let's talk about the relationship between ketones and your hormones
how do ketones actually affect your hormones well let's take a look at the
number one hormone first that's involved with ketones insulin in fact what
controls the production of ketones is when insulin is lowered okay when
insulin is too high you cannot get into ketosis your body is forced to run on
glucose and if you don't have any it'll tap into glucose from your stored sugar
as glycogen or it will start making sugar as this term called
gluconeogenesis and it could make it even from muscle protein so what
triggers insulin is mainly the carbohydrates and frequency of eating so
when you're going to low carb diet and you lower insulin you have all these
ketones it's very very very therapeutic for your body in many ways also when you
go on a low-carb diet and you run your body on ketones and your lower insulin
you're giving the pancreas a chance to breathe and relax and recover now
there's this opposing hormone in the pancreas okay there's actually two
different hormones one is insulin when is glucagon this is different than
glycogen glucagon is a hormone that helps mobilize and burn fat it's
stimulated by a moderate amount of protein or intense exercise or the
reduction of carbs as well as the reduction of insulin so they kind of
work back and forth alright next one is something called IGF insulin-like growth
factor number one now what is that that is a hormone that's made by your liver
that works very similar to growth hormone so growth hormone is an anti
aging hormone it's a hormone that helps you make proteins in the body muscle
protein for example cartilage collagen is made by the pituitary gland and it's
sent down into the liver and then it triggers this process to make a GF
so the functions of IGF are very similar to growth hormone so growth hormone is
an anti-aging it's a fat burning hormone and so is IGF IGF increases as you
decrease insulin so they kind of work back and forth so IGF mobilizes fat fuel
okay when you're not eating or when you're keeping insulin low as soon as
you eat everything switches this goes down and this goes up so now we're into
storing fat and using the calories that you're eating as energy whereas this
hormone mobilizes the energy from your storage your fat cell as well as stored
sugar as well so IGF number one and growth hormone that's right here let me
add cortisol what is cortisol cortisol is an adrenal hormone that's made by the
outside of your adrenals and it's called a glucocorticoid because it's involved
in glucose in that when cortisol goes up what it does is it mobilizes the storage
sugar as well as protein and breaks up the protein it's called deamination okay
you're breaking up these amino acids and it turns that into glucose which then
triggers insulin so if you go through a lot of stress chronic stress and you get
this elevation of cortisol this is why you get fat in the gut because the
body's mobilizing the proteins and turning it into sugar and actually help
you make more sugar and all that sugar is being converted into fat around your
gut it's a survival mechanism so your body wants to hold on the fat in case
it's starving and you're not eating and you can survive so this is why some
people can even get fat by having too much cortisol because cortisol
eventually leads to a spike in insulin okay next one is thyroid hormones now
when you go on a ketogenic diet you make Ketones many times you'll see a drop in
t3 this is the active form of thyroid hormone so it'll go a little bit lower
is it a problem no it's not because ketones allow your body to extract more
energy from the calories if you compare it to sugar so it's more efficient at
extracting fuel so is less waste less co2 so the thyroid actually does not
have to work as hard so this goes down a little bit what you won't see is the
thyroid stimulating hormones from the pituitary and this is how they diagnose
a hypothyroid condition so if we see no change with this but this goes down it
just means that your body has adapted and it's becoming more efficient and
you'll find that you really won't happen to negative symptoms your t3 will be a
little bit down but you feel fine you have a lot of energy because ketones
actually give you more energy ketones also by the way act as an
antioxidant so it actually can help protect against free radical damage now
let's talk about estrogen estrogen has the effect of increasing the sensitivity
of insulin so if you are low on estrogen what you may find is that you have more
symptoms with insulin resistance this could be one of the reasons why a woman
as she gets older and loses estrogen and she has all those symptoms then she has
blood sugar issues on top of that now some women have estrogen dominant
depending on much weight that they have because postmenopausal if they have a
lot more fat it's the fat that makes the estrogen not the ovary or not really the
adrenal too much so if you have extra weight after menopause you may find that
your more estrogen dominant if you have normal weight going to menopause you may
find that your have low estrogen and you may have an insulin problem because
you're losing the sensitivity so thereby you're having a bit of insulin
resistance and that's more of a blood sugar issue and that you might crave
carbs you definitely need to do more the
ketogenic diet so if you think about it going on a ketogenic diet improves
insulin resistance thereby improving estrogen now antigens in a male body
you're going to decrease testosterone if you're on a high carb diet and you're
running more on insulin and you're not in ketosis when you go into ketosis by
lowering the carbohydrate you have the ability to enhance testosterone now the
female body it's a little bit different when you actually are not into ketosis
you're doing a lot of carbs you develop insulin resistance your body starts to
make the male hormone testosterone and this leads to hair loss facial hair a
deep voice a gut and the mechanism for that is very interesting I put a link
down below if you're interested but that condition is called polycystic ovarian
syndrome and you have this relationship between high insulin is causing antigens
but what will solve that is getting on the ketogenic diet so if you're
consuming a lot of refined carbs or sugar you're going to be reducing your
growth hormone ketones help the thyroid to become more
efficient they help balance estrogen as well as antigens if you wanted to see
that video on PCOS I put it right here check it out