There are two main fuel systems in the human body: Fat and Carbohydrate.
Industrial Carbohydrate Paradigm
Our modern civilizations and large populations are based upon agriculture, which is based upon carbohydrates. Carbohydrates easily take over as the primary human fuel system - but with many negative consequences - including the long-term extinction of the fat burning system - leading to a false belief that we are dependent on carbohydrates to function. This highly mistaken paradigm is promoted through vested interests on many levels because there is an entire industrial system dependent on it - including agriculture, pharmaceutics, medicine, education, commerce, banking - basically our entire civilization! In essence we have an Industrial Carbohydrate Paradigm which generates and is auto-sustained by Carbohydrate Addiction.
Carbohydrate Addiction
When Carb Addiction is established in the body it generally sets in for life and people never experience or even imagine any alternative. If someone runs low on blood sugar they are hit with immediate fatigue and the many unpleasant symptoms of so called 'hypoglycaemia". The prescribed solution is to eat sugar. Sports shops are lined with shelves of high sugar content supplements for exactly this reason. Results are extremely convincing and generally effective, supported by an entire medical and scientific vocabulary that leaves little room for questioning or doubt.
Sport tends however to have an extremely high level of natural selection involved and those who don't do well simply vanish. Those who do well appear to have a more suitable genetic disposition. This is another element contributing to auto-sustaining the false ICP (Industrial Carbohydrate Paradigm). Those who persist in endurance sport don't seem to get fat. However, those who do get fat promptly quit and join the rest of the general population in the global epidemic of obesity (2.1 billion), diabetes, congestive heart disease, cancer, arthritis and other fatal chronic - but generally reversible and avoidable metabolic diseases - which are non-existent in non-agriculture based societies.
Carb Addiction shuts down key elements of fat metabolism both in the short and long term. Eating glucose causes the hormone insulin to be produced. Insulin both makes glucose available for energy and for storage as fat. Excess sugar that cannot be burned immediately is converted into fat and stored in the body. While this is happening the entire fat burning system is closed down. A similar process happens with fructose in the liver without the need for insulin. None of this would be a problem if it was not for the long-term effect on fat metabolism. In addition the fat generated from carbs in the liver form VLDL molecules which then convert to LDL cholesterol and provide the source of the specific type of cholesterol implicated in heart disease. This cholesterol comes from carbs not from eating fats. When carbohydrates are relied on as the main source of energy this has a deeper effect of shutting down key elements of fat metabolism on a long-term basis. After eating, insulin continues to process glucose until blood sugar levels drop well below the body's "normal" level - leading to an energy "crash" that causes a need to eat more sugar. This energy crash is termed "hypoglycaemia". If proper and complete fat metabolism was working then this would cover the situation and no energy dip would be experienced. Athletes running out of body glucose stores are hit by the same phenomenon even more seriously - where there is not enough glucose left to keep the brain fuelled and Central Fatigue (bonking/hitting the wall) sets in. Once again the fat metabolism system is so compromised that it cannot cover this issue. The prescribed solution is of course to once again eat sugar and deal with the symptoms at face value. The cycle of addiction is effectively enforced by what amounts to severe withdrawal symptoms. Eventually the only remaining athletes are those who are specifically genetically predisposed to have more effective fat burning metabolisms - because the high level of sugar consumption is unsustainable for most people. Athletes either can't effectively control weight or they age rapidly and suffer from the many degenerative and inflammatory effects of constant sugar oxidation.
The first victim of carbohydrates is the fat burning mechanism. From this point onwards degeneration slowly but surely accumulates in the vast majority of people. Sick people are cash cows all the way up the industrial food chain - so who is going to complain?
Breaking Paradigms
Most mistakes in life are made by interpreting things at face value and not correctly understanding underlying "cause and effect" relationships. Aristotle's basic laws of motion were completely wrong but were taught without being questioned for 2000 years in Western education - because of taking things at face value. Galileo saw through this mistake and corrected it. Real science if anything is about breaking those false paradigms based on superficial "face value" appearances. The key is nearly always the "opposite" - but with a slight twist. Statistical data worsens this problem because people then also confuse "correlation" with "causation". Most health and nutritional issues depend on statistical studies over time - so there is enormous potential for obfuscation.
When there is an entire language constructed around a subject then it’s almost impossible to perceive the subject otherwise than how it is presented. Breaking paradigms allows us to construct a new and more accurate language.
Paradigm 1: Primary Fuel System is carbohydrate
Let’s begin by looking at the Industrial Carbohydrate Paradigm. The reality is that Carbohydrates are considered by established medical and nutritional authority to be the human body’s primary fuel system – partly because of a false assertion that the brain can only survive and function on glucose. Glucose Addiction goes a long way towards hiding the reality from individuals. The first paradigm to be broken then is this one. The brain functions even better on ketones and does not need glucose. Ketones come from metabolising fatty acids.
New Paradigm: The primary fuel system used by the human body for optimum health and performance is "fat burning"
Paradigm 2: Hypoglycaemia is the cause of energy dips
Let's now consider breaking the hypoglycaemia paradigm. "Hypoglycaemia" is not "lack of sugar" - it is lack of ketones from fat burning - it's a chronic withdrawal symptom from Carb Addiction. The false solution always given is to "eat sugar". (Take more heroin!)
Fat and protein are essential macronutrients. Carbohydrate is not! The body produces all of the very little carbohydrate it needs - either directly from ingested protein or from the body's own stores of both fat and protein.
When carbohydrate is burned as fuel one of the by-products is lactic acid. Lactic acid is then also used as fuel. Nearly all parameters for measuring fitness and performance in sport are related to this process - with "lactic threshold" being a major aspect. Athletes are taught that their performance depends largely on training the body to tolerate and burn lactic acid more effectively. Fat burning is considered to be important - but is generally ignored as a background issue. The body can only store between 400 to 2000 calories of glucose (liver, blood and muscles combined) - so the athlete who is dependent on carbohydrates must replace this sugar during sports. The body can absorb up to 90 grams per hour of mixed carbs and this gives 360 calories per hour. However the body can easily burn over 1000 calories per hour - so at some point this leads to a limitation. In practice the act of eating those carbs really does work - in that it holds back all the negative issues that might befall the endurance athlete. In reality though, all this is doing is feeding the carb addiction and holding back immediate withdrawal symptoms. The athlete will eventually bomb. With age the athlete will either have to train much longer and harder or will quite simply get fat in most cases. Most will undoubtedly end up on the scrap heap of human obesity and chronic sickness - with joints wrecked.
Carb Addiction occurs when the consumption of carbohydrates blocks the fat burning system in a long-term manner so that it cannot produce ketones when required.
Muscles store both fat and glucose and can burn both.
When glucose burns it makes lactic acid which then in turn burns.
When fat burns it can produce ketones - which then in turn burn - but while carbohydrates are the main supply of food this will not happen. In addition it takes months of abstinence from Carbs to fully restore the system.
The brain cannot use fat as fuel. Contrary to official government published medical/nutritional claims the brain is not confined to using just glucose for fuel. The brain actually prefers ketones - which are molecules that are very similar to glucose and pass through the blood/brain barrier.
When fat metabolism is healthy enough to make ketones then the brain is fully protected from Central Fatigue and therefore hypoglycaemia or bonking/hitting-the-wall - do not exist! The average lean person has a store of body fat making 160,000 kcals available for this purpose. It would take a long time to get through that lot.
In general even with the system closed down through excessive carb consumption it only takes a few days for the average person to start producing ketones - when fasting. Fasting forces the body to rely on fat burning. There are three different types of ketones and the priority is first of all to protect the brain - so the corresponding ketones are produced. The muscles are ignored at this stage, taking up to three months to fully correct ketone production, burning and so recovering full strength.
New Paradigm: "Hypoglycaemia" should be called "hypoketosis" (made up word) because the issue is really one of lacking ketones - not lacking sugar. The drop in blood sugar simply exposes this issue
Paradigm 3: Normal "balanced" diet is based on carbohydrates
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyeC9IiFKpw The Meryl Streep film from 1997 - "First Do No Harm" takes for its title the beginning of the Hippocratic Oath which is said by all medical doctors. The film highlights the hypocrisy of the medical establishment in completely failing to respect this oath and principle. In 1920 the ketogenic diet was developed at the Mayo clinic in California to allow epileptics to be in a full time state of ketosis thus preventing seizures. It had been known since antiquity that fasting prevented epilepsy - but recognized that people cannot continue fasting forever. They can however use "nutritional ketosis" - by reducing carbohydrate consumption to low levels, eating only adequate protein (because excess is converted into glucose) and obtaining upwards of 65% (or higher depending on the individual) of their calories from fats. Fat metabolism is reinstated as the body's primary energy system. The hypocrisy is that victims were (and still are) subjected to endless drugs and side effects or surgery without ever being made aware of this natural solution that has over 33% complete success and 33% partial success.
Even in this film however the paradigm is upside down. Nutritional Ketosis is suggested as a special diet which has incumbent risks - and once recovering the epileptics are shown to return to a so called "normal diet". This is where we break the third paradigm.
New Paradigm: Nutritional ketosis is the result of a "normal diet" - it's the so called "balanced" carbohydrate diet that is not normal - it's completely perverse and designed to keep the industrial food chain healthy - with the biggest eaters being corporations and banks
Paradigm 4: Humans are physically weak
The human being evolved to get around on two feet and until very recently that was the only option available. The body is even more specifically developed for running and humans can outrun - over distance - almost every animal on the planet. The paradigm of the human being physically inferior and just relying on intelligence to survive is wrong. We even have specially adapted ligaments and attachments at the base of the skull to keep the head stable when running.
Having to constantly feed with sugar simply doesn't fit! Even more flagrant is the power to weight ratio between fat and carbohydrates. The body gets the same energy from 4.5 kilograms of stored fat compared to 31 kilos of stored carbohydrates. (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid_metabolism) This power to weight ratio is clearly why the body stores fat and not carbohydrates. Carbs are only useful for very top end explosive work where the generation of energy has to be very fast. When the body has a fully functioning fat metabolism then glucose is spared during exercise and made available for the purpose it was intended for – brief, explosive sprinting. Effective fat metabolism also protects protein from being converted into glucose through "gluconeogenesis" and so protects against muscle loss. Ketosis is a well-kept secret of bodybuilders who want huge muscle mass but very low fat on their bodies.
Nutrition pre-agriculture era would have depended on fats for energy as energy rich carbohydrates were neither developed nor cultivated. People hunting or foraging for food would have naturally encountered extended periods of fasting and endured them effortlessly. Their food would have been rich in fats and low in carbohydrates. Fruit such as berries are low in carbohydrates but are the richest in antioxidants. Most naturally available vegetables are low in carbohydrates but rich in phytonutrients. Fat – especially from summer grazing animals and some fish has been used for eons as the most efficient portable food storage and preservation method.
There are three ways to achieve ketosis; Fasting, Diet and Exercise. With all three appropriately aligned to correspond with pre-industrial and agricultural existence then a state of almost permanent ketosis is inevitable.
Fully adapted ketosis ensures a "flexible metabolism" where the person can eat and burn carbohydrates appropriately without ever leaving a state of ketosis - or if they do they can recover it rapidly. It's for this reason that carbs can actually be eaten during endurance sports without negatively affecting ketosis. Exercise (after a few hours) brings about a "carb debt" that allows consumption of more carbs than usual to be tolerated. It's clear however that this carb-debt is not a fixed issue as people living extended periods of time with a high fat diet and daily physical effort have been able to comfortably drop their blood sugar levels to 0.2 mmol/L - whereas an un-adapted individual would normally be unconscious a little below 4 mmol/L (Mike Stroud and Ranulph Fiennes - Antarctica crossing 1993/4 - over 93 days carrying 75% of their food calories as fat)
Within the parameters of "fat burning" exogenous (external source) ketones can actually be consumed to raise ketone levels directly - but those available are manufactured salts and are not natural. Alternative supplementation is more naturally available in the form of common oils; Coconut oil, Palm Kernel oil, Palm oil, Butter (grass fed) and Olive oil. Those oils contain high levels of Medium Chain Triglyceride fatty acids - which are converted directly in the liver into ketones - without other fat burning stages being involved. Coconut is very high in MCT oils and is widely recognized for its health giving properties. Many people are finding relief from the symptoms of dementia just by adding a spoonful of coconut oil to their daily diet – giving the brain access to ketones. The behind-the-scenes name for Alzheimer’s in the medical world is “Diabetes 3” – insulin resistance directly in the brain! Supplying the brain with ketones allows it to function.
New Paradigm: Humans are fundamentally incredible athletes and have remarkable powers of physical endurance
Paradigm 5: “Normal” body weight increases with age
Gaining weight with age is considered to be normal - especially for women beyond menopause. It isn't! The Body Mass Index (BMI) for a 70 kg man is considered to be normal between 20 and 25 - yet for a man over the age of 50 this range is altered to 23 to 28. In other words if you just manage to somehow keep that expanding waistline under control within this limit you might just be spared the multitude of chronic diseases that kills most people in modern civilization. “Normal weight” has therefore been adulterated to mean "limited loss of control of weight through an unnatural carbohydrate based diet." This needs to be turned upside down. It is not normal to systematically gain weight. In America they consider 1.5lb of fat gained per year after college is "normal"! No wonder 34.9% of all American adults are obese. This complete insanity here is considered “normal”. What’s convenient and normal here is the vast amount of money those victims have to pay for their medicine just to remain alive.
New Paradigm: Stable body weight throughout adult life is normal
Paradigm 6: Maximum heart rate lowers with age
There is a prolific number of formulas available for people to calculate their maximum heart rate and they are all based upon age. What they don’t tell you is that those formulas are designed for sedentary people or people who have spent a significant chunk of their lives at least being sedentary. If somebody remains physically trained all of their life then their maximum heart rate will not lower. When I started road cycle racing at age 50 my physically measured maximum heart rate on a bike was 176 bpm. Today six years later it is still exactly 176 bpm.
When in my 30s my maximum heart rate was 191 bpm. Years of struggling with carb induced weight issues and periods of relatively sedentary lifestyle have clearly taken their toll. It will be interesting to see if over time ketosis can recover some of this loss. The standard stupid formula used in sports science is 220 – age, which would suggest my current limit should be around 164. In the original handbook written for Polar (heart rate monitors) by Sally Edwards she encourages the use of such nonsense for athletic training. In a much more recent publication she corrects this mistake by stating clearly that constant training throughout life maintains a stable maximum heart rate – but she does not admit having made her earlier mistake.
New Paradigm: Stable maximum cardiovascular function throughout adult life is normal
Paradigm 7: Lactate Threshold provides the benchmark for sports performance
One brutal hill climbing race I participated in recently produced the result of sustaining a “95% of maximum heart rate” average for one hour. Such a high heart rate implies “red lining” which is the extreme upper end of anaerobic activity. Anaerobic activity uses around 70% glucose. Four years previously I had an almost identical performance in the same race when eating a high carb diet and so thought nothing of it. This time however I was on a solidly established ketogenic diet and had no significant glucose storage in muscles, blood or liver – so it is highly unlikely that I was burning glucose at a high rate for that hour. After the race I also did another 3 hour ride with stiff climbing on no food. One sign that I wasn’t burning much glucose was that my breathing was relatively low. Four years earlier I’d suffered post-exercise asthma from hyperventilation due to burning glucose – but this time nothing like that happened.
Hyperventilation happens when lactic acid from glucose metabolism enters the blood and raises the blood acidity. The only way the body can sort out this critical issue is to hyperventilate to expel CO2 which also affects blood acidity. Lowered CO2 leads to poorer oxygenation of body tissues and problems like asthma and possible cardiac arrest. The only clear conclusion here is that less lactic acid was being produced even at 95% of max heart rate – which then begs the question “where did the lactic acid performance threshold just vanish to?”
New Paradigm: Lactate Threshold is part of Carbohydrate Addiction – not sports performance. Avoiding hyperventilation due to excessive lactic acid may save your life
Paradigm 8: Chronic disease is genetically predisposed
Insulin Resistance is viewed as a metabolic disorder. The blame for this is usually placed upon the unfortunate genetic makeup of the individual. This disease occurs when the body experiences a positive feedback loop where the cells just say “Whoa! We have had enough of your damned insulin so we are going on strike.” The system responds by pumping out ever greater loads of insulin and encounters ever greater resistance. Until the feedback loop explodes - like screaming loudspeakers with a feedback from the microphone. When that happens it's now called Diabetes 2. It all begins with a belly that won't go away and with many years of yoyo dieting leading to obesity in inevitably failed attempts to eat like a rabbit on low fat diets. Fructose doesn't use insulin but still causes insulin resistance. Table sugar is 50% fructose. The liver also converts excess fructose into fat. The result is really a complete mess. Leptin is the hormone that generates satiety which tells you to stop eating. When fructose is eaten neither insulin nor leptin are used to regulate energy – so that never ending giant Coca-Cola will end up as mostly as fat in the liver – making those scary VLDL molecules. Even worse, fructose is known to also generate leptin resistance – so then the one mechanism that tells you to stop eating is actually knocked out!
Cancer cells can only metabolize glucose. Without glucose cancer cells die. This is why fasting and ketosis can both prevent and destroy cancer. Cancer cells also cannot handle oxygen! We will return to that later. In a nutshell, cancer is a metabolic disease – linked directly to carbohydrate consumption.
Congestive heart disease is commonly blamed on eating fat – particularly foods containing cholesterol. This has been soundly proven to be a fallacy based on confusing “correlation” with “causation” in scientific studies. The real underlying cause of heart disease is inflammation – generated through carbohydrate metabolism. With the fat metabolism closed down into the bargain there is a triple whammy present because there is no natural cleaning of fat deposits going on and the liver generates VLDL molecules from the carbs.
The cause of arthritis is not fully understood by doctors – but often only a few days of complete fasting where only water is consumed is enough to remove all arthritic pains. Most people blame the cause of arthritis on some form of stress or injury – but that’s likely to only be a trigger for an underlying metabolic condition. The inflammation in arthritic joints, like the inflammation in the arteries is linked to carbohydrate metabolism – possibly the high levels of oxidising and free radicals generated in the process. Ketone metabolism requires only 70% of the level of oxygen for the same level of performance and produces much lower levels of free radicals – with no associated inflammation.
Many synthetic toxins are stored in fat cells indefinitely inside the human body. Nobody has a clue about the long term effects of this. Each person can be sure to carry internally over 700 synthetic chemicals that didn’t even exist before the 1940s stored away inside their body. As insulin resistance grows and fat increases on the body you can be sure that the toxic load grows too. Fasting reverses this process and detoxifies the body as fat cells shrink and ketosis maintains this state of cleansing permanently. The body gets to rest and clean up when not eating – yet ketosis maintains the cleansing process and even directly causes generation of new neurons. Nutritional ketosis allows spontaneous “intermittent fasting” to take place – due to the accompanying lack of hunger – meaning 12 to 16 hour daily fasts where the body gets to stop digesting and go though a complete emptying of glucose stores – so it can focus on cleaning up work – like eating tumours and arthritic deposits in joints or cleaning up the arteries and rebuilding brain cells.
New Paradigm: The focus is currently on treating cancer – it should be on preventing cancer. It’s not genetic predisposition that leads to cancer – it’s inappropriate nutrition and other avoidable environmental factors (such as the major neurotoxin and carcinogen - fluoride - in food contaminated with pesticides, dental products, water supplies, processed foods, cooking utensils, cheap tea and psychotropic prescription drugs.) Preventing disease does not generate money for the industrial food chain.
Paradigm 9: CO2 is a waste gas
The lungs are actually CO2 reservoirs. Cells thrive in 7% CO2 conditions (because that’s what our planet used to have) and our atmosphere today is so low in CO2 (contrary to the claims of the criminal global warming alarmists) that there is only 0.039% present. Our lungs trap the CO2 produced by our metabolism and pump it back into the blood, where it is used to regulate oxygen release from the blood to tissues. Higher CO2 levels in the blood cause higher tissue oxygenation. The irony of this is that to increase oxygenation people need to breathe less. Nasal breathing is often exploited to help to achieve this goal – by naturally restricting the volume of air flow in and out of the lungs.
When the body is running on carbohydrates it consumes almost 50% more oxygen for aerobic metabolism than when burning ketones. When shifting up a gear to anaerobic activity the production of lactic acid guarantees hyperventilation to balance blood acidity. All of this over time pushes people to mouth breathe and towards chronic excessive breathing. Anxiety produces the same problem – which is why one solution is to breathe into a paper bag to re-inhale the CO2 - which dilates blood vessels and increases circulation.
Metabolic respiration includes breathing and the two systems – carbs or fats – play a major role in our breathing. Like all intelligent systems this implies a feedback system, where in this case conscious control over breathing is effective. Combining both improved restricted breathing and restricted carbohydrate consumption could well lead to better health. It is known from massive research through the work of Dr Buteyko in Russia and in many Russian hospitals that even the breathing approach alone when well developed can eliminate cancers that have not developed too far – and guarantee solid protection against cardiac arrest.
Cancer only grows in oxygen deprived tissue – and CO2 makes oxygen available from the blood for tissues. When CAT scanning the body for cancer, glucose molecules are used to attach to the tumours to light them up – because glucose is food for cancer. Remove the carbs and stop hyperventilation for a fighting chance against cancer risk.
New Paradigm: CO2 is a hormone and it is the only hormone to affect and regulate all the major organs of the body
Paradigm 10: Athletic performance is dependent on genetic makeup
Growing up we are taught that our genes determine our intelligence and capabilities. Some people (cigarette manufacturers for example) spend a lot of money trying to convince us that genes are responsible even for our health. It appears that this is not quite so accurate a picture. Switching from a carb metabolism to a fat/ketogenic metabolism will allow different – perhaps otherwise dormant – genes to be expressed. Genes are a code book but life itself is an interpretation of that book – and it can be interpreted in many ways. It turns out that genes at a cellular (micro) and macro level are controlled by their environment. Someone eating carbs all their life will possibly never experience their own real capacity for extended physical endurance. Many health issues fall into the same bag. Provide our bodies with the appropriate environment – including nutrition – and there is a certain freedom from the dogmatic and limiting constraint of the false paradigm that we are all slaves to our genes.
New Paradigm: Athletic performance and disease avoidance may be largely epigenetic
Paradigm 11: One person cannot do real science through self experimentation
Most errors in nutritional and medical science stem from a failure to distinguish between “correlation” and “causation”.
“Observational studies tend to find correlations between things. But let's be clear (and you may have heard this before): correlation does not equal causation. Just because two things happen at the same time doesn't mean that one thing causes the other….
An n=1 case study tells the experience of one individual (for our purposes, usually someone making a change in his or her diet). While most people downplay the importance of a study like this, a lot of information can be obtained from one person's experience—especially if that experience is new or unusual….
In many circles, the gold standard of human clinical research studies is the randomized, controlled clinical trial.
An n=1 case study can be a controlled study if an individual tries different diets and keeps everything else the same. In research language this is known as a "multiple-period, within-subject, crossover study." A case series is a research publication that tells the experience of several case studies, with or without the "crossover" on several different diets.
There is no standard definition of what constitutes a small or large study, but in general, a study with fewer than fifty participants is considered a small study while a large study has hundreds of participants. A large study tends to offer up more relevant and applicable results, and the more diverse the participants, the more likely the results will be relevant to you. For example, if the study looked at 8,000 men and you are a woman—well, you get the picture, right?“ - Dr Eric Westman (Keto Clarity)
New Paradigm: Scientific terminology of self experimentation… “multiple-period, within-subject, crossover study” N=1 is good science!
I’ve picked 11 paradigms to turn upside down and show how one perception often blinds us to another. It’s a beginning.
Current Status N=1
Weight
Currently my weight is stable at 65 kg, down from 77 kg five months ago due to fasting, ketosis and exercise. I am not restricting eating at all now and weigh myself only once per week. My fat consumption is probably around 75% of daily calories. Average ketone measurement shows around 1.7 mmol/L (mid nutritional ketosis). Systematically after moderate exercise (medium speed 10k run – one hour) the ketone measurement goes up to 3.4 mmol/L – into “weight loss” levels. After a tough cycling competition (6 hours) this has gone up to 8.5 mmol/L and remained there for 24 hours. My cycling jersey has dropped from size XXL to size Medium and other upper body clothing has dropped from Large to Medium.
If I see my ketone levels drop below 1.7 mmol/L then just upping the ratio of fat when eating is enough to quickly recover this level.
Health
Certain minor chronic health issues have completely cleared up – including gastric reflux, sleep apnoea, snoring and various bowel movement issues. I also have absolutely no joint pains – including total absence of almost life long chronic lower back issues (several times major surgery!) and complete absence of knee pain from an internally ripped joint where I refused surgery. This is partly due to ever improving technique in running, cycling and skiing – but not entirely due to technique. My chronically life-long poor dental health seems also to be spontaneously improving.
My lower lip has had a troubling recent history due to sun damage in the high mountains. A few years ago there was a clinically diagnosed cancer over 5mm wide and growing. That vanished spontaneously with nasal breathing alone during a period of extremely tough hill climbing cycle racing and training (mouth closed). Since last year another white protein growth was spreading on the other side of the lip and that spontaneously vanished one week after beginning a ketogenic diet and using it in competition.
One of the characteristics of being in ketosis is a feeling of having a permanent layer of fat covering the lips. Perhaps this is nature’s way of protecting the lips – because one way to protect against the sun and elements is to place a layer of coconut oil over the lips!
Athletic Performance
This is a real mixed bag. I definitely miss the “carb buzz” from being charged up with sugar – but being able to finish very long endurance races feeling good is fantastic. It feels like my body has been replaced by a different model. No doubt this is epigenetics at work. It is known from the bodybuilding world that ketosis causes an initial strength loss during the keto-adaptation period – which lasts up to 12 weeks. This strength loss has almost exactly matched the power to weight advantages that have come from losing a lot of weight. It’s frustrating to have lost all this weight but to be no faster. Being only 8 weeks into adaptation though there is a good chance that the strength will recover – as it’s the ketones required for muscle use that tend to be lacking during this adaptation process.
My last race had no carbohydrate consumption before or during and I’d registered high in ketones before the race. Despite not eating and the race being extremely demanding (3100m vertical over 133km) the race was finished very strongly and there was no sugar bonking or – of course - hypoketosis.
Motivation
Difficulties with managing training and recovery had completely discouraged me from racing long distance over the previous two years – leading to demotivation and abandoning participation in long courses. Initially there appeared to be a solution to this problem by modifying and dramatically increasing sugar supplements – but it led directly to even more serious and practically insurmountable weight management problems. The correct solution was fasting – then taking fasting ketosis into nutritional and exercise ketosis and eventually adapting the body to a full ketogenic metabolism. The result has been to render long endurance events extremely interesting and a great pleasure instead of a grinding torture. Even in the last race of the year – where I’d done just a few too many races close together – the overall impact was extremely positive.
I now have all the tools for simple weight management and so have no fear of losing control of the situation ever again. There is no fear of fasting or going without food – even through “red lining” high power hill climbing races or through long ultra-endurance races.
