How the Ketogenic Diet Reduces Inflammation in the Body
Believe it or not the reason you might feel so amazing on a ketogenic diet could be because of the modulation of inflammation within your body. I’m about to talk science, but I’m going to break it all down, so it makes perfect, easy sense. I’m Thomas DeLauer with Keto-Mojo and let’s go ahead and dive in to some inflammation science. You see, before we get in to any detail, we have to understand what inflammation is within the body and why you feel so good when it’s under control. Inflammation is sort of like our body’s immune system response to things. Any time we have a foreign invader, or we have any kind of trauma, we have an inflammatory response.
What is Acute Inflammation?
A good example is acute inflammation. If you get a cut or scrape or maybe you bump part of your body, you’re going to get swollen and red and feel that little swelling that goes on. Well that is inflammation in its acute form. Now we also have inflammation that happens in a chronic form or in a cellular form, which is basically the same kind of response as on the outside of the body but happening at a cellular level. You can see how that’s not necessarily a good thing unless we specifically need it. If our bodies are always overreacting to things and always sort of swollen, then we’re putting ourselves in a situation where we’re run down. Our body’s using energy for that.
Ketosis Can Modulate Inflammation
Ketosis has been proven to modulate inflammation in a lot of different subjects and a lot of different studies. I want to help you understand by giving you a matter of reference. Here is one study from Yale Medical School, and what they took a look at was exposing human immune cells to ketones, particularly, beta hydroxybutyrate, which is the main ketone body that we see in ketosis. In fact, it’s the ketone body that we’re measuring with the Keto-Mojo meter. What they found is that when they expose human immune cells to beta hydroxybutyrate, inflammatory markers went down. This is very, very powerful. It shows us that in the presence of ketone bodies, we can control high levels of inflammation a bit better.
Specifically, in this case, it modulated what is known as the NLRP3 inflammasome. The NLRP3 inflammasome is a multi-protein oligomer and it’s very reactive and jumpy. You see, what it does is it sort of dictates what the rest of the immune system and the rest of the inflammatory responses in our bodies do. If our NLRP3 inflammasome is elevated, it means that we are going to be hypersensitive to any little responses in the body. What that means is that if we have anything that occurs which might trigger a little bit of an inflammatory response, well it could exacerbate and create a bigger inflammatory response if our NLRP3 inflammasome is elevated. Throughout this study they found that if it gets modulated, levels come down, which means that our immune system and our inflammatory response is less jumpy and less reactive. This is good for everyone involved.
USCF Neurology Department Research
In some other interesting research, there was a doctor from UCSF’s neurology department that took a look at the effect of ketones on brain inflammation. What he did is, he gave subjects a specific chemical that would block the absorption of glucose, forcing them to go into a ketogenic state. What happened in this study showed that not only did inflammatory markers go down they actually went down to control levels, meaning they went down to levels that were lower than what we would normally see. They went down to total baseline normal levels of someone that is perfectly healthy, even in people or subjects that were not healthy at all. Now it’s also been known on the other side of the equation that excess glucose or excess carbohydrates, specifically in people that already have issues with blood sugar or are diabetic, can cause these different pro-inflammatory markers to elevate, that can eventually lead to atherosclerosis.
More Energy, Feeling Cleaner, Less Achy
There’s a multitude of things that we have to look at when we are looking at inflammation and how the ketogenic diet can control that and help us out. But by and large, one of the reasons that you’re probably feeling so good, is your body is not having to spend that extra energy on its immune system. Think about having a low-grade flu all the time. A flu that you don’t even know exists but it’s occurring inside your body and all of a sudden that’s healed, that’s gone. You’re going to feel like you have more energy, you’re going to feel cleaner, you’re going to feel less achy. And honestly, inflammation is a big thing that we have to look at when we’re looking at the ketogenic diet. So if you’re trying to make sure that you’re in a ketogenic state and make sure you’re maximizing your results with ketosis, you want to utilize the Keto-Mojo meter. It’s the gold standard when it comes to ketone testing and it’s going to ensure that you know when you’re in that powerful state of ketosis. So as always, keep it locked in here with Keto-Mojo and I’ll see you soon.
