The Ketogenic Diet and Brain Health

The ketogenic diet is not the same as a high-fat diet!

When you’re looking at research papers, you have to understand how they conducted the study. Many times they’re equating the ketogenic diet to high-fat diet studies which are usually normal diet studies and high-sugar studies.

Find out how a research study was conducted using the ketogenic diet and how it affected those with a APOE4 variant, a very high-risk gene predisposing individuals for Alzheimer’s disease.

Is a #ketogenicdiet beneficial for #Alzheimers or #dementia? @drbenlynch

Ketogenic diet. Are you all in? If not, then don’t do it. These researchers I’m about to show did a study, and they did not go all in with the ketogenic diet, and they did not get the results that they expected. Since I saw what they did, I had a feeling they weren’t going to get the results they wanted, but I wish that it would have happened the way they expected. But there is no shortcut to the ketogenic diet, and I’m going to prove it to you.

The researchers took a group of individuals who have Alzheimer’s. They have dementia. They’re not doing very well. Their cognition is declining. They said, “You know what? Since Alzheimer’s is basically diabetes type 3, blood sugar is there but the glucose can’t get into their brain. If you don’t have sugar in your brain, you can’t think very well. It’s that simple.” The researcher said, “You know what? The brain also uses ketones. If we give a ketogenic agent, basically MCT oil is what AC12O2 is, I bet we’ll see improvement clinically in these individuals because if the brain can use ketone bodies, since those who have dementia or Alzheimer’s can’t use glucose, I bet we’ll see improvement.” You know what? They saw it in some but not all.

What did they do? Methods is really, really important. When you’re looking at research papers, you have to understand what they did because a lot of research that looks at the ketogenic diet or high-fat diet is wrong. It’s done wrong. If you look at a high-fat diet and you’re equating that to ketogenic diet, high-fat diet studies are usually also normal diet studies and high-sugar studies. A high-fat diet is not a ketogenic diet, which is what they’re basically doing here. Because they took 150 individuals with Alzheimer’s diagnosed, they stayed on a normal diet. They gave them MCT oil. They assessed them clinically to see how they would score on cognitive assessments, and they also evaluated their APOE for variant because APOE4 is a very high-risk gene predisposing individuals for Alzheimer’s. It doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to get it, but it definitely increases your risk by about three-fold, which is very significant.

Let’s take a look at what happened. As they expected, the MCT oil did rapidly elevate the blood ketone levels. Excellent. That’s good, right? Because Alzheimer’s individuals cannot use blood glucose very well. It doesn’t get into their brain, so they shot up the blood ketones and that worked. But it worked in the individuals who did not have the APOE4 variant and it shows it here.

Key points. A group was split up into two: the placebo and those getting MCT oil. Placebo, there was no benefit. These individuals did not get the MCT oil. These individuals did get the MCT oil and they showed clinical benefit as shown here. This is the baseline assessment that they took prior to the study. They improved clinically all throughout the trial. They stopped the MCT oil and they lost the benefit. Big point. But these are the individuals who do not have the APOE4 variant. What about those who do have the APOE4 variant? Come on. You can’t forget about them. There was no clinical improvement at all even though the ketone bodies increased.

Wait a minute. So the ketogenic diet didn’t work for these people? No, the researchers did not follow the ketogenic diet. They followed a normal diet and they had the subjects suck down ketogenic juice, MCT oil. Big difference.

If you are thinking about utilizing the ketogenic diet, you have to do it all the way. You can’t just put butter in your coffee and have fat for breakfast and then go out and have a donut and scrambled eggs and spaghetti at night. You will not see the benefit. In fact, you actually might get worse.

Why is the ketogenic diet so amazing? Because it reduces inflammation. It reduces cravings. It stabilizes your moods. It stabilizes your energy to keep it consistent throughout the day. You know those binges that you have? Ketogenic diet. Gone. Your mood imbalances, your mood swings much more clear. But you have to be committed and you have to be the right type of individual also to see if you can follow the ketogenic diet because some people can’t.

Are you the type of person that can follow the ketogenic diet? I made an assessment for you to fill out. Simply go here and you take this assessment and it will show you if you can follow the ketogenic diet or not. Hope that serves you well.