tested successfully by adults with epilepsy, with similar good results. There are randomized controlled trials that demonstrate the potency of the ketogenic diet in seizures in patients with epilepsy.
Employing a ketogenic diet in epilepsy is that usually enables people to take less anti-epileptic drugs, while staying seizure-free. It is not uncommon to even be in a position to completely stop taking these drugs.
As a number of medications have side effects, such as nausea, reduced concentration, personality changes or even reduced IQ — being able to shoot less or no medications can be enormously beneficial.
More Prevalent Advantages
The advantages will be the most frequent ones. However there are many others that are potentially even more unexpected and, at least for some people, lifechanging.
The scope of our information is limited to chiropractic and spinal injuries and conditions. To discuss options on the subject matter, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900 .�
By Dr. Alex Jimenez
Additional Topics: Wellness
Overall health and wellness are essential towards maintaining the proper mental and physical balance in the body. From eating a balanced nutrition as well as exercising and participating in physical activities, to sleeping a healthy amount of time on a regular basis, following the best health and wellness tips can ultimately help maintain overall well-being. Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables can go a long way towards helping people become healthy.
A ketogenic diet, or keto diet, is a diet, which turns your system into a fat-burning machine. It has some initial side effects towards health and functionality, as well as many advantages for weight loss.
A ketogenic diet is comparable to other rigorous low-carb diets, like the Atkins diet plan or LCHF (low carb, higher fat). These diets wind up being ketogenic more or less by accident. The main difference between LCHF and keto is that protein is restricted in the latter.
A keto diet plan is made specifically to lead to ketosis. It’s possible to measure and adapt to achieve optimal ketone amounts for wellness or for bodily and psychological performance. Below, you can learn how to use keto to achieve your personal goals.
What is Ketosis?
The keto in a ketogenic diet stems in the fact that it leaves the body to create small fuel molecules known as ketones. This is an alternate fuel for your body, used when blood sugar (glucose) is in short supply.
Ketones are produced if you eat hardly any carbs (that are quickly broken down into blood sugar) and only moderate levels of protein (excess protein can also be converted to blood sugar). Ketones are produced in the liver, from fat. They are then used throughout the entire body as fuel. The brain is an organ which requires a lot of energy to function and fat can’t be used for energy by it. The brain can only run on glucose or ketones.
On a ketogenic diet your entire body switches its fuel source to operate almost entirely on fat. Insulin levels become very low and fat burning increases dramatically. It becomes easy to get into your fat stores to burn them off. If you are trying to drop weight, this is obviously excellent, but in addition, there are other benefits, such as less appetite and a continuous supply of energy.
Once the body produces ketones, it’s supposedly in ketosis. The quickest way to get there is by fasting, not eating anything, but obviously, it is not feasible to fast. A ketogenic diet, on the other hand, can be eaten forever and also results in ketosis. Without even having to fast, it has many of the benefits of fasting. including weight loss.
What to Eat on a Ketogenic Diet
Here are typical foods to enjoy on a ketogenic diet. The amounts are net carbs per 100 g. To remain in ketosis, lower is generally better:
The most essential thing to achieve ketosis is to stay away from eating most carbohydrates. You will need to keep intake ideally under 20 grams but under 50 grams per day of carbs is accepted. The fewer carbs the more successful.
Try to avoid
Here is what you shouldn’t eat on a keto diet, meals full of sugar and starch, including starchy foods such as bread, rice, pasta and potatoes. These foods are much higher in carbohydrates, as you can see.
The amounts are g of digestible carbs per 100 g (3.5 oz), unless otherwise noticed.
This usually means you will want to completely prevent sweet sugary foods, also starchy foods such as bread, pasta, rice and potatoes. Basically follow the guidelines to get a diet that is low-carb that is rigorous, and remember it is assumed to be full of fat, not high in protein.
A rough guideline is under 10 percent energy from carbs (the fewer carbs, the more successful), 15 to 25 percent protein (the lower end is more successful), and 70 percent or more from fat.
What to Drink on a Ketogenic Diet
So what do you drink on a keto diet? Water is ideal, and so is tea or coffee. Use no additives. A small amount of milk or cream is OK (but beware of caffe latte!) . The glass of wine is fine.
How Low is Keto?
The fewer carbohydrates you consume, the larger the effects on fat and blood sugar will be. A keto diet is a strict low-carb diet, and consequently highly effective.
We recommend following the dietary advice as strictly as you can. When you are contented with your weight and health, you might carefully try eating more liberally (if you would like to).
The scope of our information is limited to chiropractic and spinal injuries and conditions. To discuss options on the subject matter, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900 .�
By Dr. Alex Jimenez
Additional Topics: Wellness
Overall health and wellness are essential towards maintaining the proper mental and physical balance in the body. From eating a balanced nutrition as well as exercising and participating in physical activities, to sleeping a healthy amount of time on a regular basis, following the best health and wellness tips can ultimately help maintain overall well-being. Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables can go a long way towards helping people become healthy.
Conventional knowledge wants us to believe that athletes must eat a high carb diet in order to function at optimum levels. While many people believe this, nothing could be further from the truth. Ben Greenfield conducted extensive tests on himself to prove that it is possible to be a fat burning athlete, and that being a high carb athlete should be a thing of the past.
Ben�s analysis was very detailed and impressive: he had blood work, biopsies, urine and stool samples taken before the study began. He then walked on the treadmill for three hours and retook the blood work, biopsies the urine, and the stool samples, then analyzed the data. The study was called The Faster Study, and the data is available via PDF for those interested in looking at his findings and Ben�s write-up on the experience can be found here.
The Faster Study
When I asked Ben why he did the study, he said it was for his own selfish reasons. He said he was training for an Ironman triathlon at the time and wanted to go faster or at least maintain his speed for longer periods without experiencing the deleterious effects that chronically elevated blood sugar�can cause. He also wanted to avoid the potentially unsettling effects that carbohydrates fermenting in your gut can cause.
Ben also had another incentive: he was diagnosed as having a 17% higher than normal risk for Type 2 diabetes. As a result, he needed to figure out a way to complete an Ironman triathlon without going the traditional route of fueling with gels, bars, and energy drinks.
I can attest that his theory works because I tried it myself: while on an 18 hour intermittent fast, I went on a 3 hour bike ride. By the time I got home, it was 22 or 23 hours before I�d eaten one bite of food, and to everyone�s surprise, I didn�t bonk. Everyone on the ride that day was a seasoned athlete and eating constantly. I was the only one not eating, yet had plenty of energy, even after 20 hours without food. Ben proved that in a laboratory and I successfully tested his hypothesis in a real life situation.
The Faster Diet
In preparation for his experiment, Ben followed a diet of 80 to 90% fat and 5 to 10% carbohydrates. His protein intake would vary depending on the day�s activities. For example, protein intake would be approximately 20% on days he�d run or do weight training. On average, the majority of his diet was fat based. He jokingly said he was banned from Italian restaurants during this time.
While on his high fat/low carb diet, Ben did two ironman triathlons that year (Ironman Canada and Ironman Hawaii.) He stresses that that a low carbohydrate diet does not mean a zero carbohydrate diet. Using Ironman triathlon as an example, participants may be out competing for ten or more hours. When passing someone the on the bike, a person may go from their normal race pace of 250 watts up to 400 watts for a few moments. This surge of energy being exerted can cause a pretty significant glycolytic shift, resulting in the body needing to burn through a high amount of carbohydrates.
Ben took in about a quarter of the amount of carbohydrates that he�d normally consume during the actual event, along with ample amounts of easy to digest proteins, amino acids, easy to digest fats, and medium chain triglycerides. After his triathlon season was completed, Ben added exogenous ketones�to his diet in powder form to increase ketone levels. Ben admitted that he finds the ketones extremely beneficial and says he wish he�d known about them while training for previous triathlons. Personally, I have experimented with exogenous ketones in my own fat burning regime, after learning more about how they work during my interview with Dominic D�Agostino (watch the interview here.)
Study Findings
During that triathlon season, Ben conducted quite a few studies, with a few standing out in particular. In this test, a microbiome analysis was conducted to see how the gut differs between someone who follows a high-carbohydrate diet and someone who follows a high-fat diet.
Fat biopsies were taken both before and after exercise to see to see if his actual fat tissue make-up was any different. Tests were also conducted to see if there was any difference in the ability of his muscles to store carbohydrate and how quickly the muscle would burn through carbohydrates. A resting metabolic test was conducted, which is an analysis of how much fat and carbohydrate is burned at rest. And another measurement was taken to determine how many carbohydrates, fats, and calories are burned during exercise.
What makes these tests interesting is even though most physiology textbooks claim that the average person will burn about 1.0 grams of fat per minute during exercise, the athletes who followed a ketogenic or low-carbohydrate diet for close to 12 month were experiencing fat oxidation values of closer to 1.5 to 1.8 grams of fat per minute. This is significantly higher than what experts expected.
Initially, there was some confusion pertaining to this study because it was called � The Faster Study.� Critics would say Ben wasn�t going any faster on the high fat/low carb diet than those on the high carb diet. What they neglected to understand was the purpose of the study wasn�t to go faster than those on high carb diets. Instead, the goal was to maintain similar speeds while limiting (and possibly eliminating) the chronic fluctuations and elevations of blood sugar.
Ben�s thought process behind the study was simple: If he could go just as fast by eliminating sugars, why not do it? If he slowed down or felt his energy levels being depleted, he�d be forced to ask himself the following questions as an endurance athlete:
What kind of balance did he want between health and performance?
How many years of his life was he willing to sacrifice in exchange for going just a little bit faster?
How much pressure was he willing to put on his joints?
As it turns out, Ben could go just as fast on a carbohydrate-limited diet.
Go Just as Fast, Live Longer
While people are focused on getting faster, the ultimate goal should be to go just as fast and live longer doing it. Unfortunately, many high-carb athletes have a wide assortment of health problems, which can range from joint problems to life threatening emergencies such as heart attacks. Many of them are dying prematurely and don�t realize a contributing factor to their ailments is the high carb diet they had been following for years. Ironically, many athletes are thin but show evidence of degenerative disease indicating years of inflammation and oxidative stress�caused by repeated glucose and insulin spikes. We know this damage is oxidative, is harmful to the cells, and causes premature aging.
There are many studies with research illustrating how endurance sports increase oxidation and aging, but I believe as more research is done this belief will change. Studies by Ben and others show that a fat-adapted endurance athlete does not have the same levels of oxidative stress as high carb endurance athletes. At age 50, I have 8% body fat and can exercise for hours without ingesting carbohydrates because, like Ben, I�m very efficient at fat burning.
I firmly believe Ben�s study proves that people who are efficient at fat burning can burn well over one gram of fat per minute of exercise, whereas before it was believed one gram (or less) was a more realistic number. It should be noted that in order to burn that much fat, a person has to be fat adapted. It�s impossible to accomplish this level of fat burning on a high-carbohydrate diet (read more on how to get fat-adapted here: Part 1 and Part 2.)
Fat Adaption: A trick to Accelerate the Process
Becoming an efficient fat burner takes time. Many of the athletes that Ben coaches have been on a high fat diet for twelve months or more. While the greatest benefits aren�t felt for several months, a person can experience lower blood sugar levels and less oxidation within a few short weeks of starting a high fat diet. However, in order to achieve the mitochondrial density necessary for producing a lot of ATP on a high-fat diet while exercising, a person will need to follow a high-fat diet for at least a year.
It can take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years for a person to become fully efficient at burning fat. While some may balk at how long it can take, it�s not long when compared to the time it may take to become proficient in a sport, learning to play a musical instrument, or getting a college degree.
Adjusting to a high fat diet takes time and patience. To accelerate the process, one can choose to eat within a compressed time window, a strategy known as intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasts can range from 14-24 hours with just liquids being consumed. Intermittent fasting can be a challenge for beginners as the body begins to adapt, but becomes easier with each subsequent fast. I intermittent fast daily and must say it�s been the great contributor to my overall cellular health.
Some side effects beginners may experience while intermittent fasting the first few times may include the following
Fatigue
Nausea
Vomiting
Diarrhea
Headaches
Lack of focus
Bad breath
Lethargy
Joint pain
Minor depression
These side effects are normal as the body eliminates various toxins. Drinking pure water�helps to alleviate some side effects and quickly remove them from the body via urination. Staying focused on the long term is key when embarking on these changes.
Occasionally, I will receive emails from my clients or the doctors of my clients, telling me they are keto-adapted, but they�re not burning fat, they don�t notice any significant changes in their bodies, and they haven�t lost any weight. I explain how this is normal, and the body has to adjust. It takes time for the body to realize it is not starving and that it can begin to burn its own fat for energy. Using my wife as an example, it was almost a year before she was able to use her fat storage for energy. Now, she�s an efficient fat burner and finds it much easier to stay lean.
Not All Fat is the Same
An important aspect of being efficient at fat burning is the type of high fat diet you follow. A plant-rich, ketogenic diet not only limits oxidation and free radical production, but it also causes an increase in stable energy sources due to high fiber content. Having high levels of plant-based chlorophylls in the bloodstream also has the potential to increase ATP production beyond what we fully understand in nutrition science.
Ben encounters many people who follow the Bulletproof Coffee type of approach:
Three cups of coffee with grass-fed butter and MCT oil during the day
Coconut milk with some coconut flakes and some chocolate stevia
Fatty grass-fed steak for dinner
Macadamia nuts for a snack
The problem with this type of diet is there�s very little plant matter eaten, and plants are an integral part of a healthy high fat diet.
Ben Greenfield�s Diet
Ben eats an astonishing 20 to 25 servings of plants per day. He has an enormous backyard garden and eats kale, butter lettuce, bok choy, mustard greens, cilantro, parsley, and tomatoes daily. He says these foods do not count towards his total daily carbohydrate intake, and that eating a high-fat diet does not mean that you�re not eating plants. It�s the opposite. �I eat a lot of plants, a lot of fiber, and it makes a night-and-day difference.�
In order to get 20-25 servings Ben eats huge salads and drinks nutrient dense smoothies. He�ll drink one or two large smoothies a day, using a powerful blender that blends everything from the pit of an avocado to an entire bunch of kale. A sample smoothie includes the following ingredients:
Six to eight different plants (both wild plants and herbs)
Lunch. Lunch is a salad in an enormous bowl filled exclusively with vegetables. Ben will spend 30 to 60 minutes chewing each bite 20 to 25 times and �eating lunch like a cow while I go through emails and things like that during lunch.�
Dinner. Another big salad.
Snack. Snacks are normally smaller versions of the smoothie�he had for breakfast.
He stresses that his salads are extremely large and he prefers thicker smoothies: �If you were to see the size of my salads and the size of my smoothies, you would be shocked. You�d think I would be morbidly obese, but if you dig in and you look at it, it�s really just mostly plant volume. That�s generally what I do, salads and smoothies. I make them so thick I need to eat them with a spoon because I really like to chew my food. Yeah, I�m a smoothie and a salad guy.�
He goes on to say �When I look over the blood and bile markers of people following a high-fat diet, a lot of times I see really high triglycerides and really low HDL, which is often what you�ll see in someone who is eating a ton of animal fats without many plants or without much fiber. I�ll see a lot of CO2 and really low chloride levels, an indicator of a net acidic state, and a lot of biomarkers that aren�t necessarily favorable and that can be a result of a high-fat diet done improperly. I think that�s one important thing to bear in mind, too, is that you don�t want to necessarily eschew plant intake and vegetable intake; you just want to ensure that those are accompanied primarily by healthy fats and oils rather than accompanied by high amounts of protein and starches.�
When it comes to good fats, Ben prefers the following:
Animal fats are eaten sparingly. He�ll eat a grass-fed steak and wild fish a couple of times a week. He also likes pemmican, which comes in a tube that he can snack on while flying or if he needs a quick snack on the go.
When Ben was a bodybuilder, he would aim for 200 grams of protein per day but now only consumes between 100 to 120 grams. Currently, he weighs about 180 pounds and consumes between 0.5 and .8 grams of protein per pound of body weight. He feels this is the amount is sufficient to avoid any loss of muscle.
Ben says he has excellent colonic health. Since he started the high fat diet four years ago, he doesn�t have the fermentation, gas, bloating, or constant gas that many endurance athletes have. He also believes the high fat diet offers a lower risk for things like small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) and fermentation in the gut.
Diet Variation
In addition to eating a variety of plant based foods, an important eating concept that I have written about is something I like to call �diet variation,� which is basically emulating what our ancestors have done: They were forced into different diet variations seasonally, and in some instances, weekly.
When we look at the Hunza people as an example, they were relying mostly on plant food in the summers to survive. During the cold winter months, vegetables and fruits were scarce or nonexistent, and as a result, they were forced to eat higher-fat foods (meats and animal fats). Over time we can see a pattern: there would be long stretches where their diet consisted mostly of vegetables (summer,) then extended periods of time where their diet was mainly meat products (winter.) This type of seasonal eating created a variation in their diet they had little control over. Today, we have the ability to vary our diet at all times, which can work for us and against us.
I go into ketosis every summer and eat more good fats and protein than I do in the winter, when I eat more healthy carbs. Like Ben, I�m very fat adapted, yet still able to stay in ketosis while eating a lot of plants in my diet. I intermittent fast in the morning and by the afternoon I�m burning high ketones.
One of the popular diet trends these days is the Paleo Diet, where a person is instructed to eat large amounts of protein. Quite frankly, I am not a fan of this diet. I have read many studies on high-protein diets and feel they are not healthy. Eating too much protein can cause weight gain, extra body fat, increased stress on the kidneys, dehydration and other health issues.
If you include the dangers of eating grain fed beef instead of the healthier grass fed beef, we can clearly see how the Paleo Diet could be a recipe for disaster. I tell people as a general rule, eating protein that is equivalent to half your body weight (considering that you�re not morbidly obese) is usually safe and practical. Athletes like Ben (and those who do a lot of strenuous physical exercise) can consume more protein than the average person and utilize it safely. These individuals may require 0.7 to 0.8 grams of protein per day, while the average person only needs .55 grams per day.
Fasting
Ben goes on a 24 hour fast once a month, just to �clean things out a little bit.� He will start the fast Saturday at lunchtime end it at lunchtime on Sunday. Or, he�ll skip dinner on Saturday night and won�t eat again until dinner on Sunday. He�ll drink water, coffee�and tea primarily during the fast, and kombucha on occasion. He also goes on a 12-16-hour intermittent fast daily. The majority of the fast is overnight where he�ll finish dinner around 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. and eat breakfast sometime 9 and 10:30 a.m. During the daily fast, Ben will perform a few low-level exercises in the morning: yoga, foam rolling, or mobility work are exercises of choice.
In addition to daily intermittent fasting, Ben believes a likely factor that helps him to stay lean and maintain a low body fat percentage is taking cold showers. He likes to do one of the following daily:
Fast, perform a low intensity exercises then take cold shower or�
Fast, sit in a sauna for a few minutes, followed immediately with a cold shower.
Ben�s Exercise Regimen
Ben is active all day, but in an unconventional way:
�I generally am active all day long. Today, while I�m writing, doing consults, and reading emails, I�ll walk somewhere in the range of three to five miles at a low intensity like I am right now. When I get up in the morning, I�ll generally spend 20 to 30 minutes doing some deep-tissue work and some mobility work, some foam roller, and some band work for traction on my joints. By the time I get to the end of the day, I�ve been mildly physically active for six to eight hours at just very low-level intensity.
�At the end of the day, I�ll throw in 30 to 60 minutes of a hard workout. That might be a tennis match. It might be kickboxing or jujitsu. It might be some kind of an obstacle course workout with sandbags, and kettlebells, and things like that. It might be a swim. It varies quite a bit, but generally it�s 30 to 60 minutes of something hard in the afternoon to the early evening, then up until that point, low-level physical activity all day long. It�s just tough to quantify because I�m always moving. As far as a formal workout, it comes out to about 30 to 60 minutes a day. We�re talking about a workout where the average heart rate is very close to maximum heart rate, so like a puke-fest style workout. That�s pretty draining from an energy standpoint. Generally, for me to do daily�exceeding 16-hour fasts daily�that gets tough.�
What�s Next For Ben?
Ben is an outdoorsman and wants to experiment with living on the land:
�I�d like to look into more of an ancestral application, a more practical application. I would like to look a little bit more into persistence hunting, something closer to where I live where I�d be going after elk or moose or something like that, preferably in the snow where tracking is a little bit easier, but seeing if it�s doable.
�A five to eight day hunt is realistically what you�re looking at with a bow, or with a spear, or with a close-range weapon, and seeing if it�s possible to actually go and get your own food in the absence of food, just to begin to get people thinking about the state that we live in, the culture that we live in where food is just constantly readily available. What would happen if we didn�t have food but we had to figure out a way to feed ourselves?�
Ben also shares the outdoor life with his children: One day week in the summers, they can only eat the plants they find outside in the garden until dinner. As part of their childhood, he wants them to learn how to take care of themselves. They can use the stove and the blender, stuff like that, but they can�t use ingredients from the pantry, or from the refrigerator. It�s all based on plants.
While many people may think this way of thinking and living is extreme, Ben believes more people can benefit from it if they stay open minded and give it a try:
�I would like to get people more aware of that type of practice because it really goes quite handily with the things that we�ve talked about�fasting and ketosis, and denial of modern food sources and starches and instead just learning how to take care of yourself. I think that there�s a lot of lessons to be had from a health and survival standpoint, and so plant foraging, spreading our message, as well as the potential of seeing the persistence hunting in the absence of any significant sources of calories, to be able to take what allows one to, say, do an Ironman Triathlon with very little calorie intake and then turn that into a more practical level like going out and getting your own meat and stuff. Again, without carrying a bunch of power-bars out with you, I think that�d be a cool little adventure to embark upon.�
A Life of Fitness
Ben believes fitness is a lifestyle, and everyone can incorporate fitness into their daily activities:
If you work in a traditional office setting, put a kettlebell underneath your desk.
Get one of these stools that you lean back on rather than sitting down.
Every time that you go to the bathroom have a rule that you�ve got to do 50 air squats.
�Start to work in those little things throughout the day. You�d be surprise at how fit you can stay and how prepared you can be for a big event without necessarily neglecting your family, your friends, hobbies, or work.�
Ben Greenfield is an inspiration. His research on high fat diets is sure to revolutionize the way athletes view diet and endurance exercise as a whole.
Doctor of Chiropractic, Dr. Alexander Jimenez discusses mitochondria and one’s health.
Mitochondria: you might not know what they are, but they are vital to your health. �Rhonda Patrick, PhD is a biomedical scientist who has studied the interaction between mitochondrial metabolism, aberrant metabolism, and cancer.
She�s also done research on aging at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences in La Jolla, California.
�I�ve had a variety of experiences doing research on aging, cancer, and metabolism,� she explains. �Now, currently, I�m in Oakland, California, where I�m doing my post-doctoral research, working with Dr. Bruce Ames�
The primary focus of the research is the role of nutrition in preventing age-related diseases like cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and different inflammatory-related diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes.
I�ve been doing a lot of research currently on nutrition, specifically what roles micronutrients play in biological processes; how inadequacies and certain micronutrients can lead to insidious types of damage that can accumulate over decades, [and how they] lead to things like cancer and Alzheimer�s disease.�
Part of her work involves the identification of early biomarkers of disease. For example, DNA damage is an early biomarker for cancer. She then tries to determine which micronutrients might help repair that DNA damage.
She�s also investigated mitochondrial function and metabolism, which is one of my own most recent passions. Dr. Lee Know�s book, �Life � The Epic Story of Our Mitochondria�, is a really good primer if you want to learn more about this topic after listening to this interview.
Your mitochondria have enormous potential to influence your health, specifically cancer, and I�m starting to believe that optimizing mitochondrial metabolism may in fact be at the core of effective cancer treatment.
The Importance Of Optimizing Mitochondrial Metabolism
Mitochondria are tiny organelles, originally thought to be derived from bacteria. Red blood cells and skin cells have very little to none, while germ cells have 100,000, but most cells have one to 2,000 of them. They�re the primary source of energy for your body.
In order for your organs to function properly, they require energy, and that energy is produced by the mitochondria.
Since mitochondrial function is at the very heart of everything that occurs in your body, optimizing mitochondrial function � and preventing mitochondrial dysfunction by making sure you get all the right nutrients and precursors your mitochondria need � is extremely important for health and disease prevention.
For example, one of the universal characteristics of cancer cells is they have serious mitochondrial dysfunction with radically decreased numbers of functional mitochondria.
�The mitochondria can still function in cancer cells. But one of the things that occur [in cancer cells] is that they immediately become dependent on glucose and they�re not using their mitochondria even though they have mitochondria there. They make this metabolic switch,��Patrick says.
Dr. Otto Warburg was a physician with a Ph.D. in chemistry and was close friends with Albert Einstein. Most experts recognize Warburg as the greatest biochemist of the 20th century.
He received a Nobel Prize in 1931 for his discovery that cancer cells use glucose as a source of energy production. This is called the �Warburg Effect� and, sadly, to this day it is essentially ignored by nearly every expert.
I am beyond convinced that using a ketogenic diet, which radically improves mitochondrial health, could help most cancers, especially if used in conjunction with glucose fermentation poisons like 3-bromopyruvate.
How Mitochondria Produce Energy
To produce energy, your mitochondria require oxygen from the air you breathe and fat and glucose from the food you eat.
These two processes � breathing and eating � are coupled together in a process called oxidative phosphorylation. That�s what the mitochondria use to generate energy in the form of ATP.
Your mitochondria have a series of electron transport chains in which they pass electrons from the reduced form of the food you eat to combine it with oxygen from the air you breathe and ultimately to form water.
This process drives protons across the mitochondrial membrane, which recharges ATP (adenosine triphosphate) from ADP (adenosine diphosphate). ATP is the carrier of energy throughout your body.
However, that process also produces byproducts such as reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are damaging to your cells, and your mitochondrial DNA, which are then transferred to your nuclear DNA.
So there�s a trade-off. In producing energy, your body also ages from the damaging aspects from the ROS that are generated. How quickly your body ages largely depends on how well your mitochondria work, and how much damage can be minimized by diet optimization.
Mitochondria�s Role In Cancer
When cancer cells are present, the reactive oxygen species produced as a byproduct of ATP production normally send a signal that sets in motion a process of cellular suicide, also known as apoptosis.
Since you generate cancer cells every day, this is a good thing. By killing off damaged cells, your body can eliminate and replace them with healthy cells.
Cancer cells, however, are resistant to this suicide protocol, and have a built-in defense against it as articulately explained by Dr. Warburg and subsequently by Thomas Seyfried, who has done extensive research on cancer as a metabolic disease
As explained by Patrick:
�One of the mechanisms by which chemotherapeutic drugs work is they create reactive oxygen species. They create damage, and that�s enough to push that cancer cell to die.
I think the reason for that is because, a cancer cell � which is not using its mitochondria, meaning it�s not producing those reactive oxygen species any longer � all of a sudden you force it to use its mitochondria and you get a burst of reactive oxygen species because that�s what mitochondria do, and boom, death, because that cancer cell is already primed for that death. It�s ready to die.�
The Benefits Of Avoiding Late-Night Eating
I�ve been a fan of intermittent fasting for quite some time for a variety of reasons, certainly longevity and health issues, but also because it appears to provide powerful cancer prevention and treatment benefit. And the mechanism for that is related to the effect fasting has on your mitochondria.
As mentioned, a major side effect of the transfer of electrons that the mitochondria are involved in is that some leak from the electron transport chain to react with oxygen to form the free radical superoxide.
Superoxide anion, the product of a one electron reduction of oxygen, is the precursor of most reactive oxygen species and a mediator in oxidative chain reactions. These oxygen free radicals attack the lipids in your cell membranes, protein receptors, enzymes, and DNA that can prematurely kill your mitochondria.
Some free radicals are actually good and your body requires them to regulate cellular function, but problems develop when you have excessive free radical production. Sadly that is the case for the majority of the population and why most diseases, especially cancers, are acquired. There are two possible solutions to this problem:
Increase your antioxidants
Reduce mitochondrial free radical production
I believe one of the best strategies for reducing mitochondrial free radical production is to limit the amount of fuel you feed your body. This is a noncontroversial position as calorie restriction has consistently shown many therapeutic benefits. This is one of the reasons why intermittent fasting works, as it limits the window that you are eating and automatically reduces your calories.
It is particularly effective if you avoid eating several hours before going to sleep as that is your most metabolically lowered state. A review paper1 that provides much of the experimental work for the above explanation was published in 2011, titled �Mitochondrial DNA Damage and Animal Longevity: Insights from Comparative Studies.�
It may be too complex for many laypeople, but the take-home message is that since your body uses the least amount of calories when sleeping, you�ll want to avoid eating close to bedtime because adding excess fuel at this time will generate excessive free radicals that will damage your tissues, accelerate aging, and contribute to chronic disease.
Other Ways Fasting Promotes Healthy Mitochondrial Function
Patrick also notes that part of the mechanism by which fasting works is that your body has to rely on lipids and stored fats for energy, which means your cells are forced to use their mitochondria. Your mitochondria are the only mechanisms by which your body can make energy from fat. So, fasting helps activate your mitochondria.
She also believes this plays a huge part in the mechanism by which intermittent fasting and a ketogenic diet may kill cancer cells, and why certain drugs that activate mitochondria can kill cancer cells. Again, it�s because it creates a burst of reactive oxygen species, the damage from which tips the scale and causes the cancer cells to die.
�Of course, there are a lot of very other interesting mechanisms that occur when you�re fasting,� she says. �Your body also clears away damaged cells through a process called autophagy, which basically means when a cell that�s damaged, it can die. But if it doesn�t die, sometimes it becomes what�s called senescent and this happens a lot with aging. What that means is that the cell is not dead but it�s not really alive either. It�s not doing its function.
It�s just kind of sitting around in your body secreting pro-inflammatory molecules, things that are damaging other nearby cells thereby accelerating the aging process because inflammation drives aging in so many different ways. Autophagy clears away those cells that are just sitting there creating damage and not doing much else, which is nice because that�s also a very important biological mechanism for staying healthy.�
Feeding Your Mitochondria
In terms of nutrition, Patrick emphasizes the importance of the following nutrients; important co-factors needed for your mitochondrial enzymes to function properly:
All B vitamins, including riboflavin, thiamine, and B6
Alpha-lipoic acid (ALA)
As noted by Patrick:
�I prefer to get as many micronutrients as I can from whole foods for a variety of reasons. One, they are complexed with fiber help with absorption. The nutrients are also in the right ratios. You�re not getting too much. The balance is right. And there are other components that are probably yet to be identified in there.
You have to be very vigilant in making sure you�re eating a very broad spectrum [of foods] and getting the right micronutrients. I think that taking a B complex supplement is good for that reason.
It�s the reason I take one, and also for the reason that as we age, we also do not get B vitamins into ourselves as readily, largely due to our cell membranes getting stiffer. This changes the way B vitamins are transported into the cell. B vitamins are water soluble so they�re not stored in fat. There�s not really an upper toxicity associated with them. If anything, you�re going to pee a little bit more out. But I really think they�re beneficial.�
Exercise Helps Keep Your Mitochondria Young
Exercise also promotes mitochondrial health, as it forces your mitochondria to work harder. As mentioned earlier, one of the side effects of mitochondria working harder is that they�re making reactive oxygen species, which act as signaling molecules. One of the functions they signal is to make more mitochondria. So, when you exercise, your body will respond by creating more mitochondria to keep up with the heightened energy requirement.
Aging is inevitable. But your biological age can be quite different from your chronological age, and your mitochondria have a lot to do with your biological aging. Patrick cites a recent study showing how people can age biologically at very different rates. The researchers measured over a dozen different biomarkers, such as telomere length, DNA damage, cholesterol LDL, glucose metabolism, and insulin sensitivity, at three points in people�s lives: ages 22, 32 and 38.
�What was found was that, if you look at someone who was 38, they biologically could look 10 years younger based on their biological markers, or 10 years older. Even though they were the same age, they aged biologically at very different rates.
In fact, if you took a photograph of these individuals and showed it to another bystander and ask them to guess their chronological age, what was interesting, and this is part of the publication, is that people would guess their biological age rather than their chronological age.� �
So regardless of your actual age, how old you look corresponds with your biological biomarkers, which are largely driven by the health of your mitochondria. So the point is that while aging is inevitable, you have enormous control over the way you age, which is really empowering. And one of the key factors is keeping your mitochondria in good working order.
As noted by Patrick, �youthfulness� is not so much about your chronological age, but rather how old you feel, and how well your body works:
�I want to learn how to optimize my own cognitive performance and my athletic performance. I want to also increase the youthful part of my life. I want to be 90. I want to be out there, surfing in San Diego just like I was when I was 20. I would like to not degenerate as rapidly as some people do. I like to stave off that degeneration and extend the youthful part of my life as long as I possibly can so I can enjoy life.�
More Information
To learn more about Patrick�s work, please visit her website, FoundMyFitness.com. She also has a podcast�where she interviews health professionals and scientists on a variety of topics related to health. On her website, you can find videos in which she summarizes key information in clear and easy to understand layman�s terms. You can also sign up for her newsletter, in which she publishes longer, heavily referenced articles.
Click here for the free report, �Nutrigenomics, Epigenetics, and Stress Tolerance: A New Heuristic for Lifestyle Strategy,� which covers some of the topics covered in this interview today, including: the role of DNA damage in aging cells and cancer cells, how blood cells from people show they age at different rates, how intermittent fasting increases autophagy (which clears away damaged cells) and increases genes that produce more healthy mitochondria, and more! You may also want to review her report, �How to Personalize Your Nutrition Based On Your Genes.�
Proponents of specific food class-centric diets such as paleo, vegan, gluten-free, ketogenic, or the Mediterranean diet often but not always tend to prescribe their plans for everyone. Not so fast, says a group from the University of California, Berkeley. Biologists at UC Berkeley and other institutions around the world have published research that shows genetic differences from natural selection based on dietary changes in Europe, Ars Technica reports.
According to the research, for example, if you live in Europe, and particularly in southern Europe, your body is optimized to digest and process plant-based diets. Natives of Greenland, specifically the Inuit, are better at processing meat fat.
The researchers compared genomes from hundreds of contemporary humans and 101 genome sequences from Bronze Age humans who lived in Europe 5,000 years ago. They found DNA changed significantly in the last 5,000 years.
The science behind the studies is based on examining two genes that regulate how fatty acids in foods are converted into the �long-chain� form used by humans for tissue health, including the brain and muscles. Plants such as wheat and vegetables�provide �short-chain� fatty acids and must be converted to the long-form type in order for the human body to use them.
In its genome studies, the researchers found that southern European genomes mutated to produce more long-chain fatty acids from the shorter variation. This change, they argue, is due to evolutionary �pressure��from a diet that changed to accommodate more plant-based foods.�The Inuit genome, however, had no such influence, which means Inuit genes�aren�t equipped to convert as great a quantity of long-chain fatty acids because they don�t as much need it.
The general take on this research: There is no one best diet or nutritional bias for all people. If your ancestors are all from the 10 countries that make up northern Europe, for example, the study indicates you could be more likely better equipped to thrive on a diet having a higher proportion of meat. People of southern European ancestry, however, might do better with diets that lean toward plant-based foods.
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