Am I about to bash the Keto diet? Yes. Oh yes.
Because...it can't be good for your gut health
your gut microbiome. If we look at the science,
there's just no way, it’s like it's the worst
thing you can do. I get it, right you've gone
Keto and you've got lots of energy. You've lost
loads of weight because you stopped eating
so many calories and junk food and you feel great,
right? And this must be the diet for you and you
want to keep doing it. I want to challenge your belief
so hear me out. Just quickly, my name is Joe, I'm
a dietitian, science-based. We help clients with
their digestive issues. So yeah, if you're
following a Keto very low carb diet or you just
curious about it and you're also interested
in in gut health. Okay in the gut microbiome,
then please make sure you pay attention in this
video, and at the end actually I do have a guide about
gut, the gut microbiome and what you can do to
optimize it I suppose we can call it. So I'll
let you know about that at the end. So all the
researchers everyone agrees that a healthy
diverse gut microbiome is really important
for our well-being from you know, it's affecting
hormone regulation, inflammatory responses,
mental health is is a big one and then of course
physical health potentially indirectly affecting
weight management energy Etc. Here's the thing
the gut microbiome where bacteria is like a
large portion of that, the good bacteria there
they ferment or feed what they need to survive
and reproduce and be healthy. They eat certain fibers
we call them Prebiotic fibers. Okay, let's
just call them fibers, so this fiber
comes from carbohydrate food. That's the only
place we get fiber. It's like the starchy
part if you think about like sugarcane the fibers
there that's that's like what fiber is in food?
It comes from these carbohydrate plant food sources.
You can't get them from fat or from protein.
Now, of course a Keto diet or a very low carb diet
is a very low carb diet, therefore, for a very low fiber diet.
Therefore very low in Prebiotic fibers that
the bacteria in the gut microbiome need to survive and thrive.
If we're talking about very low carb diets or
being in Ketosis you looking at less than 20%
of your calories from carbohydrates that leaves
very little room if any for fruits a lot of vegetables
and certainly not like great cereals and grains. Again
It's these plant foods that have a fiber the
Prebiotic fibers in them that your gut means
and they've started studying this and looking
at participants and studies following the Ketogenic
diet and the diversity of the gut microbiome
and they say like even after four weeks, it's
significantly decreased like they can they
can see it clearly in the participants following
a Ketogenic low carb diet versus the control
group who are just eating a regular diet. We
say with 50 - 60 percent of calories coming from carbohydrates.
And then the other thing is like why would you
continually follow a diet? That doesn't allow
you to eat...fun foods like food is more than
just the calories and nutrition food is like
social interaction and food is fun and food
can be pleasure. And if you're following a diet
that doesn't allow any carbohydrates like
eliminates so much of the foods we can eat especially
the fun things and the treats should we say like,
why would you do that? Especially when you can
live optimally and be at Optimal Health and
have a diet that includes these fun foods and
includes carbohydrates, you know within reason
and not being gluttonous or anything but like
it's like what's it called a false dichotomy,
you don't you don't have to get rid of carbs to
achieve that health goal you want especially
not long-term it in the short term you can and
you know lose the weight or feel better. But you
can also get to this goal while still eating
these foods. You just need to be taught how to
do that to achieve that balance. And come on for real.
You telling me you don't want to eat like french
fries sometimes or ice cream or pizza like. So
anyway to bring it back full circle very low carb.
It's not good for the diversity of your your
gut bacteria in the gut microbiome because
there is not enough Prebiotic fibers going
into your digestive tract for them to to feed
on to ferment and therefore is going to have
negative consequences down the track and we
research starts to see that now because really
people haven't been doing the Keto diet very long.
it was it was made for treating epilepsy. And
now it has become more mainstream for weight
loss and all these things but there are of course,
you know thousand ways to skin a cat. There are
so many other ways you can get your health goal
and I just think that if you if you're going very
low carb, you need to so many things to think
about obviously particularly gut health and
your gut microbiome, which I think are not a
lot of people have not been aware of. And who like a promise?
I have a guide all about gut microbiome, like
what it is what you should be doing for it and
what to sort of avoid to nurture and you know,
Optimize it, I guess we could say, if you want that just
comment “MICROBIOME” in the comments and that
way I can send it to you. And if you enjoyed this
you found it useful, please give us a thumbs
up or a heart.