Keto diet versus Paleo diet are they the same thing
are they fads how are they different we're going to talk about all these
principles so that you can decide if it's something that you want to give a
try and you can understand when and if that would be a good idea coming right
up. [Wellness For Life logo] So what is the Paleo diet it is a philosophy of how humans have eaten
through the history of human existence so the earliest humanoids came around
about two million years ago the homo erectus and then homo sapiens the latest
version of human came around a quarter million years ago and most researchers
in paleontology and and human evolution they agree that there is very very
little difference between the DNA of the homo sapiens a quarter million years ago
and your DNA today. so the idea then is that whatever they ate would be the most
appropriate type of food for us to eat today and why might want to make that
argument because if you have the same DNA as they did the DNA codes for
enzymes and enzymes are what you have in your body there is some enzymes in food
and you produce a lot of the rest in your body that break down the food and
different types of food required different types of enzymes you can't eat
the same thing that a cow eats because you don't have those enzymes you don't
have those bacterial cultures. so an enzyme is a catalyst it is something
that fits into specific molecules and help us break down and metabolize that
food so if your ancestors had a certain set of DNA to code for a certain type of
enzymes then it would make a lot of sense
that you would be suitable for the same type of food so that is the idea behind
the Paleo diet. so what would be okay to eat on the Paleo diet then well anything
that they had access to such as meat fish poultry anything that they could
pull out of the ocean anything that they could catch and kill and eat would be
alright they also probably had access to some fruits and some vegetables at least
seasonally they probably could catch pick find some eggs and they could also
pick nuts and seeds that they found they could dig up some roots some things that
are called tubers similar to sweet potato and potato early versions of
those things so all of those things would be available to our ancestors and
that the argument is that that's what we should eat exclusively what they said no
too categorically is grain because your
ancestors before ten thousand years ago they had no grain available to them they
had no legumes they had no beans no corn well corn is actually a grain but beans
and green beans soy beans black beans etc peanuts all of those are legumes and
your ancestors did not have access to them and therefore we shouldn't eat them
they also said that there was no organized form of dairy
we didn't farm animals we didn't domesticate animals until later so even
if you could catch an occasional animal and get little dairy there was nothing
regular about that potatoes are a more modern thing and obviously they had no
processed sugar no processed foods no food additives they had no vegetable
oils no seed oils no nut oils none of that
so this because it wasn't available the principle of the Paleo diet says that
you should cut this out 100% and it also makes a lot of sense when you look at
what people develop the most allergies to the absolute top allergies today are
wheat soy and dairy and it's not just the fact that it's those foods but it's
how they've been processed and how they've changed and how they've been
refined so the Paleo diet also advocates of course that we should eat it in its
most original form so how does that then compared to the keto diet well let's
look at the breakdown of macronutrients so they've done a lot of research on
this and they looked at hundreds of different primitive populations and
where they lived and their ancestors and and what they were likely to eat and so
forth and they came up with the numbers that our ancestors on average probably
ate around 39 40 percent fat 38 40 percent proteins are really really close
and about 23% carbs so basically twice as much calories from fat and protein as
they did from carbs so it's in essence a low-carb diet it's not it doesn't have
to be but because you cut out the grains and legumes and the sugar in the
processed food it sort of becomes a low carb but you could during certain times
if you found a lot of fruit and a lot of roots and things like that then it could
develop into a more moderate carbohydrate diet but then they say it
also depended on where you lived so in the north where it was colder fewer
fruits a shorter growing season then they would rely less on carbohydrate
probably as little as 10% and they would rely more on fishing
so with fishing and hunting hunting seals and fat fish and things like that
they would get probably a full 60 percent of their
from fat on the other hand if you lived in the tropics then you would have more
fruits more vegetables longer seasons and so forth so you might have actually
40% so you'd be a moderate almost a high carbohydrate diet and again of course
there would be no processed sugars or food in that compared to the keto diet
then the keto diet is pretty close to what they would eat in the north so in a
sense some versions of the Paleo diet would actually be a keto diet but the
keto diet as we've talked about before it's not a an idea it's a physiological
principle it's about how do you cut the carbs so low that your body gets into a
state of ketosis so it's an observation it's it's changing your macronutrients
to the point where your body starts burning fat so some advocates of the
keto diet they say well as long as you cut the carbs down and get into ketosis
it doesn't matter what you eat you could eat processed foods you could don't have
to eat vegetables etc etc and I don't share that point of view I think it
still matters if you want to be healthy long term but as far as the strict keto
principle then it doesn't matter because when you're in ketosis you're in ketosis
so it's a physiological principle it's about changing your lifestyle until
something happens in your body to where you start burning fat and a byproduct of
fat burning is ketones so when you can measure ketones in your body you have
achieved the objective and you are in ketosis and you are on a ketogenic diet
regardless of what type of food you're eating and again during certain times
the Paleo diet would turn into the keto diet
if we look at it a little bit further and now we think about well we didn't
have refrigerators and worldwide global commerce and distribution of food so
there was a lot of variation from day to day and between the seasons so our
ancestors had certain periods of feasting and certain periods of famine
and during the feasting they were probably low to moderate carbohydrate
and when there wasn't so much food around then they were low carb or
probably Kido for long periods of time and when they didn't have food for a
couple of days well guess what they were fasting intermittently so I have to
laugh anytime someone calls these things a fad
diet because the definition of fad means it's of short duration it's it's an idea
someone gets excited about and a lot of people try it and then it kind of fades
away and nothing could be further from the truth because these things are not
fads this is how humans have eaten for as long as we have existed every animal
on the planet are in a feast or famine situation because the food supply isn't
constant so for certain times there were all in in keto and intermittent fasting
so there's nothing new about it it is the way we're supposed to function
humans do extremely well missing a few meals but we have no defense against six
meals a day your body is not designed to cope with six meals a day and the
results are disastrous for most people so we want to understand the differences
that the Paleo diet is an historical hypothesis it's an idea that let's eat
the way that they did and the keto diet is a physiological principle it says eat
low enough carbs cut the carbs enough back that you get into a
state of ketosis and sometimes they have two different origins the the the roots
of why we do them are completely different but sometimes they end up
being the same thing because of the reasons that we talked about that
because we cut out most of the high carb foods it becomes a low carb diet and
because there was sometimes feast and famine then they sometimes became the
keto diet but then some people they say that oh well because I believe this is
the way it is I'm going to turn it into my religion so some people look at the
Paleo diet and they say that oh absolutely
with no exceptions under no circumstances should you ever have
anything outside of that because it's unnatural and I don't buy that all the
way I think the Paleo idea is a fantastic foundation and I base
everything that I do on that I think our physiology has developed I think we need
to look not only at the foods that we ate but we need to look at the sleep
cycles and our activity levels and a lot of different things how how we respond
to stress that our whole stress response system developed to give us survival
advantage we were supposed to have a fight flight response to run away from a
bear and we had an all-out sympathetic fight flight response and then we found
our safety in a cave or in a tree and then our bodies could settle down so it
was a lot of there was large differences between the fight flight and the
relaxation whereas today we are stress is very different so we're not living
the way that our bodies were designed for we have a lot of low-grade stress
that keeps going hour after hour after hour we sit in front of computers with
deadlines we sit in traffic we have arguments we watch the new
we listen to politics we have all these little things that set off stress
responses and were not designed for those type of things
so I think this is a great foundation the Paleo diet is a great place to start
but I don't think that that is necessarily a hundred percent the law
just because of that I think a lot of people do well on certain grains
I think organic corn in moderation I think organic oats for some people I
think brown rice in moderation if you're not sensitive to it if you're not
insulin resistance I think that can be a reasonably good food for that person but
if you are very insulin resistant then all of these things are also going to
trigger insulin at a much too high level I think also based on testing and based
on clinical results that dairy is okay for most people but we have to look at
the source of the dairy the quality of the dairy is this grass-fed and has it
been pasteurized and the more we can find it in its original form the more
likely that it's good for you something like skimmed pasteurized milk
I wouldn't want for my worst enemy I think that's a horrendous food I based
on our testing in our office we have never found a person that agrees (test well) with
pasteurized skim milk but we have the majority of people doing well on
grass-fed butter and sour cream and raw cheese and things like that and by the
same token some people turn the keto diet into a religion and say that oh
well I when I went into ketosis I felt the best I ever had
it changed my life so that must be the best diet for me I'm gonna stick to that
no matter what I don't care what I eat as long as I'm in ketosis I'll be fine
that's because they were insulin resistant they were toxic with sugar and
when they cut it out they gave their body a chance to recover
and find some sort of balance but it doesn't mean that that is the optimal
diet for them forever we need to understand where our origins are
according to the Paleo principle we need to understand where low-carb and keto
and low to moderate carb diets fit in based on our health goals and our weight
and our insulin resistance so I think everyone should look hard at the Paleo
diet to get a good foundation to understand where our roots are that
those people ate a certain type of food and that that food was always whole and
unprocessed and I think that should be 80 to 90% of the food for almost
everybody then I think you need to understand where you are as far as
insulin resistance blood sugar a 1c etc and where you need to be on the
carbohydrate scale that if you're very insulin resistance then you probably
need to do keto for a while probably an if not keto at least very low carb
combined with intermittent fasting and exercise and stress modification
behavior and so forth so it's what this channel is all about it's learning these
principles so that you can take the best from each area and understand how it
fits to you because there is no one-size-fits-all we have to start
understanding what the modern world has changed what it has done to us so that
we can learn and change and try things that will work for us if you enjoy this
kind of content and you're new to this channel make sure you subscribe and hit
that notification bell so that you don't miss anything
and as always share this content with as many people as you can because that way
you can help then live a better life as well thanks
for watching