@Oldvatr
Have you come across the work by Voleck and Phinney? They have written some books about low carbing, and have been studying it for decades. I like their work because they calmly discuss the pros and cons, providing excellent references, although it is rather tragic seeing the unprofessional mess that so called scientists have approached the subject.
My next purchase of their stuff will be their endurance athlete book. Not that I have the slightest interest in athletic endurance.
The problem with most of the studies of LC are that no one agrees on what low carb actually is (you need to check this with every single thing you look at. Sometimes they call 150g carbs 'low carb' and then say the diet is ineffective, ***!), and they rarely specify whether their 'low carb diet' consists of 6 tonnes of leafy green veg, or 10 slices of white bread a day. Any researcher who does not distinguish between low sustainable ketones (aka nutritional ketosis) and ketoacidosis is too ignorant to be taken seriously.
The horns of the dilemma, for me are
very simple (probably helped by the fact that as a reactive hypoglycaemic, carbs make me feel ill).
If I eat over my personal carb tolerance, I feel permanently sluggish, leaden limbed, get indigestion, have erratic high and low blood glucose, my joints ache and I get inflammation, my HbA1c rises sharply, my brain fog returns and my attention span shortens to compete with gnats. I feel seriously CR%P.
When I get down below my personal carb tolerance all those symptoms disappear, my brain returns to full function (although that is always subjective, isn't it?), inflammation recedes, I get more energy and feel sooo much better. I am not in ketosis all the time, but I AM fat adapted.
So, as I said, my decision is basically to trundle along in Fat Adaptation and feel WELL. Or blunder along burning glucose and feel CR%P. The difference is so obvious and clear cut for me that I don't consider it a choice, and the health questions about long term ketosis strike me (personally) as absurd. I would rather live for 15 years feeling well due to fat adaption than live 30+ years in an aching body, brain fog, and a grey half-life.
Gosh. What a difficult decision!
I would suggest that only people who feel such benefits ( people like me and
@nosher8355 and all those gloriously zealotous bloggers) actually NEED to be fat adapted.
The rest of the world just needs to find their own personal sweet spot, balancing their lipid profile, their carbs, their HbA1c and their CR%P v WELL seesaw.
I have also said, many times, that the fewer people who embrace ketosis, double cream and fillet steak, the better. All the more for me.
