New York Times has a very good article on Ketogenic diet helping Epilepsy patients. The Author has a son who suffers from Epileptic seizures.
If you want to know how to control Epilepsy, you must read this article.
It is funny that the author thinks that he is slowly killing his son by feeding him bad fat and cholesterol, but it is the only diet which will let him have some life. The seizures are reduced to a very small frequency with a ketogenic diet.
A ketogenic diet is where the body does not have enough glucose, and must convert fat to create ketones for feeding the brain. It is a very high fat diet. 80-90% of calories come from fat, rest from protein. There is only trace amounts of carbs.
Unfortunately, the mainstream medicine has no intention of coming to grips with fat and cholesterol are good logic. It will be a very bad year for them, if they are forced to change. People will finally stop feeling sick, and doctors will be without job.
The Keto diet they are following is very restrictive. They have to use exactly the same percentage of fat and protein and carb. The doctors have prescribed fruits instead of vegetables for the carb source.
Somehow they don't distinguish between fats, but they are using mostly good fats.
The author says that the body prefers running on glucose, when in reality it does not. Glucose is like oxygen, it is required for various functions of the body, and needs to be there. But just like oxygen needs to be at a level of 21% to be good for us, glucose also has a specific level that is good in our diet. Its not like you can have as much as you want and will not feel any trouble.
The acceptable glucose level is determined by the health of the body. Anything goes wrong and the ability to use glucose goes down. An obese person has compromised their ability to use glucose.
There are two types of tissues in the body, neurons and other cells. Neurons can only use glucose and Ketones as fuels. While other cells can use glucose and fat for fuel. In diabetics the ability to burn glucose is lost by the cells of the body.
In some neurological disorders the ability to burn glucose is lost by the neurons.
Alzheimer's is like a diabetes of the brain. The brain is no longer able to use glucose and if the body does not have enough ketones it starves and dies.
Epilepsy is a different type of disease. Some neurons are not burning glucose properly. It is possibly causing its electrical circuitry to get affected. The only option is to avoid letting glucose get to the brain cells. This is only possible by reducing the supply of glucose to the brain as much as possible and supplement it with Ketones. It is important to keep the proteins also at minimum, because in excess they will convert to glucose providing excess glucose.
A ketogenic diet does just that. It will be helpful to use a more paleo friendly ketogenic diet, because I believe that there are some other factors from the diet that are affecting the patient. It could be wheat, it could be milk also.
I believe the authors son is not getting rid of it fast enough because he is still getting milk/cream. They should try getting rid of it. But they are following doctors advice instead of experimenting on their own. Their child is unique, they need to tailor the diet for him specifically. They need to find the problems in the diet.
Unfortunately doctors have a very reductionist attitude towards diet. So for them ketogenic diet just means a specific ratio of nutrients. They don't care which foods are giving those nutrients. Are there any anti-nutrients.
Showing posts with label diseases. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diseases. Show all posts
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Cancer: A plague caused by modern lifestyle.
Otto Warburg was given a Nobel Prize for his research on Cancer in 1931. He discovered that cells become cancerous when their mitochondria are destroyed. This results in the cells not able to do aerobic energy production. The only option left to them is anaerobic one. This is very inefficient, and works only on glucose. It results in them requiring a whole lot of glucose.
One way to control cancer is to reduce glucose in the diet. This will prevent the cancer cells from getting glucose from the body as easily, but they will still get some. The body will be converting a lot of protein into glucose to provide the required glucose, so the diet must be quite high in protein, even for a non-vegetarian. This strategy works when the cancer is still very small. When it is big, this strategy may be of only marginal help.
One problem with this strategy is that not all people are able to live well on a very low carb diet. In this diet you would have to be below 50gms of carb, and protein above 2.5gm/Kg lean body weight. This is hard for many people. You will require some supplementation to handle the lack of specific nutrients because of too few vegetables in the diet. Some people have been able to control their cancer this way. The good thing is that it has no adverse effects, and you can live your life to the fullest.
Chemotherapy is known to help some people and is generally bad for most. It could be used as a last resort. I have heard that very long water fasting (more than 3 days) before the therapy helps in dealing with the effects of chemotherapy. The fasting prepares the body for very adverse situation, and when the body is ready it is able to handle the damage caused by chemotherapy much better.
This is all that I know of handling cancer.
Now for the causes of cancer.
Cancer is caused by any number of situations. From the environmental radiation, carcinogens, etc. The body has mechanisms to deal with cancerous cells. It will kill cancerous cells, before they can cause damage. It requires vitamin D3 to fight the cancer cells, or any other infection for that matter, and even to fight bad agents in the food like Wheat Germ. Wheat germ is known to reduce vitamin D3 levels in the blood.
Unfortunately with current lifestyle of working during the day covered under a roof has made it difficult to get enough vitamin D3. Fortunately, you can buy Vitamin D3 capsules or eat enough wild fish.
Cancer is know to occur more frequently in the Cities than the villages. It also becomes more common as you go away from the equator.
Vitamin D3 is very very critical. Not just for cancer. If you don't want to get it artificially, eat enough fish, and get some noon sun (around an hour in India) lying in the sun. It will be difficult in the beginning, increase it slowly. Vitamin D3 is the reason why sun bathing is so popular in Western countries, they get so little sun.
Another factor is cholesterol. It is known to be inversely related to cancer. Cancer normally happens to people below 180mg/dl of total cholesterol. Cholesterol like Vitamin D3 is required for fighting cancer and external agents. Low cholesterol also makes you more vulnerable to diseases. I know 180mg/dl is now considered to be too high for heart disease. But this is a myth.
Insoluble fiber is known to cause cancer in the Colon, due to the constant abrasion, same process that causes lung cancer due to smoking.
High Omega6 to Omega3 ratio is known to be associated with cancer. That ratio also tends to reduce cholesterol so it may be that refined oil consumption is related to cancer because of its effect on Cholesterol. It can be directly responsible as the high ratio is highly inflammatory. The inflammation may also cause cancer. We don't know the mechanism behind it, only the association. The high ratio is also known to be associated very closely with heart disease, but there also we don't know the actual mechanism.
Some resources for finding information on Cancer.
Dr. David Servan-Schreiber
Anticancer: A New Way Of Life - David Servan-Schreiber
Some of his lectures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lwiQm5QaTs
http://www.dailymotion....com/guerir/video/x7lzzp_david-servanschreiber-on-cbc
His blog
http://www.anticancerbook.com/
Articles
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-servanschreiber-md-phd/we-can-all-fight-cancer-b_b_469718.html
Interesting article. It asks the same things, low carb, low omega6, high omega3.The only thing missing is Vitamin D3 and cholesterol. The last I think are the most important.
There are other articles at
http://www.anticancerbook.com/research.html
Dr.Thomas Seyfried
http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/1172/dr-thomas-seyfried-on-killer-carbs-ketosis-as-a-cancer-cure-episode-302/
Paper on Brain Tumors and cure.
http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/2/1/30
Paper on cure of glioblastoma multiforme. It is the most common and most aggressive type of primary brain tumor in humans.
http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/7/1/33
One way to control cancer is to reduce glucose in the diet. This will prevent the cancer cells from getting glucose from the body as easily, but they will still get some. The body will be converting a lot of protein into glucose to provide the required glucose, so the diet must be quite high in protein, even for a non-vegetarian. This strategy works when the cancer is still very small. When it is big, this strategy may be of only marginal help.
One problem with this strategy is that not all people are able to live well on a very low carb diet. In this diet you would have to be below 50gms of carb, and protein above 2.5gm/Kg lean body weight. This is hard for many people. You will require some supplementation to handle the lack of specific nutrients because of too few vegetables in the diet. Some people have been able to control their cancer this way. The good thing is that it has no adverse effects, and you can live your life to the fullest.
Chemotherapy is known to help some people and is generally bad for most. It could be used as a last resort. I have heard that very long water fasting (more than 3 days) before the therapy helps in dealing with the effects of chemotherapy. The fasting prepares the body for very adverse situation, and when the body is ready it is able to handle the damage caused by chemotherapy much better.
This is all that I know of handling cancer.
Now for the causes of cancer.
Cancer is caused by any number of situations. From the environmental radiation, carcinogens, etc. The body has mechanisms to deal with cancerous cells. It will kill cancerous cells, before they can cause damage. It requires vitamin D3 to fight the cancer cells, or any other infection for that matter, and even to fight bad agents in the food like Wheat Germ. Wheat germ is known to reduce vitamin D3 levels in the blood.
Unfortunately with current lifestyle of working during the day covered under a roof has made it difficult to get enough vitamin D3. Fortunately, you can buy Vitamin D3 capsules or eat enough wild fish.
Cancer is know to occur more frequently in the Cities than the villages. It also becomes more common as you go away from the equator.
Vitamin D3 is very very critical. Not just for cancer. If you don't want to get it artificially, eat enough fish, and get some noon sun (around an hour in India) lying in the sun. It will be difficult in the beginning, increase it slowly. Vitamin D3 is the reason why sun bathing is so popular in Western countries, they get so little sun.
Another factor is cholesterol. It is known to be inversely related to cancer. Cancer normally happens to people below 180mg/dl of total cholesterol. Cholesterol like Vitamin D3 is required for fighting cancer and external agents. Low cholesterol also makes you more vulnerable to diseases. I know 180mg/dl is now considered to be too high for heart disease. But this is a myth.
Insoluble fiber is known to cause cancer in the Colon, due to the constant abrasion, same process that causes lung cancer due to smoking.
High Omega6 to Omega3 ratio is known to be associated with cancer. That ratio also tends to reduce cholesterol so it may be that refined oil consumption is related to cancer because of its effect on Cholesterol. It can be directly responsible as the high ratio is highly inflammatory. The inflammation may also cause cancer. We don't know the mechanism behind it, only the association. The high ratio is also known to be associated very closely with heart disease, but there also we don't know the actual mechanism.
Some resources for finding information on Cancer.
Dr. David Servan-Schreiber
Anticancer: A New Way Of Life - David Servan-Schreiber
Some of his lectures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lwiQm5QaTs
http://www.dailymotion....com/guerir/video/x7lzzp_david-servanschreiber-on-cbc
His blog
http://www.anticancerbook.com/
Articles
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-servanschreiber-md-phd/we-can-all-fight-cancer-b_b_469718.html
Interesting article. It asks the same things, low carb, low omega6, high omega3.The only thing missing is Vitamin D3 and cholesterol. The last I think are the most important.
There are other articles at
http://www.anticancerbook.com/research.html
Dr.Thomas Seyfried
http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/1172/dr-thomas-seyfried-on-killer-carbs-ketosis-as-a-cancer-cure-episode-302/
Paper on Brain Tumors and cure.
http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/2/1/30
Paper on cure of glioblastoma multiforme. It is the most common and most aggressive type of primary brain tumor in humans.
http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/7/1/33
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