Health Benefits You Can Gain From The Keto Diet
One option to lose weight is to change your diet, like a keto diet. The Atkins diet is a good example of a keto diet. The goal of a keto diet is to decrease carbohydrates, increase fat, and get enough protein in different food sources. With this ketogenic diet, the body can use protein as the primary source of calories, deplete the body from sugar, and lose weight through ketosis or conversion of fat for energy.
But what are the benefits of a keto diet? Is it safe for both children and adults?
In this post, you'll learn the health benefits you can obtain from practicing a keto diet, so you can motivate yourself and make better health decisions.
Speed Up Weight Loss
Generally, the body uses carbohydrates or glucose as energy. However, without so much activity or sedentary lifestyle, or slow metabolism causes carbs to be stored as fat in the body. With decreased carbohydrates, the body utilizes stored fats or fat cells as an energy source due to depleted sugar in your diet. The fat cells are converted to ketones, which is a process referred to as ketosis. Unlike other fad diets, keto diet accelerates weight loss without leaving you hungry.
Here are some tips and tricks to help you attain and maintain your ideal weight with the help of a keto diet:
Educate Yourself: Keep yourself abreast with the right knowledge about the keto diet. Determine the foods that are accepted as ketogenic foods to ensure you stick with this diet for faster weight loss. Research and read reviews of supplements that can also help, such as MCT Wellness reviews. They will help you know which ones to take and which ones to avoid.
Switch: Instead of eating at your favorite fast-food chains fully loaded with high-carb foods, try fast food on the keto diet, serving one hundred percent keto accepted foods.
Exercise: Along with switching your regular diet to a keto diet, it's also important to start getting physically active by exercising regularly.
Ask a Professional: The best person who can help you plan a healthy keto diet is a dietician. Talk to a professional and get expert advice on how you can successfully adopt this diet change to transform your health and life. You can also look at Dr. Berg’s blog to know more about the keto diet and how you can get started.
Improves Cardiovascular Health
Keto diet can help you lose weight, which reduces the cardiovascular risk factors, like obesity, high bad cholesterol levels, and high blood pressure. Also, with weight loss, you increase the production of high-density lipoprotein or HDL, which protects you from developing heart disease.
Any cardiologist will tell you that it's important to eat healthy foods that are healthy for the heart and accepted for a keto diet. Here are some examples:
Fish and Shellfish: These foods are carb-free and are rich in potassium, selenium, and B vitamins, which are good for the heart. Also, sardines, mackerel, salmon, and other fatty fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids, which help reduce insulin levels in obese people for better heart health.
Low Carb Vegetables: They contain antioxidants that can help protect your body against free radicals that cause cell damage. The best vegetables for a keto diet include cruciferous vegetables, such as kale, cauliflower, and broccoli. They are also known to reduce a person's risk of developing cancer and heart disease. You can use low-carb vegetables as substitutes for high-carb foods., such as cauliflower to replace rice or mashed potatoes and spaghetti squash for your typical spaghetti.
Avocado: It is high in fiber, low in carbs, and contains several nutrients, like potassium, which helps improve heart health markers.
Cheese: Any type of cheese is high in fat and very low in carbohydrates, making them suitable for a ketogenic diet. Even if cheese is high in fat, it doesn't increase your risk of heart disease. According to a study, cheese can even help boost your cardiovascular health.
Prevent Cancer
According to a study on cancer and a ketogenic diet, a combination of a keto diet and standard chemotherapeutic and radiotherapeutic treatments may help cancer patients because of improved tumor response.
Here are the good-to-know facts about the said study:
Tumor-bearing mice were placed on a keto diet or low-carbohydrate diet, and they exhibited lower insulin, glucose, and lactic acid levels.
After day four of being in a keto diet, patients who were suffering from head and neck cancers were found to have reduced lactic acid levels in tumor tissues.
Healthy tissue nutrition can delay the growth of tumors and cancer cells are deprived of carbohydrates, their main source of nutrition.
Improves Skin Health
A diet that is high in refined sugar can cause blood glucose fluctuations and alter the digestive bacteria, which greatly affects the skin. Because the keto diet is low in carbs, it can improve skin conditions such as acne and dermatitis. It works by reducing skin inflammation caused by higher ketone levels in the body, thus reducing signs and symptoms like rashes, redness, and itchiness of the skin.
Prevents Seizures
A ketogenic diet can help reduce the number of seizures, most especially among children and adults with epilepsy. It can be used both at any age with detailed monitoring required for infants. The foods are calculated in a keto diet to help reduce seizures with the help of a ketogenic dietitian.
Here's a quick view of dietary treatments for epilepsy:
Modified Atkins diet or MAD: It's also called 'modified ketogenic therapy,' in which carbohydrates are strictly controlled and uses a high proportion of fats. It's a less restrictive type of ketogenic diet, allowing unlimited protein and fat intake, and doesn't restrict fluids or calories for patients with epilepsy.
Low glycaemic index treatment or LGIT: It focuses on the number of carbs consumed and the effects of carbohydrates on blood sugar levels or the glycaemic index. It's a dietary therapy recommended for epilepsy. This diet helps stabilize blood sugar to help control seizures, most especially among children.
Conclusion
Keto diet has a lot of health benefits when it is carried out correctly. It can help reduce a person's risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease. It is also used to reduce epilepsy or seizure attacks. Of course, a keto diet can also help you lose weight and improve skin health.
If you want a healthier body with the weight loss benefits, switching your regular diet to a keto diet is a good idea, most especially if you have a family history of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. You have a lot of keto diet options available to help you comply with a healthy keto diet.