Ketogenic Diet safe for SENIORS ? (It Depends...)

Hey, this is Dr. Berry. Let's discuss for a few minutes, is the ketogenic diet safe for seniors? I myself am 50 years old at the making of this video. I have many, many patients in my clinic who are 50, 60, 70, 80, even 90 years old. And the question is becoming more and more common, is it safe for me to eat keto if I am over 50, over 60, over 70, over 80? And so I wanted to make this video to explain to you why I think it's very safe and why I think it's probably the best diet you can choose at that age. So if you know someone who is 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, my my oldest patient recently went to heaven. She was a hundred and seven years old and she was progressively lowering her carbohydrate intake even then. If you know someone who's over 50, 60, 70, who is considering trying the ketogenic diet for weight loss or for all the other hundreds of health benefits that it can offer, please share this video with them. You're welcome to share this video in your keto groups, your low-carb group, your Banting, your carnivore group, anywhere on social media that you think you can help me to help more people. Now, let's talk about this. As we get older, without exception, this applies to all of us, including me, darn it. We become more insulin resistant as we get older. That's a known medical fact. On average, we get more insulin resistant. We become more likely to suffer from chronic inflammation. We don't absorb vitamins and minerals out of our gastrointestinal system as readily. And so we really need to make sure we're getting the vitamins and minerals and other nutrients that we need in our diets in large enough amounts. We tend to lose muscle mass. If we're not being very vigilant about this, we tend to lose bone density, which is also a very big deal. And I actually talk about that in another video on this channel. We also become more likely to suffer from vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Those are all the things that are going to happen to all of us as we get older, if we don't eat the proper diet and live the proper lifestyle. So really, my question is, at what better age should you do a ketogenic diet? The ketogenic diet that I recommend is a whole food, real food, fatty meat, heavy ketogenic diet. And I think that that's going to give anyone age 50 or older all the vitamins, minerals, protein, essential fatty acids, essential amino acids that they need for their best health. Now, there are many scare tactics that you'll see out there in the mainstream media and other expert YouTube channels or websites. And let's go over a few of those and let's talk about the common sense and the logic behind these. First, you'll hear, oh, there's no research that shows that keto safe for your age group. That's absolutely true. But here's what you may not have ever heard before or ever thought about. There is no research showing that the standard American diet is safe for seniors to eat. Yeah, this is just a big experiment that we started about 60 years ago of eating all these carbohydrates, and no one knows if it's safe or not. The research has never been done. There's no research that shows that the American Diabetes Association diet is safe for seniors or for diabetics, even for that matter. There's no research that shows that the American Heart Association's DASH diet is safe in seniors. And actually, there's research that's come out that shows that cutting your salt as much as the AHA wants you to is actually bad for you. It lowers your lifespan, lowers your health span. It's bad for even people with congestive heart failure to limit their salt intake as much as the AHA wants you to. So there's no research backing up any of these diets. And so it makes sense to me, since there's no compelling research that shows that eating one diet is better than the other, that we should try to mimic the diet that our ancestors have eaten for the last 250,000 years. And in my mind, that's a fatty meat-heavy ketogenic diet. Now, the next thing you'll hear is that keto is very hard, very restrictive. It's hard to do. Most people can't do it. And I want to enlist my other listeners for this. If you are doing keto and you're 50 or older, I want you to put in the comments if you think keto is restrictive or hard, okay? And if you're new to this way of eating and you're like, I don't know if I can do this, I want you to read some of the comments below because I have found the ketogenic way of eating. Currently, I'm doing a very fatty meat-heavy brand of keto called Carnivore. I find it to be fun and delicious and enjoyable. I can't wait to sit down to my next meal. I also don't have any problem fasting because I'm eating so much good, healthy fat. I'm just not hungry. And so that really helps a lot. I think I find the ketogenic way of eating to be very easy. And I think you'll see in the comments that thousands of other people find it to be also very easy as well. You hear the comment, oh, saturated fat is very bad for you. First of all, you can get saturated fat in vegetables and in meats. You can get saturated fat in both places. Actually, fatty meat like red meat, like pork, like lamb, like pork also have plenty of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats as well as saturated fat. They're actually the perfect blend of all the good, healthy fats that you need. And so that's where you find fat. Now, the research is the research showing that fat's bad for you. There's some very cursory research that might show a correlation. But when you actually dig into this data, it's basically all biased by the researcher's opinion that you should eat a plant-based diet. And the research is just ridiculous trying to prove that fatty meat is bad for you. I don't find any research that compels me to worry about eating lots of fatty meat. The next you'll hear is, oh, salt's bad for you. And so there's a lot of salt in keto, and they encourage you to eat lots of salt. And again, I already alluded to this above. Also, a great book if you'd like to learn about the human need for salt is The Salt Fix by Dr. James D. Nicolantonio. This is a great book. I'll put a link down in the show notes. Salt is good for you. We need salt. If you prick your finger and taste your blood, it's salty. It's supposed to be salty. Mammals need lots of salt to be healthy. It's just a myth that got started, again, about 50, 60 years ago that salt's bad for And even though human beings have eaten as much salt as they could get their hands on for a quarter of a million years, now the fad is to limit your salt. And that's just exactly what it is. It's fad. It's based on no meaningful research whatsoever. So if your goals as a senior are to increase your mineral acuity, to try to decrease your risk of dementia, if your goal is to increase your bone density, not only your bone density, but your bone strength, if your goal is to increase your muscle tone and your muscle mass, if your goal is to decrease chronic inflammation in your body, then I think you found the right place. I think keto is for you. You should at least give it a six or an eight week try. And I think at the end of that time, you're going to feel so much better that you'll know this is the way of eating that you should follow for the rest of your life, which I predict will be long and healthy and happy and full of adventures. Now, if you enjoyed this video, please take one second and click that subscribe button and click the little bell right beside it. That way, every time I get a bright idea, you'll be one of the very first to know. And also, I want to give a big thank you to my patrons on my Patreon website. You guys have made life so much easier for me. You've made it so possible for me to help so many other people with your generous offer. And I thank you so much for that. If you'd like to sign up to be a patron, the link is right down below. You can sign up very quickly and throw a buck or two my way. This is Dr. Berry. I'll see you next time.