Cultivating a Passive Mind

Well now that the Ketosis articles are over I am going to delve into some other topics that have been interesting me lately.  Some of these next few posts won't have as much science in them, and will be more personal musing on health than anything else.  As the blog continues to grow I am hoping I can develop a nice mix of some of the more technical science of health and nutrition, and some lighter things that are more subjective.  I think they both have their place as science is always changing and growing and some things might not have concrete answers yet.  Please feel free to leave some comments about what you would like to hear about! And now on to today's topic...

Matt Metzgar has talked several times about the importance of “darkness time” for health.  He has also noted how he feels much better on days when he gets more darkness time than others.

We also don’t have to look too far to find the benefits of meditative practices that also help to cultivate health and wellbeing (1, 2, 3).

There is a lot of evidence for the benefits of things like music and story telling can have a positive effect on health as well (4, 5).  These are the kind of recreational activities that our ancestors participated in (6). 

Sleep is also one of the unquestionable best things we can do for health, and the evidence for that can be seen from many sources as well (7, 8, 9).

Why do I bring all these up?  Well I think they all have one common thread that might be at the root of their benefit to health.  They all are ways of shutting down our minds and allowing it to rest for a bit.  Now, some of these things obviously have a mental component to them, we can’t play an instrument or tell a story without using our brains to facilitate the action, but they allow us to have a “passive mind”.

Ketosis VII: Practical recommendations

Well, here we are at our final Ketosis post!  It has been a long ride for all of us, and I hope you have learned as much as I have while researching the topic.

We have seen a lot of benefits of ketosis from helping lower triglycerides to helping with certain neurological conditions.  Now while all of these things sound great, how do we appropriately approach ketosis?  While many of us may want to try and be in ketosis at all times after seeing these benefits, and that it is a normal, physiologic process, I do think there are some reasons to not be in ketosis all the time, but I will cover those in a separate, later post, since I think they relate better to a different topic I have been thinking about lately.

So we know we have three main ways to get into ketosis: fasting, low-grade exercise, and high fat diets.  I think an appropriate ketosis-style diet is one that will combine all three of these into a cyclic approach, that way we make sure to leave ketosis for a little bit every now and then.  Also, as you will remember from my cornerstones of health posts I believe a system of HOW you eat it is very important to overall health, and we will also incorporate this system into our ketogenic protocol.

Ketosis VI: Therapeutic Roles

We have covered most of the hardcore science that I wanted to review when looking at ketosis and ketogenesis.   We have covered most of the relevant biochemistry in terms of how are ketone bodies formed and how they are regulated.  That is all well and good, but I am sure many of you are just wondering how ketosis can benefit you, right?  Well, this article is meant to show you some of the benefits for ketosis. 

Ketogenic diets have been used as therapeutic diets for some conditions for over a century, and while it isn’t used as much anymore, it probably should be.  This article will mainly go over how it can help out those in a disease state; however, I think the mechanisms through which ketones act in the diseases show us some of the power of these energy molecules.  You many not have one of these diseases, but seeing how much they can help with certain conditions certainly makes you think twice about them.

Ketosis Part V: Medium-Chain Triglycerides

We have covered a lot of ground so far in looking over the literature on ketosis and ketogenesis.  We have seen what ketone bodies our body actually uses, and how they are regulated on many levels.

We already know that a high-fat diet is a great way to induce ketogenesis.  However a question many of you may be asking is “Do all fats have the same ketogenic potential?”  Well, the answer to that is no, some fats are better at inducing ketogenesis than others.  The most ketogenic fats we have are the medium-chain fats.

We consume many different kinds of fats, and all these fats vary in two different ways, chain length and saturation.  Saturation refers to the number of double bonds a fatty acid chain has, with no double bonds being a saturated fat, and one or more double bonds being an unsaturated fat.  The medium-chain fatty acids we will talk about here are all saturated fatty acids.  They are called medium-chain because they have between 6 and 12 carbons in their chain (1).  Here are a couple of diagrams of some of these medium-chain fats.

Caproic/Hexanoic Acid

Ketosis IV: Cellular Regulation

As we have seen already the control of ketosis is controlled through a variety of mechanisms in our bodies. And, most importantly, many of these mechanisms are intricately tied to our bodies’ own energy sensing pathways. We have seen ketosis regulation at a variety of levels throughout our bodies.  It can be controlled through conscious action, by eating a high-fat diet or fasting.  It can be controlled throughout our internal environment by hormones and other signaling molecules like insulin and glucagon.  And now we will go down a bit farther even, and look at how ketosis is controlled at the cellular level.  Again this one will be a technical article, so as always if you have questions post them to comments!

Ketosis Part III: Hormonal and Enzymatic Regulation

Alright, and we’re back!  So our story so far has covered what ketone bodies are and how they are formed, and some of the ways we can turn our bodies into ketone body creating machines.   This article will look further at some ways the creation of ketone bodies is regulated.  As I did with the last article I will put out the “lots of science” disclaimer on this article.  This one will be more technical than the last one was, it is just the nature of the beast when you are talking about some of these complex biochemical pathways.

I know that all the weird letters and numbers that represent proteins in our body don’t really mean much to most people, but remember they are really just designations for various receptors our body uses to recognize each specific chemical in our body.  It is important to remember that things in our body usually can’t just go in and out cells and tissues as they please.  Few things in our body just happen.  They are all controlled by various receptors and proteins that help to move them.  So, while I will be presenting the actual biochemistry here, I hope I can bring each section home at the end and give everyone a take home message that will be meaningful.