Science Vs - Ketogenic Diet... Is Fat Good For You?

Episode Date: April 26, 2018

People who love the ketogenic diet swear it boosts their brainpower, melts their fat, and makes them better athletes. Is it true? To find out, we go keto. And, we talk to some scientists: neuroscientist Dom D’Agostino, medical researcher Eric Verdin, and nutritionist Louise Bourke. Also, Wendy’s mum drops in. Check out our full transcript here: http://bit.ly/355sUF7 Selected readings:This history of the ketogenic dietA pretty comprehensive reviewEric’s exploration of keto on the memories of miceLouise’s paper on keto and sports This episode has been produced by senior producer Kaitlyn Sawrey with help from Wendy Zukerman along with Rose Rimler, Shruti Ravindran and Romilla Karnick. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Additional help from Eric Menell and Simone Polanen. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger. Music written by Bobby Lord. Recording help from Marissa Shieh and Mary Shedden. Extra thanks to Professor Jon Ramsey, Professor Judith Wylie-Roset, Professor Clare Collins, Dr Deirdre K Tobias, Joanna Lauder and Frank Lopez. Thanks to Jack Weinstein. And extra special thanks to Joseph Lavelle Wilson and Ingrid Zukerman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet Media. This is the show that pits facts against a lot of fat. On today's show, the ketogenic diet. This is the diet where you have to eat a bunch of fat and almost no carbs. Think the Atkins diet, but on steroids. It's supposed to be good for your mind and your body. And it's huge right now. The ketogenic diet was one of the most Googled diets in the last 12 months.

That's according to Google Trends. And even some scientists are really excited about it. If a drug did everything that the ketogenic diet did, And even some scientists are really excited about it. If a drug did everything that the ketogenic diet did, it would be an enormous blockbuster drug worth billions of dollars. That's Dom D'Agostino at the University of South Florida. And he didn't start out researching diets. No, he is a neuroscientist, a brain man.

But when he started reading about this weird ketogenic diet, he just got so intrigued. He had to try it. And he says that after a couple of weeks... I could go throughout the whole day with a lot of energy and I could go to work, forget about eating, and bang out a whole day of work. And even though he was eating so much fat, Dunn says he actually started losing fat on his body.

And then, even more than that, on this diet, he said that he could concentrate more and focus on his research at the university. I almost owe my career in some ways, you know. I don't want to make this sound like a stretch of the imagination, but I'm not sure that I would be able to achieve the productivity that I achieved to be able to get tenure because I pushed myself in ways I never thought I would be able to push myself. And if you go online, this is something a lot of people say, that their brains just seemed to work better on the ketogenic diet. They had more energy, more clarity and more focus. And that made us at Science Versus really curious, especially me and our senior producer, Caitlin

Sori. I would love that. Yeah. I'm incredibly unfocused. I'm like a tiny puppy. It's like, well, what's this over here? Because that is the promise that is, like the idea that who we are now is just one version of ourselves. And when we go on this diet, we'll be on this new and improved version of ourselves. Blythe Turrell, our editor at Science Versus, is going on this diet with us. And she was not as excited as we were. It sounds like nonsense to me. Yeah, I just want to be really super honest with you guys. I'm a skeptic. And maybe I'll be wrong. Maybe I'll, you know, maybe I'll be like, oh my gosh, I've been operating at 50% my whole life and now I am running gimlet.

The truth is, though, once we realized exactly what this diet entailed, none of us were particularly excited. Caitlin gave us the rundown. Most Westerners eat about 50% of their calories from carbs. We need to get that down to 5%. So no croissants, no pasta, no cake. And because carbohydrates include sugars, you can't really eat much fruit. You end up counting cherry tomatoes.

And if that weren't bad enough, you don't even get to have beer. It's depressing. So with all of this stuff that you can't have, how do you up your fat game? Am I just having sticks of butter? Cheese, avocado, nuts, eggs. You can make like an omelette, put some mushrooms on top of that. What about like rye bread? No, that's carbs. Bagel. Carbs. None of that stuff. All right, like fettuccine, but with like a little bit of olive oil. Bagel. Carbs. None of that stuff. All right, all right. Like fettuccine. But with like a little bit of olive oil.

Absolutely not. You can have the olive oil. That's it. I feel like it would be so easy for this to go horribly, horribly awry. Did someone say wry? No, no one said wry. Instead of beautiful fresh bread, I'm going to be eating slices of cheese with Vegemite for brekkie, fistfuls of almonds for second brekkie, butter in my coffee for third brekkie,

and for the rest of the time, salmon with heaps of olive oil. On today's show, we're going to find out if by gorging on all this fatty stuff, we can become brighter and better versions of ourselves. And we'll do that by answering the following questions. One, can going on a ketogenic diet improve your brain? And two, what can this diet do for your body? Can eating all this fat help you lose weight? When it comes to diets, there's a lot of stuff that sounds like nonsense. But then there's science. Science versus the ketogenic diet is coming up just after the break.

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Welcome back. So there are claims out there that the ketogenic diet can make you a smarter, healthier human. And we were pretty intrigued. But it turned out that eating practically no carbs and a ton of fat was pretty tough. Turns out heaps of things have cheeky carbs in them. Yogurt, chickpeas. We didn't even eat carrots. Okay, so it's day one of my attempt at the ketogenic diet. And how did I do?

I did bad. Terribly. There was one solitary Oreo in my house and it was just like winking at me for hours. So I gave in and ate it. Okay, it's day two attempt at the ketogenic diet. It's 5pm and I have one gram of carbohydrates that I'm allowed to eat today. And there is nothing in this house that I can eat

and I'm hungry. We've got olive oil. Like, I can eat a teaspoon of olive oil. Oh, Jesus Christ, that's not... Oh! OK, but the reason we are going to stick with this is because while a lot of diets promise big things, what's different about the ketogenic diet is that it didn't start at a brand meeting at Goop. No, Gwyneth, she didn't start this trend.

Senior producer Caitlin, sorry. Although, according to the gossip mags, she has, of course, tried it out. Okay, so if this trend didn't start at the University of Goop, where did the ketogenic diet come from? Katie has gone down the rabbit hole on this one. Yeah, and actually the ketogenic diet was started by scientists. They came up with it in the 1920s. And this is kind of surprising, but it was created to treat children with epilepsy.

Like this was in the days before there was medication for seizures. And that's how our neuroscientist, Dom D'Agostino, first got interested in the ketogenic diet. He was studying seizures when he stumbled upon it. And I was shocked to actually see that the ketogenic diet was actually used for epilepsy. It's so counterintuitive. What were you thinking?

Like, what, a diet is stopping people having seizures? Well, I didn't believe it at first, and I pulled every article I could find about the ketogenic diet, and I spent two weeks just immersed in reading this research and realized that it was actually real. Dom says we're not entirely sure how a diet might stop seizures, but we have some clues. And it all has to do with this kind of cool thing that the ketogenic diet can do to your brain.

When you cut off your body's supply of carbs and glucose, OK, sugar, your body thinks that it's starving. It's like, hey, where'd all that sweet sugar go to? So it decides, that's cool, I'll just live off the fat I've been putting on your bum for a rainy day. Now, your brain can't directly use that fat as energy, so instead the fat heads to the liver and gets turned into this thing called ketones.

And your brain happily slurps up those ketones. Mmm. So, when you go on the ketogenic diet, the idea is that your brain will use ketones as fuel instead of glucose. And the fact that your brain can do this really surprised Dom. I was basically thought the brain could only use glucose for fuel, so this was completely new to me. Running your brain on ketones rather than glucose I was basically thought the brain could only use glucose for fuel. So this was completely new to me.

Running your brain on ketones rather than glucose could be the reason that some people stop having seizures on this diet. And we don't know exactly why this is, but one theory is that the ketones might change the way your nerves communicate with each other. Another idea is that it could be the way our brains handle glucose that can give people seizures. So when your brain switches to ketones, it can help. And we know it's kind of crazy that cutting out carbs and eating a bunch of fat could change the brains of people with

epilepsy for the better. And it got some people wondering, could this diet change everyone's brain for the better? And wherever there is the promise of improving people's brains, there are Silicon Valley disruptors and think fluences keen to optimize their minds. It seems like every VC I know is experimenting with ketogenic diets. The biggest benefit is cognitive, like I'm more awake. Ketones for ageing, mood and cognition, the list goes on and on. But is everyone this hyped about keto? Mm, no. This is a whole other world from the world I live in.

That's Eric Verden. He's the president and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Ageing in California. world I live in. That's Eric Verdon. He's the president and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in California. And the world he lives in is a world of lab mice, not biohackers. But he's still super curious about what this diet can do. And particularly, Eric wanted to know, could the ketogenic diet improve the memory of his little mice? So Eric took a bunch of mice and put them on the ketogenic diet, and then he took another group of mice and put them on a regular diet. Exactly.

And the regular diet is sort of more mimicking what humans would eat. Lots of pasta. Exactly. Exactly. Then Eric and his team ran a barrage of memory tests on these little mice, like getting them to recite all the lyrics to One Week by the Barenaked Ladies. No, they weren't that cruel. Instead, they put them in a container where if they stand in a particular spot,

they get a little electric shock. And eventually the mouse learns, hey, you shouldn't stand there. And then come back after one week or after two weeks or after three weeks or four weeks. And this is a way to measure their memory. And overall, who did better, the mice on the ketogenic diet or the regular diet? And what we find is that basically the mice on a ketogenic diet actually had a much better memory. And Eric's team isn't the only ones to have found this kind of thing.

Other researchers have found similar results in mice and rats too, making it less likely that this is just a fluke. Was there a party in the lab when you finally finished? Yes, there's champagne and a party, absolutely. But let's keep this in perspective. Mouse brains are not the same as human brains. You know, have there been trials you've seen in mice that were like really exciting in animal studies, but then when you tried to do it in humans, it just didn't work?

Many, many, many. Yes, I have some colleagues in the field of diabetes saying that, you know, they have cured type 1 diabetes in mice dozens of times, but we still don't have a cure in humans. But who cares what a mouse remembers? We wanted to know if this works in humans. So we asked Eric. So when we think about the benefits of the ketogenic diet in humans, are there any good studies to show that it can increase our memory? No. No. There are lots of sort of anecdotal studies. I don't mean to be putting them down, but none of them on a scale large enough to really prove this beneficial effect in humans. Conclusion. Despite the chatter online about

the ketogenic diet boosting the brains of healthy people, we just don't have the science to say this happens. All we really have are a handful of studies in lab animals. And with such little evidence around, you'd think a scientist like Eric would really downplay the idea that the ketogenic diet can boost the human mind. But while he was researching it, he actually started doing the diet and he stuck with it for more than a year. And just like our neuroscientist Dom, Eric also says he felt different on the diet. I felt really good. It's hard to describe if you haven't been on it. People talk about this idea of feeling like really clear-headed, having all this energy.

Did that happen to you? Yes, absolutely. Yes, it's pretty profound. Profound. So how did we go? After a couple of weeks on keto, no bread, no fruit, no beer, we sat down to talk about what was happening. Did our brains feel any different?

Here's our editor, Blythe. If you guys remember, I was seriously, I was super skeptical. I thought this whole thing was basically like pretty dumb. But I have this thing where every afternoon at like three o'clock, I'm like, okay, got to get through the rest of the day.

Like got to power through. I get like the three o'clock sleepies and you know, whatever. That disappeared completely. I swear. I feel like ridiculous even saying that, but I did not get sleepy

in the middle of the afternoon. I could just like keep going. I was like, okay, great. I have ideas about this. Okay, let's have another meeting about this. Okay, I'll stay until seven and work on this other thing.

So your brain on keto was better. My brain on keto actually felt better in a way that, like, absolutely shocked me. Wow. Yeah. Katie, how was your experience? I didn't feel that. It's like, I'll have what she's having. Exactly.

Oh, and by the way, we know our little experiment isn't science. And we know that because my mum told me. Seriously, she did. She's a scientist. And mum, she wasn't a fan of our study design. It's a sample of one. The whole team, the team's doing it. So it's a sample of three.

Wow. Science versus team is going to do a whole new experiment on three people. They might as well drop the clinical trials. Sick bird, mum. Appreciate the support. After the break, despite mum's heckling, we keep struggling through the ketogenic diet to see if eating bucket loads of fat can actually help us lose weight. Yeah, can the ketogenic diet melt fat off your body? Welcome back.

So we're still on the ketogenic diet. Blythe's powering through her 3pm sleepies and is noticing that her brain seems sharper than normal. So far, I haven't noticed anything. Same old Wendy. I didn't notice anything either. Same old puppy dog brain. What's that?

What? That's Caitlin Sorey, our senior producer. But some people on keto aren't trying to hack their brains. They want to change their bodies and lose weight. And this seems to be one of the biggest reasons for going keto. And when you think about it, it's quite counterintuitive. How can you shed fat by eating more fat? To find out, we called up Louise Burke, a nutritionist at the Australian Institute of Sport, and she's spent her career telling people

what to eat, which is a pretty tough job. We seem to have this fallibility as humans that we've just got to find ways of putting garbage calories in our mouths. Because it's so tasty, Louise. I know, but this is the problem. So could the ketogenic diet be a solution, something that stops us putting garbage in our mouths? Louise says yes. Look, some people have had some success using it to lose weight, so that's good. And there are studies showing that people can lose a lot of weight on keto, sometimes more than 10 kilos or 22 pounds in a year.

I mean, that was on the upper end, but still impressive. And how does this diet help you lose weight? Well, there's a bit of a debate going on. One idea is that the ketogenic diet actually tweaks your body's metabolism. And this claim that keto is doing something kind of special is supported by the fact that this diet is a little better than other diets. So say compared to a low-fat diet, over the year, people on keto tend to lose a couple more pounds.

But Louise says if you're losing weight on this diet, it could be for a really simple reason. When you cut out all your favourite foods, you can't treat yourself the way you normally would. So you're just eating less. The way that most people lose weight is that they eat fewer calories by restricting the number and range of foods that they can eat. And whether it's an Israeli army diet that says you can only eat apples on one day and cheese on another day, et cetera, or whether it's a paleo or a keto, once you start reducing the range of foods that people eat, that diet will lead to weight loss. So if I was feeling a bit snacky and I couldn't reach for an apple or a cookie,

I just didn't reach for anything. And so I lost a little bit of weight, we all did. But the bigger point is that if you're cutting calories with keto, without keto, you're probably going to lose weight. Conclusion, you might lose some weight on the ketogenic diet, but compared to other diets, you probably won't lose that much more. Okay, but just quickly, there are corners of the internet where people don't talk about their brains or the size of their tummies. They're more interested in brawn. And when you go on the ketogenic diet,

it can actually change your muscles, making them better at running on fat. So people have wondered, will these revamped muscles make them better at sports? Let them run faster, be stronger or more powerful. And for Louise, knowing if the ketogenic diet can do this is her bread and butter. Did someone say bread? Settle down, Wendy. Louise is actually the head of sports nutrition at the Australian Institute of Sport. So she's telling athletes what to eat in order to win gold. And right now she's working with some of the best athletes in the world,

a real group of stars. You know them, I know them, champion race walkers. It's a weird sport though, isn't it? I mean, away from your study, it's a weird sport. I thought it was weird until I started working with racewalkers because it's like trying to have a competition to see who can whisper the loudest. Yes, jokes aside, elite racewalkers are a thing. It's an endurance sport. Some of these races go for about 60 miles or 100 k's.

To find out if the ketogenic diet can give them their extra edge, Louise got more than 20 elite race walkers and for several weeks she put some of them on a strict ketogenic diet while others got to eat carbs. And so, did they crush their opponents? Ketogenic diet turned out to be a disaster for the performance of these athletes. One of the things they said was, look, it's the closest thing to death you'll ever get without

being dead. Being on the diet made it harder for them to race walk. So what's going on? Why are they performing so badly? Here's what Louise found. When you're exercising, your muscles use lots of oxygen and burning fat uses up more oxygen than burning carbs. So ultimately, the carb athletes have an advantage. Basically, they had more oxygen in their tank. It's only about a 5% difference, but a 5% difference is really important for an athlete who's working at their limits. And in elite sport, I imagine that 5% is, you know, could be the difference between gold and silver. Yes, it is. It's a huge difference. Now, this was just a small study in racewalkers. And the truth is, there's just not that much research around here. We found a few small studies in CrossFit, cycling and gymnastics.

And for the most part, people don't do any better performance-wise on this diet. And when Louise reviewed the evidence recently, she wrote that the idea that these diets are helping athletes is based on anecdotes rather than, quote, a strong evidence base, end quote. So Louise, who is a marathon runner in her spare time, she's just never really gotten into keto. Look, I've tried it for a couple of days, but unfortunately, I'm an athlete who has very little patience for feeling bad. And so it just seemed a lot of

pain to go through. And I just didn't have the patience. And it's not just impatience that might stop you from doing the diet. This is a pretty radical diet. So are there any risks here? Well, there are a few side effects here. Like people on the diet are more likely to have constipation and suffer from kidney stones. And beyond making it hard to do a poo,

is all this fat bad for your heart and your arteries? From the very few studies we have that have tracked people over a couple of years, it doesn't seem to increase their risk of getting a heart attack. But again, just a few studies. And we did find that in some people, this diet can mess around with the fat in their blood. For now, though, we don't know what this might mean in the long term. So, when it comes to science versus the ketogenic diet, does it stack up?

One, does it boost your brain? Well, there is evidence that it can help people with epilepsy, but there's not a lot of evidence that it can help the rest of us. Two, can it help you lose weight? Yes, the ketogenic diet can help you shed pounds, probably by restricting the amount of calories you're eating. And three, finally, will it turn you into a superstar race walker? No. So from what we can tell, this diet doesn't quite live up to the hype. But Dom D'Agostino, remember him, the neuroscientist from Florida? If a drug did everything that the ketogenic diet did,

it would be an enormous blockbuster drug worth billions of dollars. He's still really excited about this diet. And in fact, he's become a kind of ambassador for it. I've done over 100 podcasts, actually. In your kind of excitement for this diet and the fact that it's been really beneficial to you, Do you think at times you might sort of have almost oversold the benefits just because a lot of the research is just in rats and mice, and it really might not pan out in humans? Well, I absolutely oversell the research just because I'm biased, right? I try to have a healthy degree of skepticism for everything I do, and I'm a data-driven person.

But at the same time, the diet works great for me. It tends to work great with the people that I surround myself with because they're all about it. And the data that we've collected, at least in animal models, is very, very encouraging to me. So, I'm sticking with it. But six weeks later, how were we feeling? Caitlin, sorry, are you still on the ketogenic diet? Hell no. Wendy, are you on the diet?

Hell no. Blythe Terrell, are you still on the diet? I am still on the diet. You guys, I know. Wow. Yeah, yeah. I am as surprised as you are. Really?

Why are you still on the diet? Okay. So I really did start to feel better. And then I like, I just wanted that feeling back. I was like, I can't, I can't get enough. I want this like clarity. And I was like, if I go back, what if everything changes? And I was kind of afraid to go off of it.

But you have kind of kept this under wraps. Yeah. So I'm a little embarrassed about still being on keto because it feels dumb to stick with something where I'm like, there's no reliable evidence. And even if it is my experience, I have a hard time trusting it. What if it's fake? What if it's all in my head? And it just, like, has sort of turned my world upside down. That's why I haven't told you guys.

I, for one, really like my brain on carbs. So I don't feel bad about quitting keto. Let's get some beers. Yes. Let's, boys, let's crack open a cold one. Oh. Oh, that sound. Oh, that bloody tastes great.

I can already feel that beer clarity kicking in. That's Science versus the ketogenic diet. This episode has been produced by our senior producer, Caitlin Sori. With help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, along with Rose Rimler, Shruti Ravindran and Ramila Karnik. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Additional help from Eric Mennell and Simone Polonen. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger. Music written by Bobby Lord. Recording help from Marissa Shia and Mary Shedden. An extra thanks to Professor John Ramsey, Professor Judith Wiley-Roset, Professor Claire Collins, Dr. Deidre K. Tobias,

Joanna Lauder and Frank Lopez. Thanks to Jack Weinstein and an extra special thanks to Joseph LaBelle Wilson and my mum. Thanks, Wawa. Next week, we're spending a year in space with astronaut and world-famous twin Scott Kelly. When the solid rocket motors light, seven million pounds of thrust absolutely gets your attention. What's firing up your ass? It's 7 million.

Wait, did you say firing up your ass? Yes. Are you allowed to say that? I guess you can say anything you want on a podcast. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.