Richelle Sepúlveda- Is Keto for everyone? - (Ancestral Health Today Episode 036)

welcome to ancestral Health today evolutionary insights into Modern Health welcome everyone to today's episode of the ancestra health Today podcast and today we have with us relle saula thank you relle for being here and welcome to the podcast well thank you Isabelle for welcoming in me and um uh so just a little bit about myself um my name is relle suula I've been teaching psychology uh for almost 12 years now thinking about the number of it and I'm also a person with chronic health issues that I have been addressing with the variety of means including um diet changes but like the keto diet wonderful so um tell us a little bit about uh what G you interested in the keto diet well as my health issues had continued I figured I knew it was some aspect of um energy production issues um given on so like science background and things too so I was um kind of trying to figure out what would be a best way to address it I wanted to try something with diet rather than any other intervention to start off with and um so I've always been somebody who's not gravitated towards anything that would count into a fad diet so I was like what foods would actually help with mitochondrial respiration and help with that and I looked at it and the first thing I did was saw was keto and I was like keto because it's always had such a aura about it about how it had a tendency to be picked up by um certain groups that were very very passionate about it but were not always ones in which I I follow the trends that they would do um but so I looked into it I wanted to find out more about it and um it also it it did significantly helped me um within I figured I'd give myself a month and see how I would do on it and within a week I saw significant improvements for myself um and that's been up and down over the years since then um but it was just been a uh a really interesting change on how much just that particular diet intervention helped and plus also it really spurred me into looking into what is a little bit of the science behind it and why um why that diet might help and it also it it helps other things besides just the energy production that you might think of there's some other things that could also be um relevant when you're moving into a more restrictive diet like like a ketogenic diet so what are some of the science um uh findings um that you came across when you were researching uh so some of the science findings well first to look at what um was trying to find out what exactly is does keto do um when it comes to how you would actually produce energy from it and how that would be different than more of a glucose based diet or carbohydrate based diet and why it was such a significant difference and one of the first things I ran across was um this uh website that was called the Charlie Foundation um and it was in regards to like reduplicating some of the efforts of the early uses of the ketogenic diet were actually developed in the 1920s um for treating children with um epilepsy um and the energy production from the ketones themselves um were actually was much higher more ATP produced on not uh then compared to say uh glucose um and that helped with uh seizures and that with epilepsy and that was kind of kind of started me looking into that process wondering about how much of say my cognitive issues and other like physical slowing was due to just that did not being able to produce energy from more of the glucose carbon based diet um and so yeah the keto the ketogenic diet actually has a long Science History with it it was kind of just rejuvenated um in the early or late 80s early 90s um and uh in response to somebody trying to find um treat meant for his child with a uh medication resistant EP epilepsy and he found how much uh keto helped and he wanted to spread the word and he created this nonprofit in the name of the son so the Charlie Foundation to help people as much as possible to get the word out that this is this is a useful diet um now a lot of people have heard of the Atkins diet which does have some aspect of ketogenic process in it um but uh just trying to get into the science of it again it has to do with being able to produce higher volume of energy like the transfer trying to remember the exact ratio but it's a significantly higher number of ATP produced for the mitochondria uh from ketones versus glucose and so with that even if you're not able to use the energy efficiently um if you are you producing more possible ATP that gives you more possible energy to tap into which is one reason why I can help so much with chronic health issues because you can have some of this extra energy uh that's a little bit more of a surplus compared to more on a carb based Direction so um yeah there's so it's there's a lot of really fun things when you get into it but then there's also like breakdowns in the system that even there's at different times with different types of uh viral infection you can actually shut down the ability to generate ketones in your liver um and exogenous ketones are about the only way then at that point to be able to maintain um that the Q Jack state so what are what were some of the changes that you saw in your own health and how has that uh varied throughout the years so originally for to start off with I went from being very lethargic low energy uh lower lower mood um slower cognitive process uh I went from that particular state to within a week I was uh because I was a bit worried to start off with because with the lower energy production that I had I wasn't able to do like meal prep and not so I knew that that would be a concern to start off with because a lot of the issue with the keto diet in order to make sure you maintain the appropriate nutrient balance um you don't do this thing that's called Dirty keto um dirty keto is kind of moving towards the really that the easy to get keto foods which are not necessarily always going to um be otherwise um as close to the whole source as possible so you know more like things like cured cured meats and various things more saturated fat and that um and it's easier um but it doesn't necessarily give you all the same benefits um because you do need to make sure you're still getting a wide variety of nutrients which is harder to do and I was concerned about that myself to start off with because being able to do food prep had been something that I was been struggling with with my lower energy um and so in that first week I was wondering how I was going to do this i' kind of tried to plan out a few Foods so that way I could even if I was eating the same food every day at least be something I could continuously use um but um by the end of that first week I was making whole meals because I had the time and the energy and the the extra to spare to plan meals to prep foods to create something more elaborate I started making desserts again that I could have you know it was just just a just a switch right away um and in doing that I actually ended up having more variety in my diet because before that I was in such a low energy State there wasn't a lot of variety in my Foods because I was going for something that I could have just in that moment because I was too tired prep um so that was a significant difference but then also another big difference with it is I also have um mcast Mass Cell Activation Syndrome which uh I mean I had known about it some at the time and I thought I had it controlled to an extent but then when I went into the much more restrictive diet of the ketogenic diet I discovered that there was a lot of foods that I didn't realize I was reacting to until they were no longer part of my diet um and with that I ended up with a a big Improvement on aspects of my gut health things moving a lot more efficiently without you know in a more appropriate manner um my um skin um cleared up um like again my cognitive function greatly improved um actually anxiety and depression dropped dramatically at that point I was actually able to sleep through the night um and I just was just again had more energy to do just about everything I mean I could you know just handle like just day-to-day life without near as much um fatigue at the end and I could sleep in a more nice nice solid night of sleep which if you've dealt was chronic uless at all that's almost one of the always the the constant problems is that um not being able to sleep well which is one of those it was just it it's one of those amazing things to finally be able to sleep and wake up feeling rested um that was that was just uh probably one of the biggest moments is to be able to wake up in the morning feeling refreshed um which I hadn't had that for years so that was that was like an amazing feeling for it so so how long ago was this how long ago did you start um theogenic diet so I started a a little over four years ago uh or like or right about actually right about four years ago um approxim little right around that um so I've been doing that um for quite some time I haven't been perfectly within keto that entire time I've kind in and out of it uh that first year was pretty strict um and then the second year I went ahead and was trying to reintroduce different types of carbs or more starchy foods that I'd had in the past with limited success here and there and then each time I'd feel like a downturn and energy and that I would cut those back out and then kind of you know go back harder into keto um and then um two years ago I ended up getting uh sick again and due to like had another uh uh Co infection and I ended up um after that I started struggling to um initiate ketogenesis again and I kept I couldn't develop ketones unless I had something exogenous um I could wasn't actually able to access any of my own body Stores um I guess that's one thing I hadn't mentioned already that when I first started the keto diet I actually started to drop weight U first it was water weight and then I ended up on reducing excess weight um but uh after I had that second infection I ended up increasing weight again and I just could not generate ketones I mean the numbers before had been great i' been had an easy time with it and after that I just struggled to be able to do it at all and then that's when I found a few different possible reasons for that some of it had to do with some other medications I was taking may have interfered um but then also a big part of it had to do with the fact that um Posta some viral infections can in CO's notorious for this is to actually interfere with your ability to generate ketones in the liver um so after I could do like a 48 Hour full what water fast and I could start to get into get myself back into ketogenesis but if I ended up breaking that at all and having anything that would knock me out um I would be uh struggling to generate ketones again no matter how restrict of my diet was unless I did a fast again um so that was uh that's so that's become actually a lot more difficult to maintain um ketogenesis since then to stay in that state just because of the the difficulties post infection so I can still do it um and even if I'm not saying in full ketosis I'm still benefiting I could see a difference when if I um compared to if I'm taking in more carbs just staying in the lower carb range even if I'm not generating ketones I'm still seeing be benefit uh but it's not quite the same energy bump that I had in the past but uh but that's been fluctuating at various times when aspects of my health have improved keto then Kims right back and I'm making like full amounts of ketones again which is great and I have all those extra energy um and so it's now part of like a way I can measure where my health is doing based on the number of ketones I'm able to generate that's fascinating now do you um use it cyclically or do you go to it as a rescue or do you go into it you know when you're feeling better and you know that you'll be able to generate those ketos um in general um I'm not really rigid on the you know watching every portion and watching everything in general I tried to CH plan most everything um as a as trying to stay in keto but with some aspects of just you know letting a few things slide here and there and oh I had a cookie you know kind of thing and then if I do catch myself in a bit of a house downturn I kind of crank it back down and make sure that I'm not cheating um but uh in general I try to stay in that direction for the most part so it's uh that's kind of if it's mostly then if I've had like success of like a week or two of definitely feeling that slowdown again um I will just make sure that I'm I might do a fast and then make sure I'm staying rigidly uh adhering to more what I need to for keto and making sure my fat intake is high enough because that's usually actually one of my markers that I'm not doing as well if I'm not generating enough is I'm not um ingesting enough fat uh which if you've never tried a keto diet and then you decide to do it um yeah that's one of those things you don't realize how much fat you actually have to take in and some of the um benefit the things you can take in order to help with that um like uh coconut uh or um coconut oil or MCT oil it's based in coconut um uh that's one of those foods that I can't have due to my mcast and so that takes that as a um it's not fair uh Coconut's delicious and I can't have it um but uh it it is it is definitely um something can help a lot of people the the the coconut oil can help because it's one of the easiest ones to generate some of those exogenous ketones a little bit or it's a it's a quick way to do it um but I can't do that so I have to just really watch like just everything else is just just huge amounts of fat I've actually taken like little shot glasses and filled them up with oil sometimes and just knock that back um because that's about the only way to get to the volume that I would need um because a lot of times when my health down it goes in a downturn I also lose a lot of appetite and so it's really hard to actually make myself um eat enough especially with enough fat in it and so I'll be like you know what I'm just going to take a shot of oil some olive oil here we go this will help at least some uh so that can help but uh yeah it's a yeah and olive oil is delicious in a shot if anybody hasn't tried it that's definitely one thing but it has to be good olive oil because um you know you can definitely taste the difference for sure yeah did you know all olive oil is absolutely delicious on ice cream no but I've had it in coffee um so I can only imagine that it is delicious and ice cream you just drizzit over the top and it makes this nice little like almost like a candish kind of like crust on it it's so it's pretty good yeah that sounds amazing I will have to try it for sure so there's a lot of emerging information in regards to keto diets for mental health and you mentioned that one of the benefits that you saw in the beginning was uh a decrease in depression and anxiety so what are your thoughts on this research and where do you think that's leading us uh so I think part of where that might be the part of the uh part of the benefit I had with that had to do not necessarily just with the keto but also being able to restrict the foods that I didn't realize I was having reactions to um and those were also then contributing to the anxiety and depression symptoms um but also um like depression especially is um kind of correlated with aspects of neural inflammation um and not having enough energy to kind of block it but do to just the immune system being able to be activated properly or Hy metabolism in areas of the brain it helps quite a bit to have just extra ketones or extra energy available and that can help kind of like bump out of that to an extent um that requires uh to actually have uh being able to you're constantly having to suppress those thoughts you don't realize how much you're suppressing negative and unpleasant thoughts all the time um until you're in a lower energy State and then those start to pop up regularly um and that's one of those when you have um more energy to filter those out you'll catch your mood just does a significant Improvement um so that so that's part of it uh part of it is again the the huge amount I I almost think that almost any type of restrictive diet at least temporarily the Lor I think a lot of people wouldn't they're on different fad diets that really restrict a whole group of foods and they do amazing on it I really think a lot of those times it has to do with the particular Foods the P that were the person was eating may have been something that they were reacting to be it V mcast or causing other aspects of inflammation in the gut or however and that is actually contributing to aspects of the of mental illness um but as far as like keto just having the extra energy available makes a huge difference uh we do know it helps with epilepsy there's actually quite a bit of research out there with it on epilepsy but that also then overlaps a lot with other um like neurod Divergent conditions um so including things like ADHD autism um and that there a lot of those have to do with the ability to have the energy to control your um the sensitivities that you're experiencing with the world um because people who are neurodivergent just have more of this coming at them and so you need to have more energy in order to be able to filter these out um and so a ketogenic diet can help quite a bit with that plus with things like autism there's actually a lot of overlap with um um epilepsy and seure disorders with autism as well I've seen some research a bit on things like bipolar disorder can also do fairly well on um with aspects of a keto diet uh but it's not perfect for everybody there's going to be some people in which it's just not going to work as well but um a huge part of it is just making sure there's a full amount of energy to the variety of areas of the brain that are just needing this extra bit that you don't realize how much some areas of your brain have kind of gone into a power saving mode just because there's other critical systems that need it first and so when you have the extra energy it can help with so many aspects of cognition and focus um which again can help with anxiety depression but it can also help with just being able to um manage daily tasks and plan out what you need to do which then helps lower your overall stress load because you have these things anticipated um and it so there's a lot of benefits with it that may be like secondary it may not be the keto itself but the resulting effects Downstream from it so it's hard does necessarily always pinpoint it but that's there's again works for a lot of people but not not everybody so yeah can you elaborate a little bit more onto that brain energy because I can um I can picture maybe some people with ADHD in particularly right where uh or ad yeah ADHD in particular where people are perceived as having hyper being in a hyper energetic State um right to the the fidgeting the needing to move a lot and so forth and so on so to some people it might sound like oh I don't have an energy deficiency I have too much energy so can you speak to that a little bit sure so um the first thing I would use on that one is an example on where you might see that um easiest one to is on toddlers so when you've got a tired toddler they start bouncing off the walls because they can't they don't have the energy to settle down focus and do what they need to uh because it requires again a lot of this brain control you don't really it's kind of like I would say as far as the energy that you're using say like an ADHD where you need this extra energy it'd be similar to being say in a meeting and your boss has got this some sort of idea or says something and say you've got it's like you consider the think of this really inappropriate joke that would go along with it that should not be used in this boardroom and you just have to bite your tongue with it that requires a huge amount of energy to do that um and if you're if you don't have enough energy on that you might end up especially you have something like ADHD it comes out you're constantly holding back a huge amount in order to socialize with people be able to focus in the world actually a huge amount of our personalities are based on what we restrain not what we produce um because it has to you also have to consider things about like how your words are going to be impacting people that requires this thought process where you've got to think it out how the consequences of it and then plan on how to maybe adjust your wording to adjust the consequences um and that all is a path that each one of those places requires energy to hold back um and if you are lower on energy then you those may just you may just break right through those and just blurt out whatever it is is and then tell somebody that yeah you do look horrible in that dress and when they'd be just like oh my God why would you say it that way and you're like I am so sorry I didn't mean it that way um but if you have the it's you might notice this when you're sick and you have a t you it's kind of you've ever seen nurses talk about the person that is the one that that you have to worry about the most is that that a nice little grandma that's super sweet to everybody and then when she's a little bit frustrated or in pain that kind of thing and the nurses are deal only ones there with her then she lets it out she's the one that's going to hit them you know kind of thing because she's restraining it constantly because that's who she is and then when you're sick you just don't have the energy for that um and that's very again when we're talking about something like with ADHD you're constantly having to have an extra effort to hold these things back because it is not as um intuitive or instinctual as it is for somebody who isn't neurode Divergent and so somebody else may be able to just be like oh I I would just I wouldn't redo that I wouldn't be I'd be able to stop myself with no problem that should be that's easy have to think about it with somebody with ADHD they have to think about it constantly um just to keep themselves from say um twitching or moving weird in front of somebody um that they they have to be thinking about the impact of that movement on the person in front of them which then changes again all this extra effort that they're doing and just having some extra a little bit of extra energy can go a long way which is one reason why most ad8 HD medications are some version of a stimulant um because they do actually help wake up more or less um that part of the brain I've kind of used this in an instruction thing in the past about how um just imagine you have a club um your left bar club that kind of thing and there's a bouncer at the door and he's supposed to be watching who's coming into the club to make sure you stay under the fire limits to make sure you have a right ratio to people or this person looks like they may be like prone to fights you know kind of keeping track of all that kind of thing inside the club well what if that bouncer falls asleep and everybody just comes in um then it gets all chaos in there then there's a fire and there's an emergency and there's a run on the bar and then people are in fights and all that um and so the stimulant medication for ADHD is like giving that bouncer cup of coffee it replace him being well rested but it gets you there to cross that line to be able to do what you need to do and it's kind of similar when being able to produce enough energy from CU Genesis just just be able to have just a little bit of extra energy um in order to be able to help with all of these actually energy cognitively heavy energy tasks your brain uses a lot of energy the a huge chunk of the energy you consume every day goes to fueling your brain and if you're a little bit short on that um then your brain's going to do the most the base Survival Systems and it's kind of just hopes that you don't go too far in the other direction and don't crash or don't say something that's you're going to regret dramatically later um but uh that's not a good way to run every day if you can avoid it so you get have some extra energy that helps a lot do you think there are people where the ketogenic diet is not advisable or uh potential for um you know not just not deriving the benefit but actually being uh detrimental yes there is actually a huge chunk of people um that it just doesn't work as well for for uh for uh first if you have any tendency towards an eating disorder if you run eating disorders in your the whole process of ketogenesis where you have to stay within a perfect amount of fat to carbs ratio make sure you have the rate protein so keeping these numbers perfect and then also trying to stay in ketogenesis because if you get knocked out of it then it stops having the benefits um that can really trigger a lot of the Perfection issues that come um with uh with an eating disorder so if you have OCD or anxiety in your family it ends up being one of those things you want to be very careful about or if you've had any history of an eating disorder this actually could be be this can really at times trigger an eating disorder for people who um didn't necessarily notice they've had it before so if you catch yourself in these over regimented um style eating Pathways this may not be a good one for you because that can get into a whole host of unhealthy directions also people with type 1 diabetes uh it's usually not recommended for that doesn't mean that they can't um but they have to be very very careful because in um diabetes if you are type one or type two um if you're you can get into this this thing called keto acidosis uh where you're actually generate you're not using glucose and your body's just using ketones but it doesn't such a huge amount um that you actually uh develop more uh it gets very damaging you generate way too many ketones um for what you would need and you have a high level of glucose at the same time and that can be U that that can that that's actually one of the leading causes of like what type the deaths of type 1 diabetes in history um before we had insulin replacement so um would be moving into that so that that's definitely something to watch for um if you do have diabetes it's one of those things you wouldn't want to keep this secret from your doctor in the slightest you'd want to make sure they were a partner with you on it because it is such a critical thing to watch for um both with type 1 and type two diabetes have that risk for it it's much higher risk with type one but type two diabetes can have that as well um there's also a couple other health disorders um in which uh if you do have a tendency towards gallstones um the higher fact content with the keto diet especially if it does start triggering a larger volume of weight loss can trigger um aspects of gallstone issues um plus also depending on how you do on the different types of fats um if some I mean if you've had your gallbladder removed um you can do the keto diet but it especially if it's been recent it becomes more difficult um because you may not have be producing enough bile acid to really be able to um digest the fats properly and you could have some a significant gastric upset and not with it so that's I mean that's something again you just really would want to be working with your doctor you wouldn't want to be starting a diet like the keto diet without some sort of like coordination with some sort of medical practitioner especially if you have any chronic health issues uh because you may not realize how this may impact some aspects of it plus there is a big issue with aspects of malnutrition if you're not eating a variety of like um vegetables with it a lot of people they're used to eating vegetables that are also tied with a very starchy content um and so that's where they get a lot of that kind of like like plant-based foods and so if they're on keto they may not be actually eating enough green green vegetables or having enough uh full vitamin content and that and that's not healthy either so it's it's also so there's just lots of ways it can go wrong um also there's some people that really struggle to initiate the ketogenesis and may be stuck in this first phase it's called keto flu by a lot of people where your body's trying to transition from being power mostly by ketones to being from going from more of a carb glucose based powering to more of a keto based and in that time period um there's also like often can be a significant mood and health downturn usually lasts like a week or two I've heard some people say it could last a month depends on the person uh but that also comes up with one of those things is that really going to be the best diet for you if every time you've got to get back into keto it takes you a month to basically recover um that ends up being one of those is like is this going to be a good option for you long term so it's basically I kind of go with the idea food makes you miserable um or the particular type of food that's that's not a good one for you so this may not be a good diet for you if you end up being um feeling worse than you did before um maybe you can also transition into a few other things in the meantime to kind of buffer that like I mentioned the coconut oil there's actually taking um u mctt oil or just coconut oil can actually give you a lot of the effect of generating these exogenous ketones with without necessarily doing the fully restrictive diet other people do aspects of intermittent fasting um to get some of the same B benefits because a lot of what keto is doing is mimicking some aspects of the fasted state so um if you can actually get some of that benefit just from fasting in general that's why I would do a fast to kind of kick myself back in uh a water fast because it would actually um that it's part of what you do in order to initiate um what keto is there for is to attack happen to your fat stores that's why we put it on any differences between men and women I would say not a significant gender difference on not um I when I've heard of people with keto flu just anecdotally that people I've heard that had more of an issue with that were more men than women um but there's also going to be um aspects of that that's also tied to lipolysis so being able to access your own fat Stores um and sometimes women could have more issues with that so they may need to have more exogenous KET least to start off with so it's it's kind of mixed on it it kind of also depends on your energy needs throughout the day as well um there it's kind of like I said I haven't seen any really big gender differences on it but there are um there are some I mean it's just it it's more of like an individual health needs rather than I think really more of a gendered one okay so if a person wants to get started on the ketogenic diet and see if this is something that would be of benefit uh to them based on whatever their goals are um what would you recommend they would do and if you can have recommendations for the different populations so a person who is you know otherwise healthy and a person who is dealing with chronic conditions um would you advise them differently so um well when it comes to somebody who is otherwise assumes that they're healthy a lot of us don't realize how maybe unhealthy we actually are we think oh yeah I'm perfectly good I just have to do this I've just been slowing down because I'm older and then you you know have some sort of intervention and you realize oh no that was actually not age um that was something else um so to start off with honestly I really do suggest if you can to go to the Charlie Foundation website they have a lot of really great um introduction and um overview on uh keto diet most of they're one of the few out that I see that are not trying to sell you something almost every if you just kind of Google keto diet you're going to get into a lot of pages that get into a lot of aspects of biohacking and trying to run the perfect system and this is the perfect diet and you need to be just like this and if you're not in keto you're just not trying hard enough and um that may not necessarily be it feels like it's really trying to con connect in this like competitive spirit for people which you know if you're just trying to deal with some aspect of your health maybe you don't need that competition feel um that's one reason why I like the KE the Charlie foundation for like an initiation of some aspects of of it um but when it comes to talking about somebody who's perfectly healthy um um or and this is the first part I would talk about with both perfectly healthy and people who are chronically ill uh one thing you can start off with is seeing if um MCT oil actually helps you so MCT is medium chain triglycerides um so those are ones in which your body when you get those your body's going to use those first it really likes those it actually actually likes those almost better than carbs for being able to generate energy and you may actually see a lot of the benefits of ketogenic um uh ketogenic diet from generating the ketones and that energy boost just from MCT oil sometimes not everybody but it can it's one of those good ones to start off with if and also so much of the really good foods for keto are based on coconut so if you could have MCT oil then you can have coconut you get the benefit from that where I don't um so that's always nice to have um but that would be usually the first part but the other one is to really before you would really start out with keto is I would actually suggest try to come up with a plan look at how what you're currently eating and what is your basic percentage of carbs and protein and fat um in order to be able to generate enough ketones um to or order to initiate ketogenesis you would need to have a good uh depending on how you're going into it like 70 to 80% of your calories coming from fat which is a huge amount to do um sometimes people end up eating just they start losing a lot of weight not necessarily from the ketogenesis but just because uh the fat kind of makes them feel Fuller sooner and they just don't eat as much otherwise which is again another thing to watch out for hence the reason why planning out especially when you're first starting keto planning out at least a few weeks of what You' be planning on eating and then kind of like anticipating how many carbs and that and trying to look at the numbers of it to at least get a general ballpark you might be somebody who likes to track individual numbers I'm not big on individual numbers uh myself I'm just not very good at being rigid that way I'm kind of more of like well if I plan it out it would be about this much of these little fat balbs that I would have um need to do this approximately this time of day um or um and then I could have like something that might have a couple of carbs in it I try to aim for actually less than 20 grams of carbs a day which is pretty restrictive typically um most of the keto diets are like 50 grams or less um but I do best if I'm under 20 grams which is kind of hard to stick to um but uh that that's yeah that that doesn't take much I mean that's I mean if you look at a bag of candy you a single piece of candy like a Reese's little tiny one of the mini bite-sized Reese's cups I think is like like 30 grams or something like that and so like I could have a quarter of that um and especially if you have aspects of self-control issues when those are around you probably shouldn't have those handy um because it's going to be too easy to be like well just one won't hurt well one becomes two two becomes three four and then you know then you're out of ketogenesis and you're kind of doing this like well I guess it just doesn't work for me and I really dislike it when the diet doesn't work for somebody and people say well it's because you didn't try hard enough or you weren't following the rules of it um but that's actually one of the problems with keto is you kind of really have to um which again is why it's so easy to trigger eting disorder with it so that would also be the other thing is to watch about what kind of anxiety and stress you might have with it about like oh my God am I eating too many carbs if you're stressing about that too much you could be easily getting into an eating disorder realm um but being able to measure your ketones it's going to be critical um one way or the other there's different ways you can do that um you can get urine strip test tests um over the counter at most pharmacies because it is again for the diabetic population they use these quite a bit in order to keep track of their ketones to avoid the keto acidosis so you can get those you can get a glucometer so you can test your blood you can get the breath meters to test the ketones you can generate for breathing um and those are good to kind of give you an idea of approximately where you're at uh but H the different ones if you do the the glucometer or they the you can do glucometer or ketometer either one of those I glucometer if your glucose is very low but you're still feeling very functional and you're not feeling hypoglycemic there's a very good chance you're in ketosis um because that's part of how you're functioning um so that's kind of one way you can test it too just depending on your functionality with it but those numbers are good to keep track of especially if you are somebody who's already dealing with a chronic health issue because you want to make sure that you're not causing some other significant disruption um and seeing like um hypoglycemia kicking in because with hypoglycemia if you're not actually generating ketones and your hypoglycemic you may not be cognitively aware about how um low energy you actually are um so that's also a good one to kind of keep track of just one way or the other having especially that first couple of weeks when you're starting it so you can get the feeling of what it's like to have it um and I would also say to start it give yourself an end dat of where your test your trial begins or ends so that way you have it say you're going to try it for four weeks and see if you may see any difference um and then try to rigidly adhere it for that particular time to see how much you it makes a difference for you and if it doesn't this may not be the diet for you there may be some other interventions that might need to be um happening first uh the biggest one is just going to be realizing how much you can't have and then also realizing that how much fresh food you really do need um I mean like for me the salads are a the like one of my main sources of foods anymore I mean it's just when I say salads I mean there's a lot of things that can be salads salads is just mixing stuff together um and so it ends up being a huge um a huge part in but it's something that I enjoy so you do have to kind of look for foods that you would actually enjoy eating um I wouldn't suggest trying to find ways to substitute something right away so like if you think that you're like well I can't have regular bread but I could have keto bread well you're going to get into a whole lot of other issues there's different added if it's something like a keto bread they're adding in um other types of fiber you may not agree with it they're much higher in gluten and you may not realize that you're gluten um intolerant um there's a if you're adding something you're like well I could get these keto brownies well they could have a lot of these other things in them that could actually be um issues that would cause some some part of a uh uh some some thing you're reacting to or actually may not be as keto when you're actually purchasing like pre-made keto items there sometimes there's a lot of things in it that they may still be having more carbs or something that is the label is not really necessarily always indicative of everything that's in it um so uh that's really to start off with it's really going to be um Whole Foods from scratch if possible um so whatever how whatever the format that's going to be and uh be prepared to um eat more fat than you ever have before um I actually heard of one fellow that he starts off every meal like at a restaurant if he does actually go to a restaurant which it can be very difficult to do that um he starts off asking them for like a half a stick of butter um so that way he can then have the butter on absolutely everything and that's the only way to make sure he keeps his ratios um in in line so oh wow how about um somebody with a C kill this that's starting off with an energy deficiency to begin with so that catch 22 where you know you're trying to do this for improvement of energy but then you don't have the energy to you know do meal prep like you said or um you know just just do the tracking that's required um just stay on track with it so if you don't necessarily have the energy to do a lot of the the prep or the track in and that to start off with like for myself when I started I did not have anything to track um and I also when it came to the prep stuff that I did I mostly kind of looked at a few different types of foods that I could stand to eat um repetitively for two weeks uh because and you're not going to go into a nutritional deficiency in a couple weeks usually unless you have some something else that's much larger that you probably should address first um so to start off with looking for some foods that you could that are extremely high in fat be even saturated fat though you can actually do keto and be vegan it is entirely possible it's a lot harder uh but you can do it um but uh a big part is going to be things like having um like olive oil or trying to think of different things of that have a lot of fat in them that you enjoy that's one reason why I like to suggest the Charlie Foundation website they talk a lot about fat bombs and some of these are really easy to prepare like I will get like um um like organic peanut butter and cream cheese and cocoa powder and mix it all together and make little balls out of it and then it makes it uh sometimes I'll just add extra just like just straight butter to it too those and those are nice little like for one thing it's kind of like a little bit of a candy treat no matter what when you're first transitioning you're going to feel like things aren't sweet enough and then after about a week or two in it then if you try to have like a regular soda after that you do this like oh my God this is so much sugar I can't stand it um you realize that you can kind of adjust your sweet ratio um but uh to start off with is to see if you do have that energy bump it's going to be really more than anything it's going to just be restricting carbs that you're currently adjusting and really increasing the fat content of the food that you're eating um when and when you actually start C calculating out the grams of fat and how much you need you realize how much you really do and even if you're just looking at like a bottle of olive oil and you just measure out the ounces of how much fat that would be in comparison to okay I wanted to eat this this roll how much fat would I have to have oh my God that's like a whole cup of olive oil I'm not ready to chug that and then you can that can kind of give you this this little bit of a balance because it's not that you can't you have zero carbs you just have to be really um strategic with what you do consume and that's why you're trying to look for like vegetables or fruits like berries are great um on keto so uh trying to come up with different different we like and low energy like having like a higher fat yogurt and some berries um that can go a l ways that's a that's a way to have that and then especially if you can have like a little bit of olive oil drizzled over the top um it can make it like really um kind of still give you some good flavors um that because that's going to be a hard part too when you're initiating a diet like this is making sure you're having flavors that excite your mouth without having to feel like you're really um um in some sort of deficit um if so that's that's the the big one to start off with but really to be looking at fats you enjoy consuming um not trans fats but like saturated fats okay um mon UNS or unsaturated fats and things like olive oil would be great I mean just looking at what you can have um palm oil so Palm heart oil actually is um also an MCT oil so you can actually it's medium chain triglycerides you can have that as well it's harder to get because they usually sell it in bulk because it's used for a lot of cooking so you can't really MCT oil you get on the store is almost always coconut B and that you can get a nice little trial bottle that works well to get palm oil you usually have to buy like two gallons at a time and if it turns out you don't like it or it doesn't work for you that's a that's a big jug of oil to figure out what to do with um so it's that's really inexpensive though so that's a nice thing about palm oil it's actually very inexpensive um but uh that that's the hardest part is when you're starting off you don't have enough energy uh tracking while it's really helpful to start off with it's really more than anything it's to practice coming up with um enough uh fat in your diet so that's why I think that first week or two you do need to think strategically about what fats you can actually tolerate consuming in that kind of quantity like when I said that person that eats like a a whole thing of butter not like just eating the butter directly but like like taking little little tablespoons of the butter and putting it on everything could you stand to do that could you drizzle everything in olive oil could you I mean like not just drizzle I mean sometimes you kind of have to drench it I mean just depending on what it is that can be um hard for a lot of people at first to really consider how much they need to uh take in so that's that's the hard part as far as like trying to with the lower energy amount to um actually measure and track uh really the easiest one for that I would say would probably be the the the Ketone urine strips uh because you're probably going to urinate every day if you're not that's a problem um that's not going to be addressed by keto right um and that would at least give you an idea of where you might be um so that give you an idea if you're even within the close range or if you actually gone a lot higher than you thought U because like if your ketones are actually pretty high but you're not seeing any energy bump this may not be as helpful for you for the amount of energy that you're putting in to restrict your diet uh but then again if you're feeling really good but you're not generating the ketones maybe the diet itself was helping you you can actually generate ketones in your brain um your your your your your brain actually can generate its own ketones so even if it's not showing up on on the glucome or the the ketometer the the blood test meter or even with the uh the breast meter or the UR urine strips even if it's not showing up on there that doesn't mean you're not generating ketones in your brain you just may not be feeding the rest of your body the same way with it um so that's also one of those things too so if you're seeing cognitive changes with it even though you're not seeing measurable differences it might not so you might be going well not in KET K ketogenesis but anytime I start eating carbs I feel like crap well it may actually just be that your brain was generating KET tones but just not enough that for your lip if your liver is not generating enough then that might be due to like again like a viral infection that can slow down that process um so it's one of those it's like trying to see where that balances because your body's going to try to save this stuff for the brain anytime it can because the brain is energy hungry so it'll use quite a bit so it's it's hard when you're dealing with chronic illness to try to find ways to make especially a restrictive diet like this that's harder that requires so much tracking um to make it work for you um but once you figure out your pattern it makes it so much easier because you start to think of foods and recipes that you like um that you can do it there's also like some food delivery services that can actually stay in the keto mode um like there's a couple of the get like like hellofresh and those kind of things some they actually have some that are um keto based so you could use those if you wanted to if you had the funding for it I don't do that because I don't live in a region that gets that very well and then also most of them have foods that I can't have like I can't have mushrooms um and I can't have coconut and I can't have garlic um and so that takes a lot of really fun Foods out of the equation for me um but then that that's those are some of those things I discovered going into keto uh the keto diet is because I tried to add those in for flavor and yeah my system let me know that those were very bad for me because it does not like those um and uh that's one of the the again the big benefits of a restrictive diet or at least a temporary time period is you find out what food are going to be good for you so I'm big on emphasizing that there's no perfect diet for anybody it's going to be the foods that actually make you feel better which ones are those and some people keto find a lot they find a lot of benefit with keto other people don't um and in general it's just the foods that actually make you feel better overall ones that I'm encouraging you to eat yeah that's a that's a great point now I know a lot of people um with analepsy you know stay on the Kido diet for you know very long term or even lifelong um do you think that's a good idea for everybody else outside of epilepsy um to do it um you know in a uh excessively longterm years or um potentially the rest of their lives oh well uh I would say there's there's no reason why you couldn't it's hard to stay in that kind of restricted State especially since so much of our social world is centered around food uh food with family food with friends uh birthday party with somebody it ends up being very difficult at times in order to stay restrictive enough in order to stay in ketogenesis um or in full ketosis um and still be able to participated in those U but there are cultures throughout the world that have actually that that um that been in more or less a keto based diet uh for like thousands of years um and so it's not that you you can't do it long term you definitely can um it's just going to be making sure that you're maintaining the appropriate um nutrient levels and that you have to be a lot more cognizant of that um about making sure you're having that so like have making sure you're having plenty of vegetables and that you're having U like enough Variety in your diet if you're going to a lot of like like whole Fresh Foods um you're going to have an easier time um maintaining that which is also again that's usually better for you anyway uh I think I have fresh Foods original from the source and not as processed uh that's usually a win anyway um but uh I it's one of those you do still want to watch for things you want to make sure like you know you still doing like regular like checkups with your doctor or things like that to make sure your cholesterol staying in a decent State um because there I mean there's other health conditions that can cause issues with that too but if you start doing the keto diet and you start to see like significant negative changes in say your cholesterol or Mercers of heart health or various other your blood pressure starts spiking um then that's going to be something that yeah something needs to change and it may be some other health condition that you're dealing with that's actually causing that issue but definitely you want to always be prepared for the possibility that this diet may not be good for you may work in the short term but not necessarily long term and you can also get a lot of the same benefits again from things like intermittent fasting or just like the MCT oil um but not to the same level but you could still get some of it even if you can't necessarily maintain it but it becomes a logistically difficult diet to maintain long term um because again that it's such a restrictive diet unless you really come up with a good strategy about like how do you design your meals and your plan and your the way you interact with people like when you have people visiting you what kind of meal do you produce for them if you're if they're staying longer term do you have other stacky foods you shouldn't have you know kind of things around um and if so what is your plan on that I mean maybe it's just something where you go in and out of keto which is kind of what I've been doing is going in and out depending on other life circumstances uh partly because in order to stay in ketosis I have to be so very restrictive um and so sometimes I do let myself kind of get out of it and then um when I you know feel a little bit more sluggish I'll be like all right I'm going to stick to it harder now um but it just takes um it it takes a lot of discipline to do that sometimes because it does change every aspect of your life but if you're having such significant energy improvements like what I had um then you'll be it's worth it um but other people the benefit may not be as sufficient to balance that out um so it's especially more difficult if you have say young kids at home um because yeah they could eat it too they can eat that that the keto diet you again you have to watch out make sure that they're getting again appropriate levels of nutrition there's a lot of things like that again definitely talking to your doctor and everything about that um but uh it's a that's actually one of the things the Charlie Foundation has is they have a lot of um like resources how to connect in with dietitians and nutritionists that are actually um aware of Keto in a bit u in more of a um more Nuance sense and they can actually coordinate and work through do doctor on that so that way they can give you like recommendations about like how to um design your diet and meal plan appropriately um but that's uh I know I feel like I'm sponsored by keto or by the Charlie Foundation uh but they're such a good resource uh but uh yeah it's it's definitely something you can do long term again some people with epilepsy this has been just more of like this is what they do a lot of parents with children that have like severe epilepsy may just choose the entire family to stay more in a keto based diet so that way you don't have that one child in the family when everybody else is eating cupcakes and they go and you're not allowed um we don't that that's a especially for a child that's a very difficult state to be in um and so it's easier for the whole family to benefit from it um so uh but yeah there's people who do it quite a bit long term um but uh it's not for everybody to do that and I actually know a few people that what they do is they do it for a couple of months a year and then usually usually the you know post holidays thing in the early winter or mid late winter they have go kind of back into keto for a bit and then as spring comes they're having a lot more of the you know the the local um spring vegetables that come out and they're basically still kind of in keto because a lot of the spring vegetables are actually going to be ones that are lower in carb content anyway it's usually the later summer vegetables and fruits and things that are higher in carb content um and so they can actually kind of like just kind of then gradually come out of keto and then they have the nice fall Autumn like Harvest Foods and then they get into the holidays and then they just kind of bounce back and go more into keto um again in January so it's just kind of a a individual adapting it to your life it's not like it's not like you have to do it like you either do it all the way 100% for the rest of your life or why even try it's not that at all it's like with any diet any type of change in your the way you do food it's do what works for you and brings you Joy um make things that make you feel better um if it makes you feel worse don't do it um is generally the way it goes I mean there's sometimes in which you have to kind of push through a little bit like especially in the beginning of something but if long term it's not bringing you benefits I definitely wouldn't recommend staying miserable just because well I got to keep my ketones up it's like well if you're miserable like I myself if my ketone um get over like um U I know some people they feel absolutely amazing when their ketones are really high uh but myself if I get over 2.0 I feel like this extreme I'm feel mood dip I just start feeling cranky um and I just get this like why try anything and I'm like oh look my ketones are really high oh well it's ketones you know I start of getting just like it doesn't it doesn't necessarily help me to maintain a very high level of ketones especially with the amount of work and restriction that it has to do in order to get to that point um so it's kind of a going to be get really really independent really individual about what works for you but yeah you can do it long term um like I've been doing it for like what four is years now so yeah it's been working recently well for me wonderful well thank you relle this has been incredibly informative um can you tell people where they can find you and follow you um if you wanted to you can follow me on Twitter if you or X or whatever we're calling it now you can find me there if you want uh my handle is Willy relle if you un look for me it's so relle Sava um also easiest way to find me is relle sava.com um and then I also uh if you really want to find me Isabelle has my information she knows where I am on Renegade research and things like that so um so yeah so uh you desperately want to you need to interact with me personally it's like yeah she can she can hook you up uh but uh but uh uh yeah that's like I I have a few things I actually have a few things like like my experience with keto and things like that I do have that a bit on my website relle sava.com so that's that's nice and easy I figured people kept asking me questions so I thought I'll just make a quick little website and then you can let's put it on there and then so because of the your your your website is really informative for a variety of reasons so I really recommend people uh go there you have some very interesting hypoth es and uh again a lot of uh great information so this has been wonderful thank you so much for um being with us and sharing your experience and and your knowledge with our listeners thank you so much rette and down thank you as well thank you for having me it was really it was fun I like to I like to share knowledge that's one that's the thing I like to do it's like somebody says do you want to share this little bit of knowledge and I'll be like do I yes I do wonderful that's what we all need uh thank you so much thanks for joining us on this episode of ancestral Health today we hope you enjoyed our discussion on how evolutionary insights can inform Modern Health practices be sure to subscribe to our podcast to catch future episodes