Ketogenic diet aids weight loss, epilepsy, MS, Alzheimer's and starves cancer

The
low carb, high-fat ketogenic diet has been shown to accelerate weight loss, enhance performance for endurance athletes and manage diseases such as epilepsy, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis and cancer.

Cancer researcher 

Dr. Dominic D'Agostino

The ketogenic diet has a variety of health benefits that extend far
beyond its popular application as a weight loss tool, cancer scientist
Dr. Dominic D'Agostino said on a podcast with Nourish Balance Thrive.

For the past four years, D'Agostino's lab has researched the use of
the ketogenic diet to prevent epileptic seizures and "starve" cancer.

He found the low carb, high-fat diet can protect brain health for epilepsy patients and for people who experience traumatic brain injury, such as football players who suffer concussions.

"The ketogenic diet seems to work for a variety of different seizure
types, so I like to say it's neuroprotective," said Dr. D'Agostino, an
assistant professor at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine in the department of molecular pharmacology and physiology.

"Its neuroprotective properties are linked to its ability to supply ketones as a form of energy to the brain."Since 2007, D'Agostino has worked with the Office of Naval Research to assist the Navy SEALs by developing ketogenic diet strategies to protect them from the undersea environment. He told me the ketogenic diet prevented Navy SEALs from getting seizures during rigorous underwater training exercises.

Physician Reversed MS With Ketogenic-Style Paleo Diet

The ketogenic diet has also been shown to prevent and even reverse multiple sclerosis. Dr. Terry Wahls, a professor at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, reversed her multiple sclerosis by following a ketogenic-style Paleo diet.

Wahls, a physician who was diagnosed with MS in 2000, has managed her multiple sclerosis for the past seven years with her own personalized ketogenic-style Paleo diet called the Wahls Protocol.

“I used what I had learned from the medical literature, functional medicine, and my knowledge of the Hunter-Gatherer diet to create my food plan," she wrote in her bestseller, "The Wahls Protocol."

Dr. Wahls said her MS improved dramatically, without drugs, after she switched to a ketogenic-style Paleo diet. “The results stunned my physician, my family, and me: within a year, I was able to walk through the hospital without a cane and even complete an 18-mile bicycle tour,"
she said.

Wahls' dramatic story inspired Chad Vaccarino of the duo A Great Big World to treat his multiple sclerosis with a similar low carb, high-fat Paleo diet “My symptoms went away completely,” Vaccarino told ABC News.

“I’m sharing my story in the hopes that it might inspire you the way Dr. Wahls' story inspired me." These results aren't surprising to Dr. Eric Westman, co-author of Keto Clarity.

The low carb ketogenic and Paleo diets have become mainstream after celebrities such as LeBron James touted the weight loss benefits of their low-carb diets, but D'Agostino's research suggests the ketogenic diet can also starve cancer. This is because cancer cells thrive on sugar and cannot survive
on ketones.

"When we restrict carbs in our diet, we can prevent pro-inflammatory spikes in blood glucose and blood insulin," D'Agostino told me in an exclusive interview. "Suppression of blood glucose and insulin spikes can be very helpful when managing many chronic diseases."

According to Dr. D'Agostino, we are only as healthy as our mitochondria, which are the power sources of all our cells, so if we keep our mitochondria healthy, we can stall the onset of cancer and other age-related chronic diseases, such as Alzheimer's and heart disease.

An effective way to inhibit the growth of cancer cells is to follow a ketogenic diet, he said. "Most cancer scientists have historically thought cancer was a genetic disease, but only five to 10 percent of
cancer is hereditary," said D'Agostino, who has a Ph.D. in physiology and neuroscience.

D'Agostino's research showed ketogenic diet therapy prolongs survival in mice with aggressive metastatic cancer. These same anti-cancer properties have also been observed in human cancer patients and reported in published studies.

D'Agostino's colleague, Dr. Thomas Seyfried of Boston College, told me in an exclusive interview the ketogenic diet can replace chemotherapy and radiation for many cancers. Seyfried's decades of research indicate that cancer is a metabolic — not a genetic — disease. And the best way to treat a metabolic disorder is through diet, not by pumping a patient full of toxic radiation, he said.

The problem with the traditional treatment of cancer, said Seyfried, is that the cancer community has approached it as a genetic disease, so much of the research efforts have gone into gene-focused studies, which he says does not address the root of the problem.

Dr. Seyfried, widely considered the godfather of the nutritional treatment of cancer, joins a growing number of researchers who say the ketogenic diet can treat many forms of cancer. This is because nearly all the healthy cells in our body have the metabolic flexibility to use fat, glucose and ketones to survive, but cancer cells lack this metabolic flexibility and require large amounts of glucose and cannot survive on ketones. So by limiting carbohydrates (as the keto diet does) we can reduce glucose and insulin, and thus restrict the primary fuel for cancer cell growth.

While this idea may sound new, scientists have been aware of this for the past 80 years. This phenomenon was first observed in the 1920s by German physiologist Otto Warburg, who won a Nobel Prize in 1931 for discovering that cancer cells have defective mitochondria and thrive on
sugar.

The “Warburg effect” can be exploited by the ketogenic diet, but so far this approach has not been used to fight cancer. However, the tide may soon be turning. Today, there are about a dozen studies that are investigating the use of the ketogenic diet to manage all kinds of cancer.

Dr. Seyfried says the time has come for the medical community to publicly acknowledge the viability of the ketogenic diet as an inexpensive, non-toxic way to treat cancer. "The standard of care has been an abysmal failure for cancer," said Seyfried. "The ketogenic diet may one day replace the standard of care for most cancers."

Source: Examiner.com

How To Fix Chronic Dieting

How Chronic Dieting is Affecting Your Weight

by Jon Gabriel

If you’re like many clients I work with, you’ve unintentionally put your body into what’s referred to as a “famine state.” When you restrict the amount of food you eat, your body responds to this self-imposed famine by storing fat and making it nearly impossible to lose weight.

It’s a catch-22...

Worse still, restrictive diets reduce your essential nutrient intake so your body goes into a nutritional famine at the same time, leading to uncontrollable food cravings. To your body, dieting and any other type of restriction is seen as a threat, and it adapts by activating your FAT Programs. While fat might seem like your worst enemy, in certain circumstances, your body sees gaining and storing fat as the best way to protect you.

Want to Turn Off Your FAT Programs? Start now...

• Add “big 3” foods to your meals every day (protein, omega 3 fatty acids, live food)
• Forget about fad diets & gimmicks
• Remember that chronic dieting leads to chronic weight problems, while naturally thin people never diet or even think about it

Why You Should Stop Dieting Now!

When I was overweight, I spent countless hours (and dollars) plowing through different diet books searching for some miracle program that would actually work for me. There was Atkins, The Zone, Fit for Life, low-fat, all-carb, no-carb, you name it, I tried it!

And each new diet ended with the same old result, a result I was all too familiar with... failure. Not only did I gain back all the weight I worked so hard to lose, I’d often end up gaining more than I started with. With each yo-yo cycle, I’d lose con fidence, lose hope, and spiral deeper and deeper into despair. I felt as if I was destined to be fat.

And then it all changed.

Out of pure desperation one evening, I pulled my car over on the side of the freeway and rested my forehead on the steering wheel. At 409 lbs, I was borderline diabetic, I had terrible sleep apnea, my brain was in a constant fog, and I was struggling just to get through the day.

Right then, I declared (out loud) that I would never diet again. I was going to focus on getting healthy becauseafter over a decade of struggle, it was 100% clear to me that diets don’t work. I’m begging you too to make this shift today - to focus on adding not restricting, to focus on abundance and self-love not lack and self-hate.

That single statement on the side of the freeway is what led me down my path all the way to what has become my life’s work. What started as a best-selling book has now turned into an international movement for holistic, sustained weight loss; and I’m so excited to see the momentum growing with each passing year.

As humiliating and frustrating as it was for me to try and fail on so many diets, and as horrible as it felt to be 409 lbs (my highest weight), those experiences gave me an unparalleled insight that I now channel directly into my research and teaching.

Here are My Top 3 Discoveries:

1. Dieting puts your body in a state of famine and ensures that you’ll gain back the lost weight.
2. Exercising to battle overeating is like running away from a burning re... the moment you stop, you get burned.
3. Real, sustainable results are archived holistically, by balancing your physical, emotional, and spiritual bodies.

So...What Should I Eat?

My Total Transformation students often send in questions, and one of the most common questions goes something like this:

“I know I need to stop extreme dieting... but then what do I eat?”

At The Gabriel Method we focus on adding what you’re missing back into your life, so here’s the question I’d like you to ask instead:

“Why is your body really hungry right now anyway?”

Most weight loss programs are all about rules and restrictions, behavior modi cation and supposed “willpower;” but life changes and so do circumstances.

It’s impossible to stay on a diet forever, and portion control and calorie counting happen all by themselves, unconsciously, when your FAT Programs are turned off. When you truly nourish your mind, body and spirit, you’ll eventually “crowd out” the foods that have been activating your FAT Programs and causing you to gain weight.

Is Your Body Able to Burn Fat Right Now?

Did you know that almost everyone who struggles with weight loss for 12 months or more has developed a chemical imbalance?

During the 12 years I spent dieting and doing grueling exercises, I wish I knew that gaining and losing weight again and again actually makes your body more and more prone to obesity. According to the latest research in metabolism*, when a person gains and loses weight repeatedly, their muscle fibers transform and end up burning as much as 11% less calories each day (compared to someone of the same weight who never dieted).

Here’s why this is important...

Two people of the same weight can require a difference in calories that’s equivalent to that of a small meal – talk about bad news! Not only that, the yo-yo dieter often experiences stronger food cravings and less desire to exercise as a result of the body’s recent famine.

If you’re like I was, you might have a lot of things working against you right now; and the realization that you’ve got a chemical imbalance might just fuel your frustration.

But don’t let it!

Understanding your biology is one of the keys to The Gabriel Method, and the better you understand what’s going on inside, you can quickly learn to work with your body rather than fighting it.

Eat Live a Caveman, Think Like a Physicist!

Your genetic heritage comes directly from our hunter-gatherer ancestors...

... and that means you’re better suited to hunting, foraging, and fi ghting for your food than you are trying to subsist on frozen dinners or take out.

Intuitively, you probably already knew that. What you might not know is that while your conscious mind is as modern as broadband internet, it does an extremely poor job of communicating to your primal body. In terms of weight loss, this means that no matter how much book knowledge you have about nutrition or how many hours you spend at the gym, your primal body, most often, remains boss.

So if your inner caveman feels it needs fat, it nds a way to make sure you stay hungry all day. Conversely, when your hunter body feels it needs to be thin, your hunger will decrease and you’ll lose weight without even trying.

Ask yourself this: “Why do you even need fat in the fi rst place?”

These days, you don’t need fat. You don’t suffer from long, cold winters exposed to the elements, and at any given time, most people have access to food within a few short steps to the kitchen. So excess body fat today is, by de finition, a biological mistake.

And the best way to reverse this is to reconnect your primal body and modern brain through the mind-body practice of visualization. Using mental images is similar to the caveman writing on the rock wall with ash. This type of communication goes beyond language and speaks directly to your subconscious in a language it understands: images.

Even if you’ve never done visualization before or if you’re weirded-out by the whole idea, I have to insist that you give it a try. For weight loss, it’s perhaps the single most effective thing I teach.

Source: The Gabriel Method

Dr Mehmet Oz explains the Paleo Diet (Stoneage Diet)

Debunking The Paleo Diet

Christina Warinner at TEDxOU

Paleo Diet Plan Explained - Is The Caveman Diet For You?

For more information go to:- Fitium.com

What is the Paleo Diet?

One of the most thorough looks into "Stone Age" nutrition was done by Dr. Loren Cordain, author of The Paleo Diet and considered to be one of the world's leading experts on Paleolithic nutrition. Based upon scientific research examining the types and quantities of foods our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate, the foundation of "The Paleo Diet" is lean meat, including ostrich and bison as well as organ meats, seafood, fresh fruit and non-starchy vegetables -- a far cry from the standard American diet.During the Paleolithic period, which spans to 12,000 years ago, people ate primarily vegetables, fruit, nuts, roots and meat. As Dr. McGuff stated, if you went out to gather food during this time, the foodstuffs you would find the least of would be carbohydrates. As he said, there was a lot more "fauna" than "flora" in the environment.Your body likely developed the signal to store energy based upon the food type that was least abundant, i.e. carbohydrates, and this has continued to this day. So when you eat carbs, your body hears "store energy" -- and this situation is put on steroids with the Standard American Diet, as McGuff said. While exercise is important and crucial for weight loss, the foods you choose to eat are multiple times more important for controlling your weight than your exercise. And if your diet relies on carbohydrates like sugar, fructose and grains, weight- and fat loss will be virtually impossible.

If You Want a Lean Body, Eat the Way of Your Ancestors

Our Stone-Age ancestors not only ate more natural foods than we do today, but they also ate an incredibly wide variety of them. Dr. Mark Berry, who is involved in the Paleolithic nutrition research, explained that back then humans ate 20-25 different plant foods a day.Today, many Americans struggle to fit in five!Meanwhile, modern-day man eats far more carbs -- including grains, sugar and fructose -- than your ancestors could have dreamed of. See, you don't get fat simply because you overeat -- on the contrary, you overeat because your fat tissue is accumulating excess fat.   But why would your fat tissue continuously accumulate fat if you're not simply "eating too much and exercising too little"? Because;

1. Dietary carbohydrates, especially fructose, are the primary source of a substance called glycerol-3-phosphate (g-3-p), which causes fat to become fixed in fat tissue.
2. At the same time, high carb intake raises your insulin levels, which prevents fat from being released.

The resulting equation is simple: fructose and dietary carbohydrates (grains, which break down into sugar) lead to excess body fat, obesity and related health issues. No amount of exercise can compensate for this damage because if you eat a lot of fructose (and there's a good chance you are, considering it's in virtually every processed food), it could be "programming" your body to become fat.

It's not hard to understand the dietary roots of the American weight problem nowadays when you consider that the top 10 sources of calories in the American diet: Four of the top five sources of calories, and eight out of the full 10, are CARBS -- sugars (primarily fructose) and grains! This is the opposite of what our ancestors ate, and is also counterproductive to what you need to lose body fat and stay healthy. 

1. Grain-based desserts (cakes, cookies, donuts, pies, crisps, cobblers, and granola bars) 139 calories a day	6. Alcoholic beverages
2. Yeast breads, 129 calories a day	7. Pasta and pasta dishes
3. Chicken and chicken-mixed dishes, 121 calories a day	8. Mexican mixed dishes
4. Soda, energy drinks, and sports drinks, 114 calories a day	9. Beef and beef-mixed dishes
5. Pizza, 98 calories a day	10. Dairy desserts

So What Should You Eat to Mimic Your Stone-Age Ancestors?

Ironically, when U.S. News evaluated and ranked 20 diets with input from a panel of health experts, the Paleo diet ranked lowest of the 20! But this was not because it is a poor diet, but because the panelists didn't believe it was possible to find the appropriate foods in the modern era. Nothing could be further from the truth, because food selection today is no longer dictated by your environment as it was so long ago, but rather by your choices at the supermarket or, better, the farmer's market.

As written in AlterNet:

"The Paleo diet is less a prescription than a framework for considering one's relationship with food, but several themes are common to most Paleo menus. Aversion to wheat and most grains is common, and processed carbs and sugar are especially avoided. Many Paleos are suspicious of modern fruit, engineered as it was by agriculture into the equivalent of candy bars hanging from trees."

While you wouldn't be able to find many of the wild varieties of plant foods eaten by cavemen even if you wanted to, because modern agriculture has largely taken over the food supply and tweaked and shrunk it to where only a few varieties of wheat, corn and other plant foods are left, you can certainly mold your diet around the principles of Paleo eating rather simply by following the Paleo Diet Plan.

I believe it to be one of the most profound interventions for the 21st century and, when properly applied, it can improve just about anyone's health by basing your diet on fresh, whole, unprocessed, "real" food!

As Dr. Cordain stated:

"Simply put, human nutritional requirements for optimal health are determined by our genes, and our genes are shaped by the environment of our ancestors through natural selection. Many modern staples and processed foods were not present throughout most of the more than 2 million years hominin species have been present on earth.
The nutritional qualities of modern processed foods and foods introduced during the Neolithic period are discordant with our ancient and conservative genome. This genetic discordance ultimately manifests itself as various chronic illnesses, which have been dubbed "diseases of civilization."
By severely reducing or eliminating these foods and replacing them with a more healthful cuisine, possessing nutrient qualities more in line with the foods our ancestors consumed, it is possible to improve health and reduce the risk of chronic disease."

Where Does Exercise Fit In?

Much of Dr. Doug McGuff's video above is focused on high-intensity exercise like Peak Fitness -- and this, too, mimics the behavioral patterns of the Paleolithic people. During this era, people were not running long distances without any rest, the way so many people do on treadmills today. Rather, they would exert themselves in short bursts while hunting or evading threats, and then follow this up with a period of rest. By following this strategy, you can really maximize your weight loss efforts, as long as it is combined with proper dietary changes. The short intense training protocol that is used during Peak Fitness exercise improves muscle energy utilization and expenditure due to its positive effects on increasing muscle mass and improving muscle fiber quality. Muscle tissue burns three to five times more energy than fat tissues. This means that muscle gain increases your body's metabolic rate and allows you to burn more calories, even when you're sleeping.

Further, several studies have confirmed that exercising in shorter bursts with rest periods in between burns more fat than exercising continuously for an entire session. In fact, you can actually lose more weight by reducing the amount of time you spend on exercise, as with Peak Fitness you only need 20 minutes, two to three times a week. Remember proper dietary choices are your first and most important step to fat loss, but high-intensity exercise can boost your progress from there.

Source: Dr Mercola - Paleo Diet