Source: Diets And Nutrition May 25, 2020 4 years, 7 months, 1 hour, 55 minutes ago
Ketogenic Diets: Medical researchers from the University of California-San Francisco in a small cohort study demonstrated that low-carbohydrate, high-fat ketogenic diets helps in lowering inflammation, promoting weight loss and heart health and also impacts the microbes residing in the human gut in a positive manner.
The researchers also conducted research in animal models (mice) that showed the so-called "ketone bodies," a molecular byproduct that gives the ketogenic diet its name, directly impacts the gut microbiome in ways that may ultimately suppress inflammation.
This gives rise to evidence for potential benefits of ketone bodies as a therapy for autoimmune disorders affecting the gut.
The research study was published in the journal Cell.
https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30490-6.pdf?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867420304906%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
Typically In ketogenic diets, carbohydrate consumption is drastically reduced in order to force the body to alter its metabolism to using fat molecules, rather than carbohydrates, as its primary energy source, In the process, ketone bodies emerge as a byproduct, a change that proponents claim has numerous health benefits.
Dr Peter Turnbaugh, a UCSF Associate Professor of microbiology and immunology, member of the UCSF Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator told Thailand Medical News, "I got interested in this area because our prior research showed that high-fat diets induce shifts in the gut microbiome that promote metabolic and other diseases in mice, yet ketogenic diets, which are even higher in fat content, have been proposed as a way to prevent or even treat disease. Hence we decided to explore that puzzling dichotomy."
His research team partnered with the nonprofit Nutrition Science Initiative to recruit 17 adult overweight or obese non-diabetic males to spend 60 days as inpatients in a metabolic ward where their diets and exercise levels were carefully monitored and controlled.
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In the first 30 days of the study, the participants were given either a "standard" diet consisting of 50 percent carbs, 15 percent protein and 35 percent fat, or a ketogenic diet comprising 5 percent carbs, 15 percent protein and 80 percent fat. After four weeks, the two groups switched diets, to allow the researchers to study how shifting between the two diets altered participants' microbiomes.
Subsequent analysis of microbial D
NA found in participants' stool samples showed that shifting between standard and ketogenic diets dramatically changed the proportions of common gut microbial phyla Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Firmicutes in participants' guts, including significant changes in 19 different bacterial genera.
The study team focused in on a particular bacterial genus ie the common probiotic Bifidobacteria which showed the greatest decrease on the ketogenic diet.
In order to better understand how microbial shifts on the ketogenic diet might impact health, the team exposed the mouse gut to different components of microbiomes of humans adhering to ketogenic diets, and showed that these altered microbial populations specifically reduce the numbers of Th17 immune cells, a type of T cell critical for fighting off infectious disease, but also known to promote inflammation in autoimmune diseases.
Further diet experiments in mice, in which the researchers gradually shifted diets between low-fat, high-fat and low-carb ketogenic diets, confirmed that high-fat and ketogenic diets have opposite effects on the gut microbiome.
The research findings suggested that the microbiome responds differently as the level of fat in the animals' diet increases to levels that promote ketone body production in the absence of carbs.
The team observed that that as animals' diets were shifted from a standard diet towards stricter carbohydrate restriction, their microbes also began shifting, correlated with a gradual rise in ketone bodies.
Dr Turnbaugh added, "This was a little surprising to me. As someone who is new to the keto field, I had assumed that producing ketone bodies was an all-or-nothing effect once you got to a low enough level of carb intake. But this suggests that you may get some of the effects of ketosis quite quickly."
The study team tested whether ketone bodies alone could drive the shifts they had seen in the gut's microbial ecosystem by directly feeding ketone bodies to mice. They found that even in mice that were eating normal amounts of carbohydrates, the mere presence of added ketones was enough to produce many of the specific microbial changes seen in the ketogenic diet.
Dr Turnbaugh further added, "This is a really fascinating finding because it suggests that the effects of ketogenic diets on the microbiome are not just about the diet itself, but how the diet alters the body's metabolism, which then has downstream effects on the microbiome. For many people, maintaining a strict low-carbohydrate or ketogenic diet is extremely challenging, but if future studies find that there are health benefits from the microbial shifts caused by ketone bodies themselves, that could make for a much more palatable therapeutic approach."
The research team is also now exploring further studies of the health benefits of ketones as a dietary supplement.
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