Ketosis?

Does anyone here know anything about the body state called Ketosis?

My friend is on an atkins diet and swears by ketosis, which is where the body has to convert fat directly for energy because there's no sugar to be had.  Apparently you drop 'weight' very fast once a body enters ketosis, due to a very low-carb diet, but I also read that this 'burns' lean tissue and organ tissue along with the fat, if not as much as fat.  Atkins people swear you don't lose any muscle tissue, and only fat. 

Does anybody know?  If it really does burn up muscle tissue too, I'd like to get my friends to switch from the atkins diet..

Ketosis is basically putting your body into starvation mode.  Yes, you'll loose weight quickly, but it's not exactly healthy.  It's what most Anorexics aim for.  You do burn more than fat.

fluffy, have you read the lit. on the Atkins diet on this web site? If not read it. It's in the Library.  Has alot of good info. on the diets that are out now. 

In short... Ketosis is BAD

Your body is eating away your muscles for energy.

Here's an interesting article: http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/167/12/13 96?etoc

Note that the boy was suffering from severe juvenile diabetes and ketosis... a lot of the symptoms they state the boy had are due to ketosis (pale, hair falling out, smell of acetone on breath).

I've read the library stuff, but I'm hoping for actual scientific evidence, because my friend will say "well, the atkins diet says it only burns fat!"

i dont know what everything else says, but i know some facts of when i tried it. It only took about three weeks to lose almost 20 lbs, and i'm not that overwieght, so that should tell you right away that it's bad, and the moment i went off the diet, and i'm not saying i wasnt eating healthy, because i was, i just simply added carbs back in. i gained it ALL back including an extra 5 lbs.

I hope this helps and tell your friends that unless they want to stay carb free and be unhealthy their whole lives to maybe try a different approach to losing weight.

I didn't do Atiken, but I did do I diet that had you go into Ketosis.

I lost 110 pounds in 8 weeks and ended up in the hospital in December and January! 

I needed to have my gall bladder removed because my rapid weight loss caused gall stones.

It's not healthy.  The risk outway the benefits in my opinion.

I made I typing error I ment to say 8 months!

Next time I will not type with my eyes closed!

whew.. I was really scared for  a second..

8 months is still bad mind you.. sorry to hear about your hospitalization :(

Ketosis is a very bad thing. When my dog developed diabetes (and she survived for a year with it) I had to test her urine every day for Ketoacidosis to make sure that the insulin shots I gave her were working. In diabetes, your body has enough sugar from the food that you eat but it doesn't make insulin so it can't use food properly. Instead, regardless how much is eaten, the body feeds on itself until it becomes emaciated or insulin is introduced.

When you starve your body by not giving it enough food, this is the same thing that happens to you, until you introduce more food. The body doesn't care if it burns fat, muscle or organs. Fuel is fuel and it will take what it needs in order to prolong survival. When you've used up all your stored fuel (fat, muscle, etc.), that's when it becomes fatal.

One thing that might be getting mixed up here: There is Benign Ketosis - what Atkins is talking about and there is Ketoacidosis. The two are very different. Ketoacidosis is a complication of diabetes and can be life threatening. I've known a diabetic who passed away from that.

From wikipedia: Ketosis, which is one of the body's processes for the metabolism of body fat, should not be confused with ketoacidosis (severe ketosis which causes the blood to become acidic), a medical condition induced by diabetes, that is usually accompanied by dehydration, hyperglycemia, and insulin deficiency.

(Wikipedia's whole article on Ketosis is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis )

If you are concerned, I'd ask your friend if they've discussed it with their doctor. I followed a modified Atkins eating plan for a few years and experienced no ill side effects. The only reason I stopped because my new marriage to a big carb-eater made meal-planning inconvienent.

Despite pre-conceived notions about low-carb eating, I ate more fresh produce and whole grains on that diet than anytime previously.

hmmm, I think I"m confused. All I know is I was using ketodiastix to check for excessive levels of sugar in urine.

But I did find another helpful article:

Ketosis

Ketosis sticks do check for extra sugar in your urine.. that means that all that sugar is leaving your body.  Not that you're taking in an excessive amount, but that your body is putting out an excessive amount- unhealthy

sorry Hunny, that article isn't helpful at all.  I need someing SCIENTIFIC. 

The Wikipedia one is much more helpful, but probably not really great.

Fluffydragon -

Try looking for articles through the Canadian Medical Assoc./American Medical Assoc. If those aren't sufficient, maybe ask your doctor or a registered dietician.

Here's one article that I found right off the bat. Scroll down to "Low-Carbohydrate Diets".

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/174/1/56? maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULT FORMAT=&fulltext=ketosis&andorexactfu lltext=and&searchid=1142006203657_1361&am p;FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&res ourcetype=1&journalcode=cmaj

"what most anorexics aim for"

i'm sorry but as a recovering anorexic, i can say that ketosis was never on my mind. horrible inner pain, depression, warped reflections, family issues, dying friendships, and deep self loathing were on my mind.

we're not a group of stupid dieters, or vein for that matter.

I went on Atkins twice. Both times I lost weight fast, felt sort of OK (low energy at first, got somewhat better as it progressed). Always had a greasy feeling in my mouth and bad breath. It's a very very hard diet to stick to - all the fats and proteins you are allowed to eat are lovely, but one is used to eating them with carbs! (what good is cream cheese without the bagel, or guacamole without the tortilla, if you get my drift). I went off the diet after a few weeks each time and gained back twice what I lost. I don't think it did good things to my metabolism, but the effects were not permanent.

If someone can actually stay on Atkins and feel OK, more power to them. It isn't the healthiest or most flexible lifestyle but hey, it's probably still better than the typical American lifestyle. Me, I am having a much better time counting calories. I've stuck with it twice as long as I ever stayed on Atkins, lost more weight than I ever lost on Atkins, and this time it "feels" permanent and doable.

All weight loss burns both fat and muscle. The more overweight you are, the more of the loss is fat. The closer you are to normal weight, the more it contains muscle. I don't think this is intrinsically different depending on the diet. I know that maintaining a "normal" (i.e. maintenance intake) of protein makes you lose somewhat less muscle. Someone on Atkins is almost certainly getting enough protein intake. Your friend has other concerns - namely, long-term "doability" of their diet.

Ketosis is the accumulation of ketone bodies in your system, which are the byproduct of not getting enough glucose in your diet. It is generally accompanied by an acetone smell to the breath (this is how they used to diagnose diabetics many years ago). When you deprive your body of carbohydrates your glycogen stores in the liver are broken down to fuel the brain (which runs exclusively on glucose under normal circumstances as fatty acids can't cross the blood/brain barrier). These stores are depleted in about a day as the human body can't store more than that so the body has to get glucose from somewhere in order to maintain a concentration of above 2.2mM.

Thus, the first priority of the body under starvation conditions is to provide sufficient glucose to the brain and other tissues (ie red blood cells) that are 100% dependent on this fuel (other tissues help out by halting glucose uptake, as a result of low insulin levels, and rather rely exclusively on fatty acids). Unfortunately precursors for glucose are not abundant within the body but rather are stored as triglycerols in adipose (fat) cells, which can't be converted into pyruvate (you can't go backward from Acetyl CoA, which is the form fat chains end up in when they are cleaved from the triglycerol backbone), so the body has to figure out a way to supplement its glucose deficit. Breaking down amino acids is one way, and so the first step the body takes is breaking down proteins to convert to glucose. However, this necessitates a loss of function and as most animals depend on the ability to move rapidly, which requires a large muscle mass, muscle loss must be minimized.

How does the body get around this? After about 3 days of starvation the liver forms large amounts of ketone bodies (acetoacetate) which are generated from from fatty acid breakdown. Ketone bodies can be used by the brain in times of famine when glucose is in short supply. After 3 days of starvation 1/3 of the brains energy comes from these ketone bodies, and is associated with a reduced need for glucose (40g/day instead of 120g) by the brain (slowing of the metabolism), which as a result preserves muscle mass.

Your body does not run as well on ketone bodies, your brain does not run as well on ketone bodies and ketosis is something to be avoided. It places undue stress on your body and is not an effective way of dieting. You essentially make yourself sick in order to lose weight,  as it is not the natural way of things to subsist on acetoacetate.

It's so much easier to just eat only when you're hungry y'know rather than starve.