Keto is More Than Just A Diet (Cancer Prevention)

For years, we heard the word keto and thought, weight loss, great, but now we're learning that being in ketosis can do a whole lot more than help you shed a few pounds. It can actually help to change the metabolic environment inside your body and prevent a slew of health issues, everything from diabetes to dementia and even cancer. And this has nothing to do with fear mongering that sugar feeds cancer or carbs are poisonous and you should go and throw out the potatoes in your fridge immediately, because researchers are now discovering something way more interesting. When your body enters ketosis, you start making ketones, and one of those guys has a ridiculously long name called beta-hydroxybutyrate. Nobody wants to hear me say that 47 times in this video, so we're going to call it BHB. But BHB doesn't just sit around waiting to be burned off for energy. Now we know that it actually sends out some positive signals to your cells, it interacts with proteins, and it can even change metabolic pathways. And according to some amazing new research, it can also interfere with how cancer cells grow. So that's what we're talking about today. Because if you've had cancer and you're worried about it coming back, or you're just trying to lower your chances of ever getting it, this new research gives us a completely different way of thinking about ketosis. And later, I'm also going to show you what a healthy version of keto can look like that doesn't involve eating sticks of butter with a side of bacon for dinner. But first, I want to squash the idea that all carbs are evil. Whenever I make a video about keto, someone says, So you're saying I can never eat fruit again? No, that's not what I'm saying. People tend to think of keto as a restrictive diet where you just have to take everything away. Take away bread, take away pasta, take away bananas, take away all joy, and somehow you magically become healthier. But that's not how we should look at keto at all. Instead of focusing on what keto takes away, we're going to talk about what keto creates. So first of all, it creates a different metabolic state called ketosis. Your insulin comes down, your reliance on food changes, you start burning more of your stored body fat for energy, and your liver turns some of that fat into ketones. And again, one of those ketones is your new best friend, BHB. Think of BHB like an enthusiastic life coach for your cells. It's like Tony Robbins sending messages to your cells telling them what to do. And when we're talking about cancer cells, those messages mean a lot. Because cancer cells have one gigantic problem. They desperately want to grow and multiply fast. But that takes a ridiculous amount of energy and raw material. It's like building a house. You need lumber, drywall, concrete, wires, plumbing, and somehow 20 extra trips to Home Depot because you bought the wrong thing. But cancer cells have the same basic problem. If they want to build more cancer cells, they need fuel and raw material. And this is where sugar enters the picture. Because when your cells break down sugar or glucose for energy, it's called glycolysis. And that process generates the raw materials that cells can use. Now since most types of cancer cells love sugar, they're sugar addicts, they gobble it up fast and burn it off fast, making their building material fast. But sugar isn't the only thing it needs. Because even if a cell has all the sugar and building materials it could ever want, it still needs somebody to yell at it to say, start building. Cancer cells need growth signals. And one of the biggest ones is called mTOR. If you've seen some of my other videos on fasting, protein, and building muscle, you've probably heard me talking about this before. But we can think of mTOR like a big growth switch. Normally it's a good thing. You go to the gym and build muscle, you want that growth signal switched on. You cut yourself and need to heal, you want growth signals. You're a growing kid, also kind of important. But if you're a cancer cell, you love growth signals. Your dream scenario is to have a growth switch duct taped into the on position so you can grow, build, divide, repeat. And some cancers even find sneaky ways to keep growth signals like mTOR on. But this is where that amazing little ketone, BHB, really shines. Two years ago, we discovered that BHB can actually mess with how your cells burn sugar for energy. Why does this matter? Because remember how cancer cells rely on burning sugar to make their raw building materials so they can grow and multiply. But BHB slows this down. And it also slows down mTOR, the signals they need to grow. So think about what's happening here. You're in ketosis, you're making ketones, and one of them, BHB, is potentially slowing down the growth of cancer cells from two directions. So in these experiments, researchers saw that cancer cells weren't able to grow or multiply as fast when ketones are around. And that news is a lot more valuable than just saying sugar feeds cancer. Because now we're not talking about being afraid to eat ice cream for the rest of your life. We're talking about changing the metabolic environment in our body to make it harder for cancer cells to thrive. So instead of asking, what happens to our cancer risk when we eat less sugar, maybe we should be asking, what happens when we increase ketones in our body? What happens to the messages being sent to our cells, to our metabolic pathways, and even to our genes? Obviously some amazing things. And we're only beginning to understand everything ketones can do. Now obviously I'm not saying keto can cure cancer, and I would never tell somebody to replace their chemo with the keto diet. Please don't do that. This research we've been talking about didn't include a clinical trial where thousands of cancer patients were put on the keto diet, but it does show that keto may be another tool we have to help prevent cancer or keep it from coming back. But if you're currently on cancer treatment, please talk to your doctor about making any big changes to your diet, especially if you're struggling to maintain your weight or your muscle. But this new research is really exciting, because for decades we were focused on how cancer was more of a genetic disease. Which gene is broken? How did it mutate? But now we're adding on another layer. We're also asking the question, what kind of environment does this cancer cell need to exist, and how can we change it? How is it affected by insulin, inflammation, growth signals? That's where things like ketones really become interesting. And they're teaching us a lot about cancer that we've never known before. Now, I know you may be wondering, isn't the keto diet kind of unhealthy? It's just a lot of meat and fat. Because people hear the word keto and immediately picture someone eating bacon, cheese, butter, steak, more cheese. That's not healthy. And if we're talking about cancer prevention, the food you eat really matters a lot. But you can build a ketogenic or very low-carb diet around healthy foods like avocados, nuts, non-starchy vegetables, high-quality meats, fish and eggs, olive oil, herbs and spices. You don't have to make butter your entire personality. And the keto diet isn't the only way to make your body produce more ketones. Fasting can do it too. When you stop eating for a while and your insulin begins to drop, eventually your body starts burning more of your excess body fat for energy, and your liver turns some of it into ketones. So basically, fasting and the keto diet can get you there in different ways, but they both trigger a similar metabolic shift. They can both teach your body to become more metabolically flexible. And that means it depends less on food coming in for energy, and learns how to burn fat more easily and make ketones more easily. Now if you're thinking, great, so should I be trying to stay in ketosis every single day? No. Becoming more metabolically flexible actually means switching things up often. The whole point is that you don't do the exact same thing every day. You don't have to fast for exactly 18 hours every morning, and you definitely don't need to panic because you ate a sweet potato and it kicked you out of ketosis. Mix it up. Maybe one day you fast for 14 hours, and the next for 18 hours. Occasionally you go longer, some days you eat more carbs, other days you eat less. And this is where fasting and the keto diet can work really well together. Because if you eat a low carb diet the day before a fast, you can help your body enter ketosis sooner, and make ketones sooner. And if you break your fast with a low carb meal, you may be able to stay in that fat burning, ketone producing state a little longer. Think of fasting and a low carb diet as two tools that work together. Use one on Monday, use the other Tuesday, combine them Wednesday, with the goal of making your body more used to being able to switch between earning glucose for fuel, and body fat for fuel, and making ketones. That's metabolic flexibility. Not being stuck in ketosis. Being able to get there when you want to. The problem is our modern lives barely give us the chance to make ketones. Most people have breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, dessert, maybe another little snack while they're watching Netflix, and then you go to sleep for 7 hours, and wake up saying, hey I fasted. Well, technically, but your metabolism barely had time to look around and say, let's start burning some body fat before your breakfast arrived. I have a ton of other videos on the amazing benefits of fasting, and how long after your last meal it actually takes to get into ketosis, so I'll link those for you to watch next. And I'll see you next week!