What is a ketogenic diet?
Although the ketogenic diet is safe for healthy people, there may be some initial side effects while your body is adapting. This is usually called keto flu and usually ends within a few days.
To minimize these symptoms, you can try a low carb diet for the first few weeks. It may accustom your body to burn more fat before you completely avoid carbohydrates.
A ketogenic diet can also change the balance of water and minerals in your body, so adding extra salt to your meals or taking mineral supplements can help.
For minerals, try taking 3,000-4,000 mg of sodium, 1,000 mg of potassium and 300 mg of magnesium per day to minimize side effects.
At least in the beginning, it is important to eat until it is full and avoid over-calorie restriction.
Disagreements and myths regarding the Quito diet
This is not an uncommon phenomenon that at first people are skeptical about a low carb diet, especially since advice on a high carb and low fat diet has been so common for decades.
We do not want unproven fear to stop the path of people who can get the benefits of a low-carb diet. On this page you will learn why many of these controversies are based on misunderstandings or poor knowledge - there is nothing to worry about.
However, our goal to make the low-carb diet simple requires us to be very transparent and honest about the potential problems and how to address them.
Here are the most common controversies about carbohydrates, and what scientific evidence currently available can tell us about them:
Will saturated fat clog the arteries and cause a heart attack?
No. This is probably one of the biggest diet myths in recent decades . First, heart disease does not work the same way a clogged sink works! There are many potential factors that contribute to the development of heart disease, including genetics, inflammation and other health conditions, such as diabetes.
The way diet interacts with these other factors can vary greatly from person to person. In terms of scientific evidence, the links between saturated fat and heart disease are weak and inconsistent. Although other reviews come to different conclusions, some reviews of contemporary science suggest that there is no link between saturated fat and heart disease.
The weakness of the evidence against saturated fat has also been recognized in many high-quality newspapers.
Because the evidence is so weak and because the individual response to dietary fats differs significantly for each, it seems that general recommendations for avoiding saturated fat were a mistake.
Fortunately, in recent years more and more experts and organizations have realized that natural saturated fats - despite their reputation - appear to be health neutral.
It is natural to eat saturated fats, as they are in natural foods we ate during evolution. This includes human breast milk, and the multiple foods that sustained our ancestors as adults .
Do not be afraid of fat. Updated experts are not afraid.
2. Does a low carb diet cause high cholesterol?
A low-carb diet tends to improve the cholesterol profile by raising HDL (“good cholesterol”) cholesterol levels and lowering potentially harmful triglyceride levels . They may also improve the size profile of LDL ("bad cholesterol").
These appear to be beneficial changes associated with decreased insulin resistance and improved health. Regarding LDL cholesterol (“bad cholesterol”), most people do not experience significant changes in the use of a low-carbohydrate diet .
However, in some people, LDL levels decrease or (more often) increase slightly. However, for a small minority of people, cholesterol may rise abnormally during a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet .
In these situations, it may be worthwhile to adjust the diet to normalize LDL cholesterol levels. Depending on your overall risk profile, you may want to work closely with your doctor to keep track of any evidence of cardiovascular disease.
There is controversy about the absolute risk of increased LDL in all people, as some observational studies show that higher LDL levels in the elderly are associated with longer life expectancy.
While this does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship, it does raise the question of whether LDL is a concern for everyone.
At the same time, studies show that a low-carbohydrate diet improves, on average, the risk factors for heart disease in most people, including cholesterol.
