Tue, Apr-24-12, 05:05
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Senior Member
Posts: 15,075
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Plan: mostly milkfat
Stats: 190/152.4/154
BF:
Progress: 104%
Location: Ontario
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http://www.plosone.org/article/info...al.pone.0018604
That's the diabetic kidney disease/ketogenic diet study mentioned in the la times article.
LA Times;
Quote:
A high-fat "ketogenic" diet may reverse the kidney damage caused by diabetes, a study published online Wednesday by the journal PLoS One reports.
Past research has shown that lowering blood sugar through diet can prevent kidney failure but not reverse it in patients with diabetes. Lead author Charles Mobbs, a neuroscientist at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, said that this study -- in which mice were fed a high-fat diet of 5% carbohydrate, 8% protein and a whopping 87% fat -- was the first to show that dietary intervention alone is enough to reverse kidney failure caused by diabetes.
"This finding has significant implications for the tens of thousands of Americans diagnosed with diabetic kidney failure, and possibly other complications, each year," he said.
That's hopeful news, but there's a serious problem: Following a ketogenic diet is brutal. A November 2010 article in the New York Times Magazine detailed one family's experience putting their young son on the diet to treat his epilepsy. The boy isn't allowed to eat such staples of childhood as cookies or macaroni and cheese. His mother has to weigh every morsel that passes his lips. At the time the article was published, he had been on the diet for almost two years.
"We figure that in an average week, Sam consumes a quart and a third of heavy cream, nearly a stick and a half of butter, 13 teaspoons of coconut oil, 20 slices of bacon and 9 eggs," wrote the boy's father, journalist Fred Vogelstein, who noted that the ketogenic diet is "only for the desperate."
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Yeesh. Childhood staples. I'd feel bad that the kid can't have a banana or an orange on a regular basis.
One thing I can't find in the study itself is whether the mice were fed ad-lib or calorie restricted.
The mouse diet was 8 percent protein. They should try 10, 12, 15, 20 while keeping the carbs out, and see what happens to the kidneys then. Even a slight increase in protein, when starting at such low levels, vastly lowers the "brutality" of ketogenic dieting.
Quote:
Research Article
Reversal of Diabetic Nephropathy by a Ketogenic Diet
Intensive insulin therapy and protein restriction delay the development of nephropathy in a variety of conditions, but few interventions are known to reverse nephropathy. Having recently observed that the ketone 3-beta-hydroxybutyric acid (3-OHB) reduces molecular responses to glucose, we hypothesized that a ketogenic diet, which produces prolonged elevation of 3-OHB, may reverse pathological processes caused by diabetes. To address this hypothesis, we assessed if prolonged maintenance on a ketogenic diet would reverse nephropathy produced by diabetes. In mouse models for both Type 1 (Akita) and Type 2 (db/db) diabetes, diabetic nephropathy (as indicated by albuminuria) was allowed to develop, then half the mice were switched to a ketogenic diet. After 8 weeks on the diet, mice were sacrificed to assess gene expression and histology. Diabetic nephropathy, as indicated by albumin/creatinine ratios as well as expression of stress-induced genes, was completely reversed by 2 months maintenance on a ketogenic diet. However, histological evidence of nephropathy was only partly reversed. These studies demonstrate that diabetic nephropathy can be reversed by a relatively simple dietary intervention. Whether reduced glucose metabolism mediates the protective effects of the ketogenic diet remains to be determined.
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