Читать книгу Nutrition For Dummies - Carol Ann Rinzler - Страница 69

Choose a basic balanced healthy diet, and your body runs on glycogen, the sugar produced when you digest carbohydrates. A ketogenic diet changes that by restricting carbs so that you burn fats instead. That leads to your liver’s creating ketones, alternate chemicals your cells can use for fuel, a situation called ketosis.

The original ketogenic (”ketone-making”) diet, created in the 1920s as a treatment for epileptic children who did not respond to anti-seizure meds, drew 90 percent of daily calories from fat, 6 percent from protein, and just 4 percent form carbs. After a year on this regimen, nearly half the children experienced fewer seizures, and 12 percent were actually seizure free, a result confirmed today by the Epilepsy Foundation.

The strictest modern medical keto diet is more flexible, reducing calories from fat to 75 percent of the daily total, raising calories from protein to 20 percent, and adding one percent point to carbs. Non-medical versions such as the multiple varieties of the Atkins diet promoted as a fast way to peel off the pounds, are even more relaxed. Caution: To date, there are no serious long-term studies that show that keto diets produce anything more than a temporary weight loss.

None of the keto diets are risk free. The most common side effects among children who followed the original ketogenic plan were constipation, weight loss, and growth problems thought to be due to limiting proteins. Today, obesity experts know that the keto diet may trigger high calcium levels in urine (hypercalciuria), kidney stones, temporarily high cholesterol, bad breath, dizziness, and, in the first few weeks, low energy levels commonly called the keto flu. This list of potential problems suggests that pregnant women, diabetics, and those with a history of kidney stones should not try keto without a doctor’s approval.