What Is Ketosis And Is It Harmful?
Ketosis in itself isn't harmful. It's a normal process that your body goes through to provide your cells with energy. Normally, your body relies on glucose as fuel. When it's store of sugar is used up however, it begins to use fat. It breaks the fat down into ketones, an alternate energy source that your cells can use. This metabolic state is known as ketosis. This is perfectly fine, and even healthy say, for people who are trying to lose weight, or if you miss a few meals and aren't fond of passing out. When people mention it in a negative way, they're usually talking about ketoacidosis. In people who have untreated diabetes, their cells aren't able to absorb the glucose in their bloodstream due to a lack of insulin. To compensate, their bodies start using fat as fuel (ketosis). Because a source of glucose never becomes available, this goes on unregulated. As the level of ketones in the bloodstream rises, the pH of their blood drops or becomes more acidic ( hence, why it's called ketoacidosis). This is significant because blood pH needs to stay within a narrow margin (between 7.35 and 7.45). A change in pH that falls outside of it can cause serious health issues and death. ketosis means high ketone bodies level in blood "ketonemia" and as result increase in their level in urine "ketonuria" and yes it's very harmful...it is considered as a bad indicator for your health , as accummulation of ketoacids in your blood decreases the neuro transmission , which can lead to confusion , concentration problems , coma and death it's one of complications of diabetes mellitus if poor treated , so you have to take care of yourself Continue reading >>
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Ketosis
Tweet Ketosis is a state the body may find itself in either as a result of raised blood glucose levels or as a part of low carb dieting. Low levels of ketosis is perfectly normal. However, high levels of ketosis in the short term can be serious and the long term effects of regular moderate ketosis are only partially known at the moment. What is ketosis? Ketosis is a state the body goes into if it needs to break down body fat for energy. The state is marked by raised levels of ketones in the blood which can be used by the body as fuel. Ketones which are not used for fuel are excreted out of the body via the kidneys and the urine. Is ketosis the same as ketoacidosis? There is often confusion as to the difference between ketosis and ketoacidosis. Ketosis is the state whereby the body is producing ketones. In ketosis, the level of ketones in the blood can be anything between normal to very high. Diabetic ketoacidosis, also known as DKA, only describes the state in which the level of ketones is either high or very high. In ketoacidosis, the amount of ketones in the blood is sufficient to turn the blood acidic, which is a dangerous medical state. When does ketosis occur? Ketosis will take place when the body needs energy and there is not sufficient glucose available for the body. This can typically happen when the body is lacking insulin and blood glucose levels become high. Other causes can be the result of being on a low carb diet. A low level of carbohydrate will lead to low levels of insulin, and therefore the body will produce ketones which do not rely on insulin to get into and fuel the body’s cells. A further cause of ketosis, less relevant to people with diabetes, is a result of excessive alcohol consumption. Is ketosis dangerous? The NHS describes ketosis as a pote Continue reading >>
Why Does Diabetes Cause Ketosis?
In diabetes due to the insulin deficiency there is increased hepatic gluconeogenesis and lipolysis And this lipolysis inturn increases free fatty acids. Now you know that as insulin is deficient in diabetes glucose cant be utilised as a energy source. So to get the energy an alternative source of these free fatty acids are used. End ketones being the end product of this fatty acid metabolism it gets accumulated. Initially it causes ketonemia(increased ketone bodies in blood) but this cycle keeps on going at ketoacidosis occurs. P.S- I just tried to simplify the answer,the exact mechanism is complex as there are lot of steps involved in it. Continue reading >>
Why Dka & Nutritional Ketosis Are Not The Same
There’s a very common misconception and general misunderstanding around ketones. Specifically, the misunderstandings lie in the areas of: ketones that are produced in low-carb diets of generally less than 50 grams of carbs per day, which is low enough to put a person in a state of “nutritional ketosis” ketones that are produced when a diabetic is in a state of “diabetic ketoacidosis” (DKA) and lastly, there are “starvation ketones” and “illness-induced ketones” The fact is they are very different. DKA is a dangerous state of ketosis that can easily land a diabetic in the hospital and is life-threatening. Meanwhile, “nutritional ketosis” is the result of a nutritional approach that both non-diabetics and diabetics can safely achieve through low-carb nutrition. Diabetic Ketoacidosis vs. Nutritional Ketosis Ryan Attar (soon to be Ryan Attar, ND) helps explain the science and actual human physiology behind these different types of ketone production. Ryan is currently studying to become a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine in Connecticut and also pursuing a Masters Degree in Human Nutrition. He has interned under the supervision of the very well-known diabetes doc, Dr. Bernstein. Ryan explains: Diabetic Ketoacidosis: “Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA), is a very dangerous state where an individual with uncontrolled diabetes is effectively starving due to lack of insulin. Insulin brings glucose into our cells and without it the body switches to ketones. Our brain can function off either glucose or fat and ketones. Ketones are a breakdown of fat and amino acids that can travel through the blood to various tissues to be utilized for fuel.” “In normal individuals, or those with well controlled diabetes, insulin acts to cancel the feedback loop and slow and sto Continue reading >>
Is Keto Healthy? Ketosis Vs Ketoacidosis
Is Keto Healthy? Ketosis vs Ketoacidosis When looking at a ketogenic diet and ketosis, it’s common for some people to confuse the process with a harmful, more extreme version of this state known as diabetic ketoacidosis. But there are a lot of misconceptions out there about ketosis vs ketoacidosis, and it’s time to shed some light on the subject by looking at the (very big) differences between the two. An Overview of Ketosis A ketogenic, or keto, diet is centered around the process of ketosis, so it’s important to understand exactly what ketosis is first before we get into whether or not it’s safe (spoiler: it is): Ketosis is a metabolic state where the body is primarily using fat for energy instead of carbohydrates. Burning carbohydrates (glucose) for energy is the default function of the body, so if glucose is available, the body will use that first. But during ketosis, the body is using ketones instead of glucose. This is an amazing survival adaptation by the body for handling periods of famine or fasting, extreme exercise, or anything else that leaves the body without enough glucose for fuel. Those eating a ketogenic diet purposely limit their carb intake (usually between 20 and 50 grams per day) to facilitate this response. That’s why the keto diet focuses on very low carb intake, moderate to low protein intake, and high intakes of dietary fats. Lower protein is important because it prevents the body from pulling your lean muscle mass for energy and instead turns to fat. Ketone bodies are released during ketosis and are created by the liver from fatty acids. These ketones are then used by the body to power all of its biggest organs, including the brain, and they have many benefits for the body we’ll get into later. But first, let’s address a common mi Continue reading >>
Can You Eat Anything To Burn Fat As Long As You Are Below Your Caloric Deficit? Or Do You Have To Have A Low Carb Diet To Get Into Ketosis?
Good questions! First, our bodies need fuel and the first fuel they use is sugars (or carbs), so if you’re eating “anything” as you suggest the only way you would start to burn fat would be if your caloric deficit were enough that you needed to burn more fuel than the sugars and carbs you were putting in your body. This is physically possible on low calorie diets (which is why so many people try them), but usually in order to keep your calories low enough, you will be very hungry all the time. Also, once your body burns the carbs and sugars you eat, it will move on to the fats you eat each day and burn those before it stores them - so you may never lose the excess fat that is stored in your body which is why most people go on calorie-restricted diets to begin with. The difference between a calorie-restricted diet and a low carb diet - or specifically the Ketogenic diet - is that YOU are determining what your body uses for fuel by not giving it carbs and sugars. When your body doesn’t have access to carbs and sugars for fuel, it automatically switches to burning fat - both the fat you eat each day and the excess fat stored in your body. And when your body switches from burning sugars for fuel to burning fat for fuel, your body produces ketones and you are in ketosis. Now some people will tell you that ketosis is dangerous, but unless you are a Type 1 Diabetic (or have a few other types of chronic conditions), ketosis is a normal metabolic state. Many people get ketosis confused with ketoacidosis which is a dangerous condition and mostly happens to Type 1 Diabetics when they burn both glucose and ketones. (Although the keto diet and ketosis are healthy for most people, please know that I’m not a medical professional, so you should definitely check with your doct Continue reading >>
What Is Ketosis?
"Ketosis" is a word you'll probably see when you're looking for information on diabetes or weight loss. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? That depends. Ketosis is a normal metabolic process, something your body does to keep working. When it doesn't have enough carbohydrates from food for your cells to burn for energy, it burns fat instead. As part of this process, it makes ketones. If you're healthy and eating a balanced diet, your body controls how much fat it burns, and you don't normally make or use ketones. But when you cut way back on your calories or carbs, your body will switch to ketosis for energy. It can also happen after exercising for a long time and during pregnancy. For people with uncontrolled diabetes, ketosis is a sign of not using enough insulin. Ketosis can become dangerous when ketones build up. High levels lead to dehydration and change the chemical balance of your blood. Ketosis is a popular weight loss strategy. Low-carb eating plans include the first part of the Atkins diet and the Paleo diet, which stress proteins for fueling your body. In addition to helping you burn fat, ketosis can make you feel less hungry. It also helps you maintain muscle. For healthy people who don't have diabetes and aren't pregnant, ketosis usually kicks in after 3 or 4 days of eating less than 50 grams of carbohydrates per day. That's about 3 slices of bread, a cup of low-fat fruit yogurt, or two small bananas. You can start ketosis by fasting, too. Doctors may put children who have epilepsy on a ketogenic diet, a special high-fat, very low-carb and protein plan, because it might help prevent seizures. Adults with epilepsy sometimes eat modified Atkins diets. Some research suggests that ketogenic diets might help lower your risk of heart disease. Other studies show sp Continue reading >>
Ketosis Vs. Ketoacidosis (dka): What Is The Difference?
Let’s break it down so that you can understand exactly what ketosis is and how it differs from ketoacidosis. But the states they refer to are nothing alike. In this case, maybe mistakes are understandable. Many people who believe that ketosis is dangerous are mixing it up with another state called "ketoacidosis." The two words do sound very similar. And some people simply make mistakes. Profit motives tend to muddy up the works when it comes to getting clear, factual information about your health. Well, there are a lot of individuals and companies which all have their own goals and motivations. Where do these misperceptions come from? Here’s the thing though … that is all misinformation. You then Googled something like, "low carb dangerous" and found a list of link-bait articles informing you that low-carb is a ketogenic diet, and ketosis is a dangerous metabolic state which can be fatal. And then maybe someone said something to you like, "What are you thinking? Low-carb is a dangerous diet." If you are thinking about starting a low-carb diet, maybe you have mentioned it to some of your family or friends. By the time you finish reading this article, you will understand why low-carb is a safe diet. Continue reading >>
What Are The Main Differences Between Nutritional Ketosis, And Ketosis?
I believe these can be used interchangeably. Ketosis is ketosis - this term describes a metabolic state characterized by elevated level of ketone bodies in your blood and low blood glucose levels, induced either by consumption of exogenous ketones or medium-chain triglycerides that are quickly metabolized into ketones, or by starvation (or, at least, restriction of carbohydrates), which switches your body’s metabolic machinery to utilizing fat oxidation as the main source of energy (byproducts of fat oxidation in the absence of glucose are then metabolized further into ketone bodies that can be used as energy substrate by most tissues). “Nutritional ketosis” is more often used to describe a voluntary exercise of inducing ketosis through certain dietary practices (in other words, this is ketosis as a result of a specific nutrition). But, given that nutrition (or lack thereof) still remains a primary method of inducing ketosis (barring direct consumptino of ketone esters, etc.) - most of the time, any ketosis is nutritional ketosis. Continue reading >>
Ketosis Vs. Ketoacidosis: What You Should Know
Despite the similarity in name, ketosis and ketoacidosis are two different things. Ketoacidosis refers to diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) and is a complication of type 1 diabetes mellitus. It’s a life-threatening condition resulting from dangerously high levels of ketones and blood sugar. This combination makes your blood too acidic, which can change the normal functioning of internal organs like your liver and kidneys. It’s critical that you get prompt treatment. DKA can occur very quickly. It may develop in less than 24 hours. It mostly occurs in people with type 1 diabetes whose bodies do not produce any insulin. Several things can lead to DKA, including illness, improper diet, or not taking an adequate dose of insulin. DKA can also occur in individuals with type 2 diabetes who have little or no insulin production. Ketosis is the presence of ketones. It’s not harmful. You can be in ketosis if you’re on a low-carbohydrate diet or fasting, or if you’ve consumed too much alcohol. If you have ketosis, you have a higher than usual level of ketones in your blood or urine, but not high enough to cause acidosis. Ketones are a chemical your body produces when it burns stored fat. Some people choose a low-carb diet to help with weight loss. While there is some controversy over their safety, low-carb diets are generally fine. Talk to your doctor before beginning any extreme diet plan. DKA is the leading cause of death in people under 24 years old who have diabetes. The overall death rate for ketoacidosis is 2 to 5 percent. People under the age of 30 make up 36 percent of DKA cases. Twenty-seven percent of people with DKA are between the ages of 30 and 50, 23 percent are between the ages of 51 and 70, and 14 percent are over the age of 70. Ketosis may cause bad breath. Ket Continue reading >>
What Are The Dangers Of The Ketosis Diet?
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the "Atkins" and low carb dieting thing was just coming on in a big way, there was a terrific number of idiotic claims made about the dangers of it -- many of them confusing (as the questioner points out) diabetic ketoacidosis, a serious condition, with voluntary nutritional ketosis, even though there is no relation whatever. But, leaving all that aside, some caution is in order. The diet seems to stress the adrenals. This has been noted anecdotally by many people who've followed the diet. It was also noted by Dr Wolfgang Lutz, one of the early pioneers of the diet, who personally practiced the diet for 40-odd years, as well as advocated the diet to thousands of his patients. He noted in his book on the subject ("Life Without Bread" was the title, though it was published later I believe under a different title) that some patients would suffer mild autoimmune reactions that required small doses of corticosteroids to control. This sounds like what would happen if the adrenals are failing to produce a normal amount of steroids. You can find a lot more of a mostly-anecdotal nature by searching for "ketogenic jaminet". Paul Jaminet is a popular health blogger who has written about what he perceives to be problems with the ketogenic diet, including the possibility of deficiency of mucus and other key glycoproteins. He has some scientific backing for what he is saying, but it is far from air-tight. Read and judge for yourself. You can also learn a lot from the comments below his posts. Jaminet and others have also written about the risk of kidney stones on the ketogenic diet, and this is a serious concern, albeit a rare occurence. As far as the kidney stress goes: this would I believe be easy to avert simply by taking some alkali during Continue reading >>
What Are Ketone Strips Used For?
This won't make sense unless you understand low-carb diets. Here's how a low-carb diet is supposed to work. A person eats about 30g of carbs per day for a couple days. That's not a lot of carbs. That's like two slices of bread. The body burns through all those carbs. Now that it can't burn carbs, it starts to burn fat. When you burn fat, you lose weight. When the body burns fat, ketones end up in the urine. Low-carb dieters use ketone test strips to test whether their bodies are burning fat. A positive sign of ketones can often predict future weight loss. If this sounds too good to be true, well it might be. The biggest problem with low-carb diets is that most people can't sustain them for long enough to cause permanent weight loss. Cravings for carbs can be surprisingly strong. Depending on the protein source, high cholesterol can be a problem too. Ketosis sounds bad but the symptoms are pretty mild - bad breath, nausea, fatigue. Nobody dies from ketosis. We all should be thinking about carbs to some extent. There's an awfully high sugar content in the typical modern diet. Diabetes is no fun. Even cavities aren't a picnic. Most people could cut some carbs and be healthier. Continue reading >>
Ketoacidosis Versus Ketosis
Some medical professionals confuse ketoacidosis, an extremely abnormal form of ketosis, with the normal benign ketosis associated with ketogenic diets and fasting states in the body. They will then tell you that ketosis is dangerous. Testing Laboratory Microbiology - Air Quality - Mold Asbestos - Environmental - Lead emsl.com Ketosis is NOT Ketoacidosis The difference between the two conditions is a matter of volume and flow rate*: Benign nutritional ketosis is a controlled, insulin regulated process which results in a mild release of fatty acids and ketone body production in response to either a fast from food, or a reduction in carbohydrate intake. Ketoacidosis is driven by a lack of insulin in the body. Without insulin, blood sugar rises to high levels and stored fat streams from fat cells. This excess amount of fat metabolism results in the production of abnormal quantities of ketones. The combination of high blood sugar and high ketone levels can upset the normal acid/base balance in the blood and become dangerous. In order to reach a state of ketoacidosis, insulin levels must be so low that the regulation of blood sugar and fatty acid flow is impaired. *See this reference paper. Here's a table of the actual numbers to show the differences in magnitude: Body Condition Quantity of Ketones Being Produced After a meal: 0.1 mmol/L Overnight Fast: 0.3 mmol/L Ketogenic Diet (Nutritional ketosis): 1-8 mmol/L >20 Days Fasting: 10 mmol/L Uncontrolled Diabetes (Ketoacidosis): >20 mmol/L Here's a more detailed explanation: Fact 1: Every human body maintains the blood and cellular fluids within a very narrow range between being too acidic (low pH) and too basic (high pH). If the blood pH gets out of the normal range, either too low or too high, big problems happen. Fact 2: The Continue reading >>
How Do Ketosis And Ketoacidosis Differ?
For one a probably 3 to 10 time higher levels of circulating ketones. Here’s what you need to know. Ketones are a natural part of human metabolism. Everybody has circulating levels of ketones in their bodies. When you don’t eat for 12 hours over night your levels of ketones start to rise. The key regulator of ketone production is the hormone insulin. When insulin levels are high, circulating ketones are low. As insulin drops, ketone production starts to rise. Why? Ketones are an alternate fuel for certain tissues in the body. The body starts to ramp up production of ketones in case it needs them to help fuel things like the brain. When concentrations rise about 1 milimolar, the brain starts to burn them as fuel. Ketone metabolism breaks down when insulin is missing in the body. In type 1 diabetics or type 2’s that have beta cell failure, ketone levels can rise to levels of 15 to 25 milimolar. This lack of insulin also causes the massive release of fatty acids which acidify the body and cause the ketones to become toxic by acidifying the ketones. Typically someone on a low carb diet who is in ketosis will have levels of 2 to 3 milimolar. It is very rare for someone with insulin to see ketone levels in the 5 milimolar range. Ketones are a very elegant system that humans developed over years and years of evolutionary adaptation. They may actually burn better in the brain the glucose. They have substantial neuroprotective effects in the human brain. Continue reading >>
