Keto diet and autoimmune disease

A November 2024 study by the University of California at San Francisco said,

• “What was really exciting was finding that we could protect these mice from inflammatory disease just by putting them on a diet that we supplemented with these compounds,”

• “The big question now is how much of this will translate into actual patients,”

• “But I think these results provide hope for the development of a more tolerable alternative to helping those people than asking them stick to a challenging restrictive diet.”

Pancreatic Cancer and the Ketogenic Diet

An August 2024 study by the University of California - San Francisco said,

• “Our findings led us straight to the biology of one of the deadliest cancers, pancreatic cancer,”

• "Our findings open a point of vulnerability that we can treat with a clinical inhibitor that we already know is safe in humans,”

• “We now have firm evidence of one way in which diet might be used alongside pre-existing cancer therapies to precisely eliminate a cancer.”

• "Fasting has been part of various cultural and religious practices for centuries, often believed to promote health,"

• "Our finding that fasting remodels gene expression provides a potential biological explanation for these benefits."

• “The metabolite that the body uses to make energy is also being used as a signal molecule during fasting,”

• “To a biochemist, seeing a metabolite act like a signal was the coolest thing.”

• “Once we could see how the pathway works, we saw the opportunity to intervene,”

• “The field has struggled to firmly link diet with cancer and cancer treatments … But to really connect these things productively, you need to know the mechanism.”

• “We expect most cancers to have other vulnerabilities … This is the foundation for a new way to treat cancer with diet and personalized therapies.”

Ketogenic Diet, Gut Health/Cholesterol Issues

An August 2024 study by the University of Bath said,

• “Despite reducing fat mass, the ketogenic diet increased the levels of unfavourable fats in the blood of our participants, which, if sustained over years, could have long-term health implications such as increased risk of heart disease and stroke.”

•  “Dietary fibre is essential for the survival of beneficial gut bacteria like Bifidobacteria. The ketogenic diet reduced fibre intake to around 15 grams per day, half the NHS recommended intake. This reduction in Bifidobacteria might contribute to significant long-term health consequences such as an increased risk of digestive disorders like irritable bowel disease, increased risk of intestinal infection and a weakened immune function.”

• “The ketogenic diet reduced fasting glucose levels but also reduced the body’s ability to handle carbs from a meal. By measuring proteins in muscle samples taken from participants’ legs, we think this is probably an adaptive response to eating less carbohydrates day-to-day and reflects insulin resistance to storing carbs in muscle. This insulin resistance is not necessarily a bad thing if people are following a ketogenic diet, but if these changes persist when people switch back to a higher carbohydrate diet it could increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the long-term”

• “The ketogenic diet is effective for fat loss, but it comes with varied metabolic and microbiome effects that may not suit everyone. In contrast, sugar restriction supports government guidelines for reducing free sugar intake, promoting fat loss without apparen­­t negative health impacts.”

Low-calorie ketogenic diet, testosterone, overweight men

A May 2021 study by the University of Bari said, 

"We aimed to evaluate the response of total testosterone and sex hormone levels to a very low-calorie ketogenic diet in a cohort of overweight or obese non-diabetic male subjects and what we found was that there is a noticeable relation between a specific, controlled diet and insulin action, energy balance, and testicular function,"