• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Stop Keto Now - The Mice Have Spoken!

So funny...dextrose is part of a keto diet, therefore keto is bad Nope, dextrose is bad, it isn't part of a keto diet and fat is good.

Really, scientists you should try keto for yourselves, you might find your brains work a tad better on it.
 
Diakat said:
Here is the press release:

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/tps-kdm080718.php
Click to expand...
"The study, which was conducted by ETH Zurich in conjunction with University Children's Hospital Zurich, involved feeding mice two different types of diet (a ketogenic diet and a high fat diet, which causes the liver to become resistant to insulin"

Rather a bold statement to make. This sounds like they already knew what causes IR and then found evidence to support this fact. They may on the other hand just be making an assumption........ They have included this nugget

"It is important to note that the research did not analyze whether the diet employed causes obesity, if given long term."

I think that by high fat diet they mean a normal diet ie regular (or high?) carb such as Eatwell (or the mouse equivalent) with added gratuitous fat and extra mozarella but not a LCHF diet. So they seem to be comparing a LCLF diet against a fatty Eatwell

ETH is however a reputable Technical Institute so there must be a formal paper description of how they conducted this research, but I cannot find it. As in other animal analogues, we need to look carefully at what they used for the diets, and whether the mice were a specially bred strain that is susceptible to diabetes anyway by genetic disposition. This has been the fault behind other such studies I have reviewed in the past.

P.S. I do not know how we would tell the mice.........

I wonder how they established the carb intake level at which a mouse becomes ketogenic, and how they measured the level of ketosis. Difficult doing finger prick tests on a mouse.... So they do say they used special techniques but are their methods valid? No description in the press release - how convenient

In one section they say that if you have IR then you run a high risk of T2D -No ***** Sherlock. But then they say the research proves that keto causes IR, but I see no ships (or proof) in this release.

If anyone can unearth the full report then please post it here, please. Until then I give this a miss.

Postnote: I have now read the formal report, and I still give this press release a miss. The press release is not accurately reporting on the study results - seemingly the opposite conclusion than the scientists make.
 
Last edited:
tim2000s said:
And why are they feeding mice on a keto diet something containing dextrose?
Click to expand...
It is also high salt, low potassium and very low magnesium which would mess up my homeostasis quite nicely. The disaccarides is high, presumably the dextrose/
 
I think t
They are really interested in telling the weight loss/ slimming fad audience, or anyone considering taking that path who are otherwise normal (metabolism wise that is, not mental state).
 
According to the highly respected Tom and Jerry series, mice have a keto diet anyway, living entirely on cheese.
 
If the mice could speak they would say "Can we have mouse food please? Never mind, just leave the cage doors open and we'll find it ourselves!"

Kendrick is right, Publish or be damned to obscurity.
 
Ummm reminds me of the film "the mouse that roared" That was a comedy also.
 
Hey gang. sorry I've been away for a while.

I was annoyed by this article. Saw this Sky News on my google feed this morning and wanted to have a moan about it. Now I'm seeing it popping up from other news outlets (The Independent, etc). It just takes one BS article to then filter through and before you know it everybody is reading that the Keto diet is making people diabetic.

It's so frustrating, as I've seen so many articles talking about the benefits of Keto, and now this will ruin all the good work. The papers will write any old ******** without questioning the validity of the source, all for print space. Grr.
 
bulkbiker said:
Apparently this is what they were fed.. doesn't look much like my food...

http://www.bio-serv.com/pdf/F3666.pdf
Click to expand...

Too right

Ingredients: Lard, Butter, Corn Oil, Casein, Cellulose, Mineral Mix, Vitamin Mix, Dextrose I

Poor, poor mice.
When will these scientists learn that feeding mice Frankenfood and then then pretending the results have any bearing on i) humans, and ii) humans eating real food, is simply NONSENSICAL.
 
Diakat said:
It's open access

https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/JP275173
Click to expand...
Thank you. This will take some reading to digest, but my first impression is that what they are seeing may well be liver dump that happens at the start of keto diet. They only gave the diets for 3 days,

Their report is full of references to other previous works by others, and this is often conflicting information which I find to be a major distraction while reading.

I think Tim is right - an iGTT done while keto is not usually successful without a period of normalisation, but this is generally a temporary effect, whereas these researchers are postulating that it is a dangerous longer term condition which may be their interpretation, but a 3 day trial before euthanasia is not proving that IMO. To my mind a huge overdose fix of glucose intravenous is bound to upset any control system for a while in the same way kicking an ants nest or wasp nest has.

They do show in the method section that they used MRI scans to measure body composition, but the report does not seem to provide any results. But they do talk of weight loss and it may be the MRI was used to determine lean masss only. I note that neither diet seems to have reduced any weight in 3 days so their comments at the start regarding keto being used for slimming is thus not proven either. Waste of time and money doing MRIs. eh? At least Newcastle used theur scans to good effect. Hpwever, it may be the MRI was used to determine muscle takeup, but it is not clear.
 
Oldvatr said:
Report itself has
a ketogenic diet with 90% of calories derived from fat (Teklan TD.96355; Envigo, Huntingdon, UK
Click to expand...
Which is here
https://www.envigo.com/resources/data-sheets/96355.pdf

Casein 173.3
DL-Methionine 2.6
Vegetable Shortening, hydrogenated (Crisco) 586.4
Corn Oil 86.2
Cellulose 87.97
Vitamin Mix, Teklad (40060) 13.0
Choline Bitartrate 2.5TBHQ,
antioxidant 0.13
Mineral Mix, Ca-P Deficient (79055) 20.0
Calcium Phosphate, dibasic 19.3
Calcium Carbonate 8.2
Magnesium Oxide 0.4

Doesn't look like anything I have ever eaten or ever would. The measurements are grams per KG so most of it is vegetable fat.
Vegetarians and vegans beware....

Described as a "Purified Diet".... hmmm
 
Diakat said:
It's open access

https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/JP275173
Click to expand...

Or to quote their key points:
  • A ketogenic diet is known to lead to weight loss and is considered metabolically healthy; however there are conflicting reports on its effect on hepatic insulin sensitivity.
  • KD fed animals appear metabolically healthy in the fasted state after 3 days of dietary challenge, whereas obesogenic high‐fat diet (HFD) fed animals show elevated insulin levels.
  • A glucose challenge reveals that both KD and HFD fed animals are glucose intolerant.
  • Glucose intolerance correlates with increased lipid oxidation and lower respiratory exchange ratio (RER); however, all animals respond to glucose injection with an increase in RER.
  • Hyperinsulinaemic–euglycaemic clamps with double tracer show that the effect of KD is a result of hepatic insulin resistance and increased glucose output but not impaired glucose clearance or tissue glucose uptake in other tissues.
If anything, the glucose tolerance test was made worse by fasting the mice before doing it, after 3 days of solid high fat diet, which really wouldn't help.

I think point 2 is the more important one.

Reading further through the document, the results showed:
Short‐term obesogenic HFD feeding but not KD causes an increase in fasting insulin and homeostatic model assessment‐insulin resistance (HOMA‐IR)

also:
Short‐term KD or HFD feeding causes impaired glucose clearance and insulin tolerance (an already recognised phenomenon that is known about in human OGTTs)

plus:
Steady‐state RER inversely correlates with glucose tolerance, although all groups respond to an i.p. glucose challenge with an increase in RER which means that those on the KD diet were reliant on lipids as their energy source

In addition:
Hyperinsulinaemic–euglycaemic clamps reveal differences in insulin‐suppressed endogenous glucose production but not glucose disposal or tissue glucose uptake which is where they state that the glucose disposal across tissues was unchanged between diets, and it demonstrated that it was the liver that was impaired in glucose clearance after three days.

Finally:
Interestingly, in our studies, only the HFD animals showed signs of impaired glucose homeostasis when observed in the 6 h fasted state, even though the effect on hepatic glucose output under insulin was stronger in the KD fed group. [...] It is relevant to note that a low carbohydrate KD does not cause obesity and that muscle insulin sensitivity appears to be entirely preserved in this model even after long periods of feeding, in marked contrast to obesogenic HFD [...] This is a necessary adaptation in animals on a KD. However, in animals consuming large amounts of fat together with significant amounts of carbohydrate (a hallmark of the so‐called Western diet), the increased flux of glucose from endogenous production combines with the dietary glucose, leading to a progressive deterioration of systemic insulin sensitivity caused by the elevated insulin levels released from the pancreas to cope with elevated postprandial and fasting glucose levels.

Or in other words, the headlines have inaccurately reported a load of old ****. The discussion in the paper itself doesn't support the headline hypothesis.

The researchers have basically said that those on the obesogenic High Fat Diet had impaired glucose homeostasis where the Ketogenic Diet fed ones didn't. In addition, the KD fed animals did not become obese. Only those on the 50% of calories HFD diet (supposed to equate to a standard western diet in a partially fasted state) and chow got fat and showed signs of progressing to T2D.

Basically, no-one in the press has read the paper properly, they've jumped to conclusions and the reports in the media are cobblers. Terrible reporting all round.



 
Lord Midas said:
It just takes one BS article to then filter through and before you know it everybody is reading that the Keto diet is making people diabetic.
Click to expand...
Also given that the words low carb and keto are often mistakenly used interchangeably, the rot could spread further.
 
lucylocket61 said:
I thought hydrogenated fats were now know to be evil stuff and very harmful and banned in several countries.
Click to expand...
Still legal for rats and biscuit eating humans. At least the human omnivores get a choice and get their dextrose and vegetable shortening baked into cookies with a coffee to dunk them into...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn More.…