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.”

Ketones and Cognition

In a May 2024 study by the University of Rochester Medical Center said,

• "Once neuronal function is lost, there is no recovering the connection, so we need to identify when the function first becomes impaired,"

• "This study accomplishes that by bringing us closer to understanding how to rescue the function of impaired neurons and prevent or delay devastating diseases like Alzheimer's."”

• “This research has implications for developing ketone-based therapies targeting specific neuronal dysfunctions in conditions involving insulin resistance/hypoglycemia like diabetes or Alzheimer's disease,”

• “We are now looking to understand the role that astrocytes and other glia cells play in acute insulin resistance.”

Ketogenic diet and Cognitive Behaviour, Blood Lipids and Motor Function

An April 2024 study by the University of California and Istinye University said,

• “intermittent ketogenic diet (IKD) or ketogenic diet (KD) intervention did not improve measures of cognitive or motor behavior in TgF344-AD rats; however, both IKD and KD positively impacted circulating lipids.”

• “it remains to be determined whether long-term consumption of a ketogenic diet can mitigate declines in cognitive or motor behavior in a rat model of AD. Therefore, the current study aimed to determine whether a KD improves cognitive or motor behavior in the TgF344-AD rat.”

• “the IKD or KD did not improve motor coordination or spatial learning memory compared to the control diet. However, KD, and to a lesser extent IKD, mitigated elevations in plasma lipids in the TgF344-AD rats. Furthermore, the KD diet decreased plasma levels of total Tau in females.”

ketogenic diet and polycystic kidney disease (PKD)

A December 2023 study by the University of California, Santa Barbara said they were,

• “… really happy about these clinical trial results … We now have the first evidence in humans that the cysts really don’t like to be in ketosis and that they don’t seem to grow.”

•  “If you have PKD, the dogma is that it’s a genetic disease … And no matter what you do, you progress toward kidney failure and diet doesn’t make any difference, which unfortunately most patients are told to this day.”  

•  “To everyone’s great surprise, kidney function actually improved with the ketogenic diet … And that was a hard outcome of statistical significance.” 

•  “Doctors often assume that their patients cannot adhere to a diet anyway, so they don’t even try. Clearly, this is not true. People with PKD are highly motivated to do something about their condition,”  

•  “A keto diet just means very low carbs,”

• “If you make a discovery in animals, but you don’t check it in actual people, you’ll never quite know if it’s going to be meaningful … There’s always going to be the doubt, and people are going to say animal experiments don’t always translate to humans.”

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,"