Dr. Mercola introduces the concept of Nutritional Ketosis, a concept I’ve been following.
Obesity and top killers such as diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and cancer have something significant in common — they’re all rooted in insulin and leptin resistance.
By eating a healthy high-fat, low-carbohydrate and low- to moderate-protein diet, you enter into what is known as nutritional ketosis: a state in which your body burns fat as its primary fuel rather than glucose (sugar). Mounting research suggests nutritional ketosis is the answer to a long list of health problems, starting with obesity.
In fact, emerging scientific evidence suggests a high-fat, low-net carb and low- to moderate-protein diet (in other words, a diet that keeps you in nutritional ketosis) is ideal for most people.
The primary reason that so many people are overweight and/or in poor health these days is that the Westernized diet is overloaded with non-fiber carbs as the primary fuel, which in turn inhibit your body’s ability to access and burn body fat.
High-quality fats, meanwhile, are a far preferable fuel, as they are utilized far more efficiently than carbs. When you burn fat as your primary fuel, your respiratory quotient (the amount of oxygen you need) typically goes down, which is a sign that your metabolism is running more efficiently.
It is my belief, as well as that of many of the experts I have interviewed, that over 90 percent of cancer cases are either preventable or treatable.
The key is recognizing that cancer is really a mitochondrial metabolic disease, rooted in poor diet choices combined with a toxic lifestyle.
Viewing cancer as a metabolic disease — opposed to a disease of damaged DNA, which is a downstream effect of mitochondrial dysfunction — gives us the power to control this dysfunction by carefully choosing foods and nutrients and employing strategies that help optimize the biochemical pathways that suppress cancer growth while simultaneously stimulating mechanisms to push it into remission.
The central premise is that since cancer cells need glucose and insulin to thrive, lowering the glucose level in your blood though carb and protein restriction literally starves the cancer cells. Additionally, low protein intake tends to dampen the mTOR pathway that is often responsible for accelerating cell proliferation.
