Vitamins are essential nutrients that we must obtain from our diet. Vitamin B12 deserves some special attention, this water-soluble vitamin is essential for several processes in the body and a chronic deficiency can result in anaemia or paralysis. It is required for DNA synthesis, crucial in times of rapid growth.
If you look at the science you can easily get hopelessly confused, as you can find studies that pretty much supports anything. Many foods have been described as either good or bad for your health. It is therefore necessary to look at the preponderance of the evidence available instead of ´cherry picking´ some studies. In the field of nutrition, we have lots of epidemiological studies, these studies look for causes and risk factors for diseases in defined populations.
Many of the side effects of low carbohydrate diets were already known in the 20th century when the classic ketogenic was devised by Dr. Russel Wilder to treat children with epilepsy that could not be treated with medication. The short-term side effects reported were diarrhoea, constipation and vomiting. Long term side effects reported include vitamin deficiencies, kidney stones, restricted growth, fatal cardiac arrhythmias, pancreatitis, high cholesterol, and bone fractures.
Many proponents of ketogenic diets strive to keep the body in a permanent state of ketosis. This is a very unnatural state for anybody to be in long term. Not even predatory animals that naturally subsist on a low carbohydrate diet, live in a permanent state of ketosis (6). They actually use gluconeogenesis to transform protein into glucose, and only when they suffer from prolonged starvation or when they are diabetic these animals will go into ketosis. This all makes sense because glucose is needed for intense bursts of energy, which most predatory animals need if they want to catch their prey.
Out of the many diets nowadays there are a lot that propose to limit your carbohydrate intake and thus eat more of the other macronutrients, fat and protein. All these diets see carbohydrates as the dietary supervillain that makes us sick and overweight, but is there actually any truth in this?
There is uncertainty about the effects of essentially all foods and/or dietary patterns on health and weight. Much of what we know about diet derives from lesser forms of evidence rather than absolute proof, lots of thing we know about diet derive from observation. If we would only agree on using absolute proof we would for example still not know that smoking causes cancer.
Prebiotics are compounds in food that induce the growth or activity of beneficial microorganisms, the probiotics. Most types of soluble fiber are prebiotic, as is resistant starch, HMO (Human milk oligosaccharides), polyphenols and certain omega3 fatty acids, like the one that is for example present in walnuts. In a healthy gut, a gut that is in homeostasis, the good bacteria (probiotics) keep the ¨bad¨ bacteria under control.
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