Medical experts have warned about a new twist to extreme weight loss, popularly called “keto diet” that is now the fad, especially among women in the country.
According to the promoters of the diet, especially on social media, it uses the body’s own fat burning system to help users lose significant weight in as little as 10 days.
The “keto diet” is any extremely low or no-carbohydrate diet that forces the body into a state of ketosis. Ketosis occurs when people eat a low- or no-carb diet and molecules called ketones build up in their bloodstream. Low carbohydrate levels cause blood sugar levels to drop and the body begins to break down fat to use as energy.
Ketosis is actually a mild form of ketoacidosis. Ketoacidosis mostly affects people with type 1 diabetes. In fact, it is the leading cause of death of people with diabetes, who are under 24 years of age. Some studies, in fact, suggest that a ketogenic diet is safe for significantly overweight or obese people.
Also, many people say ketosis helps them to lose weight so fast, compared to regular exercise, which is tiring. But medical experts have warned of the great danger in embracing such a diet because it damages vital inner organs.
According to a surgeon, Dr. Daramola Ayinde, at the Federal Medical Centre Owo, Ondo State, your body stores carbohydrate, mostly in your liver and muscles, in the form of glycogen. Depending on your size, you can store roughly in the range of 1500-2000 calories of storage carbohydrate, depending on how fit and big or small you are.
“If you are sedentary and don’t really exercise much, this amount of storage carbohydrate is more than sufficient to get you through your day. Really, your body only needs a maximum of 600 calories of carbohydrate to survive each day and that carbohydrate can be derived from diet, or from you own storage glycogen,“ he says.
So, if you are active and at the same time consuming a low carbohydrate diet, you can easily burn through your liver and muscle glycogen stores in anywhere from two days to a couple weeks. The nice part about this if you’re trying to lose weight is that, since glycogen carries up to four times its weight in water, a low carbohydrate diet can quickly shed 5 to 10 pounds or more, which seems quite satisfactory.
But the problem is, most of what you’ve lost is energy to sustain your daily physical activity and also you have lost water. Losing water now continuously will make you get dehydrated on time, which will start to affect your kidneys by retaining stones. It also affects your liver and other vital organs in the body.
A clinical dietician at Saint Thomas Catholic Hospital, Akute, Ogun State, Mrs. Grace Nwagbo, notes that the keto-type diets usually work only in the short term and can be unhealthy.
“For starters, most of the lost weight is water weight and once your body enters ketosis, you also begin to lose muscle, become extremely fatigued, and eventually enter starvation mode. Then it actually becomes even harder to lose weight,” she says.
Nwagbo adds that she doesn’t believe the keto diet causes muscle loss, and, therefore, cautions that it is not optimal for someone trying to gain muscle.
She explains, “Keto diets should only be used under medical supervision and only for a short period of time, though they have worked successfully on some cancer patients in conjunction with chemotherapy, to shrink tumors and to reduce seizures among people suffering from epilepsy.
“The keto diet should only be considered in extreme cases. It can do more harm than good. It can damage the heart, which is also a muscle. Anyone with type 2 diabetes can benefit from weight loss and a reduced-carb diet because it will improve insulin sensitivity. It’s just that the diet will do more harm than good to the majority of patients, especially if they have any underlying kidney or liver issues.
“People are using this for cosmetic reasons, but it’s so extreme that it’s dangerous. If your ketogenic diet is high in protein, it could also increase your risk of diabetes, cancer and overall premature mortality, if you’re middle-aged, but not if you’re over 65.”
