- Is the keto diet bad for your kidneys?
Will keto kill your kidneys and then kill you?
This is a valid question.
There's an article out there in the tabloids right now
about an Indian actress who passed away.
I think that much is true.
And it's been reported in the news stories
that she was eating keto, and this is what caused
kidney failure and ultimately her demise.
Let's talk about the ketogenic diet and your kidneys.
I'm Dr. Ken Berry, a family physician
with 20 years of clinical practice.
And this video is gonna help you understand
the ketogenic way of eating and your kidney health.
So currently the truth of the matter is,
is we don't know any of the details of this poor,
unfortunate young lady's medical case.
We don't know what preexisting conditions she had,
what medications she was taking.
And we don't even know what she considered to be
a ketogenic diet.
Many people out there who've been duped
think that keto means you eat whatever you want to,
and then take some exogenous ketones and that's keto.
We don't know any of the facts about this case,
we just know the inflammatory, click-worthy headlines.
Both I, and many of my colleagues in the low carb community
are looking into this case
and we hope to find out more information to share with you.
But currently, all we know is that the actress
says she was eating keto and that she developed
kidney failure and ultimately succumbed.
I've done several videos on this channel about
how a ketogenic diet actually improves your kidney function
and doesn't harm your kidneys in any way.
I'm gonna put links, they'll pop up somewhere in this video,
and I'll also include them in the show notes.
I've also linked to a large amount of research data
and research studies down in the show notes below
to help ease your mind that keto is not
going to kill your kidneys, nor will it kill you.
I want to help you understand this
by doing a little thought exercise.
So I live in Tennessee in the United States
and when I was a young boy growing up,
there were three dialysis clinics in the entire state.
There was one in Memphis,
one in Nashville, and one in Knoxville, and that served
the entire population of Tennessee at that time.
So you can see that kidney function back in the 1970s,
it was pretty darn good and chronic kidney disease
and kidney failure and the need for dialysis
was very, very rare.
Now over the course of the eighties, nineties,
2000s, and the 20 teens,
now we've come to the point where there's over
120 dialysis clinics in the state of Tennessee
here in the United States.
That's a 4000% increase in the number of dialysis clinics
over those few decades,
while the population of Tennessee
has only about doubled in that time.
So obviously something during the eighties, nineties,
2000s, and 20 teens was going on.
Do you think everybody in Tennessee
in those four or five decades, they were all eating keto
and that's now why we need so many dialysis clinics?
Indeed, you can go to the average small town in Tennessee
and there's a dialysis clinic
on just about every street corner.
It's sad, but it's true.
The need for those dialysis clinics
did not come from Tennesseans eating a ketogenic diet
and killing their kidneys.
The reason that we have all these dialysis clinics
in Tennessee now is because people have been eating
a diet rich in sugars, in grains, in vegetable oils,
in processed carbohydrate treats and breads.
This is what has led to the kidney failure epidemic
that Tennessee, and probably your town as well,
your state as well, is suffering from.
Both myself and hundreds of low carb doctors and dietitians
and other healthcare providers have seen multiple examples
of how a very, very low carb or ketogenic diet
or even a carnivore diet can improve kidney function.
We've seen multiple people go from a stage three
chronic kidney disease and reverse their kidney failure
back to a stage two.
We've seen stage two go to stage one.
We've seen stage one kidney patients go back to having
normal kidney functions eating a a ketogenic diet,
or even a carnivore diet.
So I've seen absolutely no evidence that the ketogenic diet
does any damage to the human kidney whatsoever.
We think that the kind of the pervading fear
of the ketogenic diet with regards to kidney function
comes from a couple of myths.
The first one is, is that eating a diet
that's too high in protein is bad for your kidneys.
Now this is a complete and utter myth,
there's no research to back this myth up whatsoever.
But it's a very resilient myth in the medical community.
Many doctors, many dietitians, many healthcare providers
believe that a high protein diet will harm your kidneys
or at least that it's hard on your kidneys.
But when you actually look at the research,
and if you question your healthcare provider and say,
"Why do you think that eating protein hurts my kidneys?
"What research do you base that on?"
You're gonna hear crickets chirping,
and you're gonna see kind of a confused stare
on your health care provider's face,
'cause there is no evidence that supports that at all.
There are multiple examples of societies
that ate moderate protein diets and high protein diets
that had wonderful kidney function.
Weston Price would go in and look at these
indigenous cultures that ate either a moderate protein
ketogenic diet, or a very high protein ketogenic diet.
And then other explorers as well,
and medical researchers would go and look at Inuit tribes
and tribes in Northern Russia and Northern Scandinavia.
These people ate nothing but fat and protein,
and they never had a complaint of a kidney stone
or of kidney failure or shown any signs
of kidney disease whatsoever.
Many healthcare providers believe that eating
a high protein diet or a diet rich in meat will cause you
to have kidney stones and they're wrong about that.
But they are right about worrying that any diet
that causes kidney stones can lead to kidney damage.
That's absolutely true, but it ain't the meat doing it.
I've actually got a YouTube video on this channel
about kidney stones and what diet prevents kidney stones
and which diet actually makes kidney stones more likely.
I'll have a link to that video.
But the truth of the matter is,
is it's a diet that's high in carbohydrates,
high in fructose, and that causes chronic inflammation
in your body, that's the diet that increases
your risk of kidney stones, not eating a meat-rich diet.
Again, in case you missed it,
I've got tons of research links in the show notes below
to help you understand,
and also perhaps to help your healthcare provider understand
that a moderate or high protein ketogenic diet
doesn't do anything harmful to your kidneys.
In fact, it's actually very healthy and very good
for your kidneys.
Those links are down in the show notes.
If you have a friend who's eating low carb, or keto,
or carnivore, or ketovore,
and they're worried to death about this news article,
could you do me a favor and your friend a favor
and share this video with them
so hopefully I can help to calm their nerves.
They have nothing to worry about eating a ketogenic diet
if the ketogenic diet that they're talking about
is full of real whole foods, one ingredient foods,
lots of fatty meat, plus or minus a little veg.
That is the healthiest diet in the world,
and that's why I've started calling it
the proper human diet.
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Hope this video helps.
This is Dr. Berry,
I'll see you next time.