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| What Super-Sensitive Celiacs need to know about going Keto. |
If you're a super-sensitive celiac that hasn't been able to get your symptoms under control, the Keto Diet might look quite inviting. Many celiacs are turning to Keto to help them avoid cross contamination.
Keto severely restricts the amount of carbohydrates you eat, so it would greatly cut down on the potential to get accidentally glutened. When you limit your carbohydrates to:
- vegetables
- green salads
- nuts
- dairy products
- sugar substitutes
- and other low-carb foods
Not all ketogenic diets are gluten free, especially if you intend on expanding your diet beyond the basics of meat, eggs, cheese, nuts, and vegetables. You will still have the potential for cross contamination to deal with.
Plus, there often is MORE gluten in low-carb products than in the foods they replace, so you'll also have to keep your guard up. Wheat protein (Vital Wheat Gluten) and modified wheat starches are commonly used to replace all-purpose flour in low-carb products and recipes because they are super low in carbs.
Safe gluten-free, low-carb products made with almond flour and coconut flour do exist, as well as a ton of recipes online.
But, you'll have to stay on top of the manufacturer's cleaning practices and investigate the warehouse environment for each low-carb product you want to add to your diet, the same as any other gluten-free product.
Sticking with the basics, however, can make life more simple for a super-sensitive celiac, so if you want to give Keto a try, here's what you need to know before you take the plunge.
What is the Keto Diet?
There are three major macronutrients that must be supplied in the diet:- protein
- fats
- carbohydrates
In general, the body stores the fats you eat for later use, giving preference to glucose because it's easier. Once glucose is exhausted, however, fats are pulled out of storage. When carbohydrates are scarce long-term, glucose is scarce long-term, and the body has to adapt to the lack of carbs.
This scarcity is where a Keto Diet comes into play.
Since the body's major source of fuel is being restricted, Keto forces the body to use a different metabolic pathway -- one that encourages the body to use mostly fatty acids for fuel instead of glucose.
Initially, when you stop eating carbs, the liver turns to its stored carbohydrate supply called glycogen. When glycogen runs low, the liver has to find alternative sources of glucose to fuel the brain.
This switch is called "going into ketosis."
At first, the liver oxidizes amino acids for fuel, thinking the carbohydrate deprivation is only temporary. It may also use a bit of stored fat or oxidize some worn out tissue.
If you're eating plenty of protein foods, the liver will convert the glucogenic amino acids you eat or protein structures that need replacing into glucose. If you're not eating enough protein, the liver will get the amino acids it needs from your muscles.
When carb restriction continues beyond a couple of days, the liver will begin to ramp up its production of ketones, making them deliberately. During the process of breaking down fat, incompletely broken-down fragments called ketones are created and dumped into the bloodstream to fuel the body.
In the beginning of a low-carb diet, the entire body can use these ketone fragments for fuel.
In about a week, if carbohydrates remain in short supply, the body stops using proteins, to save muscle tissue, and turns to burning mostly fatty acids and ketones instead. This is why Keto is said to be muscle-sparing.
At this point in the ketosis process, the muscles become insulin resistant and stop pulling in ketones and glucose from the bloodstream. This saves the available ketones and glucose for the brain.
The brain can use ketones to supply up to 75 percent of its needs. The other 25 percent must continue to come from glucose.
Once the brain is running on ketones, the muscles and other organs and body systems use fatty acids for energy instead of ketones. These fatty acids can come from food or body fat. You don't get to choose which one -- the body does that.
Ketosis is a normal metabolic condition that occurs whenever the body is burning mostly ketones and fatty acids instead of glucose.
Although, the brain needs about 120 carbohydrates per day, part of those carbs can come from ketones. Those carbohydrates do not have to come from sugars and starches in your diet.
While some of the needed glucose comes from the salads, vegetables, and other low-carb foods you'll be eating, the body can make glucose from other things, including (but not limited to):
- the glycerin molecule attached to stored triglycerides
- lactic acid
- pyruvate
- glucogenic amino acids you eat
- non-essential amino acids the body makes, such as glutamine
- worn-out protein structures
Keto is not an abbreviation for the word ketosis. It is a specific dietary intervention for metabolic syndrome and diabetes that Dr. Stephen Phinney created over a decade ago.
Dr. Phinney is a Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of California - Davis. He was also on the editorial board of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a very highly esteemed scientific journal.
Today, he is the Chef Medical Officer for Virta Health, which he co-founded with Jeff Volek. Virta Health is a dietary intervention program for diabetics and those with metabolic syndrome.
Dr. Phinney coined the term "Nutritional Ketosis" back in 1980. Through trial-and-error, he discovered the optimal range of circulatory ketones in the bloodstream that would provide optimal performance.
Today, this dietary intervention for diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and obesity is known as Keto or The Keto Diet, but Dr. Phinney still refers to his personal program as Nutritional Ketosis.
Ketosis is NOT the ketoacidosis that Type 1 diabetics need to be concerned about. Nutritional Ketosis is a dietary adaption the body makes to a lack of stored glycogen.
Ketoacidosis occurs in those who cannot make any insulin because insulin controls the amount of ketones your body makes.
In those who do not have diabetes, or in Type 2 diabetics who can still produce some insulin, the pancreas secretes insulin when the ketone level in the bloodstream gets too high.
This is why Nutritional Ketosis isn't dangerous.
Insulin secretion puts ketosis on hold until after the excess ketones are used, or dumped.
When diabetics go into ketoacidosis, there is no insulin secreted to control the ketosis process, and the body becomes too acidic. It's the excessive acid that makes ketoacidosis dangerous, but this never happens with Nutritional Ketosis.
Keto is not a high-protein diet.
Only 10 to 20 percent of your daily calories come from protein foods. This supplies all of the amino acids your body needs for repair, with a little extra for gluconeogenesis. Most of your calories come from dietary fats.
However, if you're overweight or obese, you don't have to eat gobs of fat. A large portion of your daily caloric fat requirement can come from body fat, so Keto makes an excellent weight-loss diet, as well as a good gluten-free foundation diet for those who don't need to lose weight.
What You Need to Know Before You Try Keto
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| Here's what you need to know before you try The Keto Diet to recover from gluten intolerance |
When doing Keto for health purposes, it isn't like your average low-calorie, low-fat diet where you can decide to eat a few extra calories due to a special occasion and just accept the consequences on the scale.
Like a gluten-free diet, adherence to Keto is an essential component of this type of dietary intervention, due to the switch in metabolic pathways.
Instead of just watching for hidden gluten, now you'll be watching for both carbs and gluten.
Eat too many carbs and your body will never prefer fats over sugar. Too many carbs will also kick you out of ketosis and reverse the whole fat-adaption and keto-adaption process.
The body breaks down carbohydrates into complex and simple sugars.
To make things easier to understand, think of carbohydrates as servings of sugar. You're going to limit your sugars to less than 50 grams of carbohydrates per day.
How many carbs you actually eat depends on which ketogenic plan you decide to follow.
You don't have to do Dr. Phinney's Nutritional Ketosis program. You could opt for a different ketogenic diet instead:
Some plans like Atkins 20 and the Keto Diet at Reddit start you out at 20-net carbs a day, while other plans like Atkins 40 start off at 40. Nutritional Ketosis, developed by Dr. Phinney, uses 30 to 35. Do-it-yourself plans can be anywhere from zero carbs to 50 and still be ketogenic.
A few individuals can go as high as 70 or even 100 carbs a day and still maintain ketosis. It all depends on how sensitive to insulin you are.
To put this in perspective, the average American diet contains 300 to 500 grams of carbohydrates per day; and the average gluten-free diet tends to be on the higher end of that due to the amount of sugars and starches in gluten-free products.
Going from one extreme to the other can be quite rough, especially if you have a habit of using comfort food to soothe your emotions or to deal with stressful situations.
The idea behind Keto is to teach the body to prefer to use fatty acids, instead of sugars and starches, for fuel, so if you're continuously stepping over the line by eating too many carbs, you'll never reach the point of fat adaption.
There is nothing wrong with that, but if that's your tendency, then it's better to choose a different nutritional approach to taking charge of your life, than Keto.
Learning to burn fatty acids efficiently and letting your body adapt to your ketogenic diet takes the body a good, solid 6 to 12 weeks, or even more.
So, you really need to be committed to the diet.
During this initial time period, you have to tightly stick to your Keto plan. No cheating!
Once you are firmly keto adapted, the body will have an easier time handling a few extra carbs, as it will be able to bounce right back into fat burning once you lower them again.
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| Since Keto is a lifestyle, rather than a diet I ate white rice for my birthday. |
For example, hubby took me out to P. F. Chang's for my birthday last month, and I ordered my favorite gluten-free meal: their spicy chicken with white rice.
I did limit the amount of rice I ate to less than one cup.
We also skipped dessert.
The scale bounced up a couple of pounds, because the rice replaced some glycogen and water, but my weight went right back down again after a couple of days back on Keto.
However, in the beginning of a low-carb diet, you really need to stay on plan, as strict as you can, which will encourage your body to burn fat.
Many gluten-free foods are not Keto-friendly.
If you decide to move to a low-carb lifestyle, you'll be giving up:
- gluten-free grains, including corn
- most store-bought gluten-free products
- potatoes, all varieties
- most fruits except berries
- milk
- white and brown sugar
- natural sweeteners like honey, corn syrup, agave nectar, and molasses
The other thing that needs to be considered before going Keto is what happens when you go off a low-carb diet.
Unlike a typical calorie diet, leaving Keto behind results in the body refilling its glycogen stores, switching metabolic pathways, and going back to burning glucose.
This can take a few days to achieve because the body will have to ramp up its production of enzymes that are needed to digest those missing carbs.
Where going from high carb to low carb is relatively easy, thanks to the body's ability to burn ketones for fuel, going from low carb to high carb is not.
It can be quite uncomfortable, resulting in digestive disturbances and other problems, especially if you're returning foods to your diet that you happen to be sensitive to.
Any health benefits you got from going Keto will disappear if you choose to go back to your old style of eating. Leaving Keto also means you'll have to pay attention to what you're eating, and probably begin counting calories for awhile, until you get control over your portions, or you'll regain all the weight back.
Benefits of Going Keto for Super-Sensitive Celiacs
None of the above is meant to talk you out of going Keto.
I first went Keto in 1975 when I used the original Atkins Diet to lose 40 pounds in 6 weeks.
Later on in my life, after being bedridden for a couple of years with vertigo, and gaining 80 pounds, I went on a personalized version of Atkins and lost over 100 pounds. That did take me a few years to accomplish.
Keto isn't a fast weight-loss plan.
When Graves' Disease surfaced in my life, I regained 80 of those 100 pounds back, so a couple of years ago, I went on a portion-controlled low-carb diet and lost 40 of those extra pounds.
Note, that I said "low carb" and not Keto.
Today, I'm a borderline diabetic and still trying to get down to a reasonable size, but whether I do or don't, I will be on some degree of carbohydrate-restriction for the rest of my life. For me, I feel best when eating between 60 to 120 carbs a day.
The above information is simply a real-life view of what you're getting yourself into if you choose to drastically restrict your carbs, even temporarily.
Most people who go Keto try to use it for a crash diet, which it was not designed for. Nutritional Ketosis is a powerful tool that can improve your health if you happen to be insulin resistant or a diabetic. It also improves blood pressure and cardiac markers, but you have to respect it as a tool to help you manage your health condition.
Nutritional Ketosis isn't magic.
You may lose a lot of weight during the first couple of weeks, if you're new to low-carb diets, but that weight will be mostly glycogen and the water needed to process it. The weight loss won't be body fat.
After the first couple of weeks, if you're eating at a caloric deficit, weight loss will drastically slow down to an average of 1 to 2 pounds per week.
That's an average.
Since most super-sensitive celiacs are in some degree of starvation, weight loss might be much slower than the average.
Mine is.
In fact, when it comes to malnutrition and malabsorption, there is no guarantee that you'll lose any body fat on Keto at all.
This is because Keto uses the starvation pathway, and sometimes, the body just doesn't want to do that.
If you're underweight and want to put on a few pounds, you simply go in the opposite direction.
Hit your protein target (which should be higher than average if you're below a healthy weight) and then crank up the dietary fat. Eat more protein, vegetables, and healthy fats than what it takes to maintain your current weight.
Healing will help both overweight and underweight conditions, but sometimes, that healing will take a bit of time.
You'll have to be patient and realize that the body will only let go of its fat reserves when it feels comfortable enough to do so. Repairing the villi and replacing wasted muscle tissue is a very slow process.
In addition to weight loss and helping you cut down on the potential for cross contamination with gluten, Keto diets come with many benefits:
- drastically lowers your triglycerides
- raises HDL cholesterol
- improves your overall cholesterol profile
- lowers elevated insulin levels
- corrects elevated blood glucose levels
- improves your A1c test results
- helps you avoid diabetic complications, such as neuropathy
- normalizes high blood pressure
- reduces systemic inflammation
- improves cognitive function
- decreases hunger and appetite
- slashes cravings for junk food
- improves digestion
- increased energy and alertness
- greater endurance
- increased sense of well-being
- less arthritis and joint pain
- improved sleep
- reverses heartburn and acid reflux
- improves insulin resistance, even in women with PCOS
- promotes muscle gain while sparing muscle losses
- burns liver fat and other visceral fat
- lowers oxidative stress, which slows down aging
- increases mitochondria function
- stabilizes your mood and lowers anxiety
But, to take advantage of these benefits, your body has to get to the point where it prefers to burn fatty acids for fuel instead of glucose. For some individuals, this never happens.
So even if you are one of those normal-weight celiac folks, you can still reap a lot of benefit from going Keto, provided you eat at maintenance, or above.
Just make sure that this is what you really want to do because unlike a typical low-calorie diet, Keto really needs to be a complete lifestyle change -- the same as going gluten free was for you.
Instead of eating at a caloric deficit, you simple eat enough to maintain your current weight, or gain if needed.
Take the time to give the diet some honest, soul-searching reflection. Look at what you get to eat, what you have to avoid, and how that dietary plan will fit into your tastes, lifestyle, and social life.
While I'm not going to tell you that you have to stay on Keto for the rest of your life, because you don't, you will have to be extra careful if you choose to do something else for maintenance or later on after your gluten symptoms calm down.
You'll have to slowly raise your carbs back up.
Most people regain their weight within the first year after leaving Keto, so portion control and mindful eating does need to become a permanent part of your life if you want to maintain your fat losses.
The trick to being successful on Keto, or any weight-loss diet for that matter, is to make small changes to your everyday habits, so they become a permanent part of your being and not just something you do for a potential reward.
At maintenance, there won't be any more rewards, so if Keto, or a tweaked version of Keto, isn't how you eat by then, maintaining will be a serious struggle.
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