Isn't LCHF the same as Atkins?

LittleGreyCat

Well-Known Member
Messages
4,233
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Dislikes
Diet drinks - the artificial sweeteners taste vile.
Having to forswear foods I have loved all my life.
Trying to find low carb meals when eating out.
Atkins "diet" I remember from around 1984 when I got Type 1. I guess it's still around especially on diabetes forums especially. There's one in the US and they are all over it too they call it "ketogenic" and test their urine for ketones too. Not sure why I've never done that once. My gut feeling is it's not a good thing to spill ketones in your urine.

Suggest you educate your gut. :)
Ketones are produced quite naturally by healthy people.
As usual the Internet is full of conflicting information but there seems to be an agreement that ketones are produced when you are using fat for fuel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketone_bodies

"
Ketone bodies are three water-soluble molecules (acetoacetate, beta-hydroxybutyrate, and their spontaneous breakdown product, acetone) that are produced by the liver from fatty acids[1] during periods of low food intake (fasting), carbohydrate restrictive diets, starvation, prolonged intense exercise,[2] alcoholism or in untreated (or inadequately treated) type 1 diabetes mellitus. These ketone bodies are readily picked up by the extra-hepatic tissues, and converted into acetyl-CoA which then enters the citric acid cycle and is oxidized in the mitochondria for energy.[3] In the brain, ketone bodies are also used to make acetyl-CoA into long-chain fatty acids.

Ketone bodies are produced by the liver under the circumstances listed above (i.e. fasting, starving, low carbohydrate diets, prolonged exercise and untreated type 1 diabetes mellitus) as a result of intense gluconeogenesis, which is the production of glucose from non-carbohydrate sources (not including fatty acids).[1] They are therefore always released into the blood by the liver together with newly produced glucose, after the liver glycogen stores have been depleted (these glycogen stores are depleted after only 24 hours of fasting).[1]
"

From the list above some causes are good (e.g. low carbohydrates, prolonged exercise) and some are bad (e.g. poorly treated T1).

As a T1 I think you should perhaps be more wary of ketone bodies in the blood or urine because of diabetic ketoacidosis but T2s on diet, exercise and Metformin (such as myself) are quite happy to see ketones in urine and blood samples. Just not too many!

ketosistix_graph.jpg