Hey, guys.
Dr. Axe here, founder of DrAxe.com and Doctor of Functional Medicine.
Today, I'm going to share with you the benefits of a ketogenic diet and how ketogenic diets
can help weight loss, cancer, and even the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.
Basically, what a ketogenic diet is, it's putting your body in ketosis, which means
your body is burning fat for energy rather than carbohydrates.
So again, your body will burn its own body fat or fat that you're consuming dietarily
for its overall energy production.
This is very effective.
In fact, there are medical studies now showing that the ketogenic diet is an effective treatment
for cancer, for Alzheimer's disease, and effective for very fast weight loss.
I've worked with thousands upon thousands of patients over the years in my clinic, and
I've actually found that the ketogenic is quite possibly the best diet for very fast
fat loss.
Now, I don't believe that the ketogenic diet should be done for typically periods more
than three to six months.
After that, I think that you do want to add some good carbohydrates back in.
But if your goal is especially fast fat loss, the ketogenic diet is the perfect diet.
The reason why it works so effectively is that when your body goes into ketosis and
starts burning fat for energy, your body is burning up its own body fat.
Your body also stops feeding on sugar.
So let's go into next in terms of what it does for those three conditions.
Let's start off with cancer, so the ketogenic diet for cancer.
We know that cancer cells feed off of sugar.
So when you restrict your body, a ketogenic diet is essentially a diet that is made up
of around typically 80% fat, 10% carbohydrates, and 10% protein or maybe even let's say 70%
fat, 20% protein, and 10% carbohydrates.
The carbohydrates are very, very minimal.
So again, you can see your body is really burning fat for energy.
But the reason why the ketogenic diet is effective in cancer treatment is that the cancer cells
are being starved.
They have no sugar to feed off of and so the cancer cells starve to death.
That's why the ketogenic diet is effective in cancer treatment.
The second thing a ketogenic diet is effective for is weight loss and the reason being, again,
your body starts burning its own body fat for energy.
Think about this.
Your body will also then continue to burn fat even while you're sleeping at night.
So your body is burning fat 24/7.
It's not just burning the fat you consume.
It's burning your own body fat.
That's why it's the most effective way to burn fat fast.
And last, but not least, the ketogenic diet is effective for Alzheimer's disease.
In fact, there is a female medical doctor in Florida who treated her husband, who had
dementia and Alzheimer's, with what she called the coconut ketogenic diet and said it cured
his symptoms completely.
The reason why it would be effective is we know that part of what happens in dementia
and Alzheimer's is the degeneration of the nerve system in the brain.
So you really need to support the brain nerve system.
Well, a diet that has around 70% healthy fats, we know will help the brain, and we also know
that ketosis and your body being able to burn fat for energy or utilize fatty acids is critical
for the brain and for the natural treatment of dementia.
Now, if you want to know what a diet would look like on a ketogenic diet, again it's
going to be specifically you want to add three types of healthy fats in your diet -- healthy
saturated fats, omega-3 fatty acids, and then healthy fatty acids from things that are omega-9
fats that are going to be found in olive oil, avocados, and almonds, so sprouted nuts and
seeds.
The omega-3 fats, so eating a diet that's high in things like salmon, chia seeds, and
flax seeds.
Then also getting good quality saturated fats from things like coconut oil and high-fat
dairy like butter, so again coconut oil and grass-fed butter or ghee.
Those are some of the most effective healthy fats you want to be consuming as part of this
ketogenic diet.
So again, I can tell you in working with thousands of patients over the years, the ketogenic
diet is absolutely effective in the treatment of weight gain as well as cancer, and also
it's effective for the treatment of Alzheimer's.
So again, if you can follow a ketogenic diet, I recommend it.
It is beneficial, but I only recommend it for about a three to six month period of time.
You don't want to do it longer than that because your body does need carbohydrates long term
to function at its absolute best.
Hey, guys, this has been Dr. Axe talking about the many benefits of a ketogenic diet.