In the 1990s, Dr. Robert Atkins made low-carb diets a huge fad across the country. In this day and age of ever increasing obesity (yes, over 60% of the country is now obese), his diet was a welcome ray of light.
Dr. Atkins based his diet on your body’s ability to produce the energy molecules known as ketones.
But now there are people saying ketones cause diabetes, but is this true?
As you may know, your body burns either glucose or fat for energy.
When you eat carbohydrates, they turn into glucose, which your body burns to produce energy. The problem with this is that in certain metabolic types, eating carbs suppresses cellular fat metabolism.
The idea is that people with metabolisms that rely heavily on cellular fat metabolism (about 80% of the country) will not be able to efficiently burn fat if they eat carbohydrates. These are most of the people who struggle with weight control.
Dr. Atkins’ diet wisely eliminated carbohydrates while at the same time increased fat intake. This is why his diet helped so many people lose weight. When they stopped eating carbs, their body began burning fat – and they lost weight.
The energy molecules your body produces when you stop eating carbs and instead eat fats are known as ketones. If you’ve read Dr. Atkins’ books, you’re probably very familiar with this term. Ketones are an amazing energy molecule, as you’ll soon see.
After Dr. Atkins made ketones famous, many doctors and patients grew concerned with the idea of increasing the production of ketones. It has to do with a complication stemming from insulin-dependent diabetes. This is the form of diabetes that lacks enough of the hormone insulin. If these patients don’t get enough insulin, two things happen.
One, since the body cannot burn sugar without insulin, their blood sugar gets extremely high. This leads to brain dysfunction, dehydration, and dangerously low potassium levels that could cause the heart to stop.
Two, the liver starts to compensate by making excessively high levels of ketones. This is an emergency attempt by the body to prevent death from the excessively high sugar levels. Ketones are acidic. So, if the high blood sugars are not corrected quickly by administering insulin, the ketones and the blood sugars will escalate, and the body will become dangerously acidic, ultimately leading to death. This condition is called diabetic ketoacidosis. Here is the important point that confuses some people about ketones.
It is not the ketones that are responsible for the deadly consequences of keto-acidosis. It is the lack of insulin leading to extremely high levels of blood sugar. In fact, the excessive production of ketones is the body’s way of protecting itself against the life-threatening effects of not having enough insulin.
Nevertheless, I still occasionally hear patients and doctors alike express a concern over ketones. So, let me make this as clear as I can. Ketones are good for everyone except for people with insulin dependent diabetes who for whatever reason are not taking their insulin.
In the coming weeks, you will see why making enough ketones are good even for insulin-dependent diabetics, as long as they are getting their insulin injections.
So, if you want to worry about ketones, don’t worry about having too many, worry about not having enough.
Yours for better health,
Frank Shallenberger, MD