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Home » Diet » Buck Institute study suggests high fat diet may be healthy – The Mercury News

In the Woody Allen movie Sleeper, health-store owner Miles Monroe is awakened after being cryogenically frozen for 200 years to discover that deep fat, steak, cream pies and hot fudge are now regarded as health foods.

Two new studies one by scientists at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and the other led by a professor at the University of California, Davis have produced similarly counterintuitive results.

The two independent mouse studies found that a ketogenic diet high fat, low protein and extremely low carbohydrates significantly improved memory in aging mice and increased the animals chances of surviving to old age. Both studies have been published in the Sept. 5 issue of Cell Metabolism.

I think the reason why the paper was published in a high-profile journal like Cell Metabolism is probably for that very reason, said Eric Verdin, CEO of the Buck Institute and senior author of the Buck Institute study. It sort of puts the whole world upside down in terms of what people think they should be doing.

The establishment has been pushing low-fat diets for the last 30 years and we only have a population that is getting more and more obese and developing more and more problems, Verdin said.

What these papers will hopefully do is force people to revisit some of their assumptions about what is and is not healthy, he said.

BENEFITS QUESTIONED

The health benefits of a low-fat diet were called into question by a major federal study in 2006, which found that such a diet had no effect on the risk of heart disease or cancer.

In the Buck Institutes study, mice were fed three diets: a normal high-carbohydrate diet, a zero-carbohydrate ketogenic diet and a high fat, low carbohydrate diet that was not ketogenic.

The mice fed the zero-carbohydrate ketogenic diet had a lower risk of dying as they aged from 1 to 2 years old, although their maximum lifespan remained unchanged. These mice performed at least as well on memory tests at old age as they did at middle age. Mice fed the normal diet demonstrated an expected age-associated decline.

The other study, overseen by Jon Ramsey, a professor at UC Davis, also found that the mice fed a ketogenic diet maintained physical fitness, such as grip strength, in old age.

The magnitude of the changes surprised me, Ramsey said.

Previous animal studies had shown that calorie restriction delays aging. It has been shown that both fasting and exercise can trigger ketosis, in which the liver ramps up production of the ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate acid (BHB) to provide energy for organs, especially the brain.

CELL SIGNALING

In 2012, Verdin and colleagues published a paper in the journal Science that showed that in addition to acting as a fuel, BHB also produced cell signaling.

One of the major pathways that controls aging is insulin signaling, Verdin said. Insulin is the hormone that one uses for metabolizing carbohydrates, so the idea was if the mice did not have any carbohydrates they would have low insulin signaling and therefore would age more slowly.

And that is what both Verdin and Ramsey found in their new studies.

Verdin said that ketogenic research is still in its early days. While ketogenic diets are used clinically for life-threatening conditions such as epilepsy, he cautioned that most people should consult a doctor before trying it on their own.

There are no guarantees that research on mice will accurately predict effects on humans. For example, mice fed a ketogenic diet will eventually become obese. In Verdins study, the mice were periodically taken off the ketogenic diet to control their weight while the Ramsey study limited the calories given to the mice.

Humans fed a ketogenic diet, however, typically lose weight.

In fact, an early approximation of the ketogenic diet was promoted by Dr. Robert Atkins, a cardiologist who prior to his death in 2003 advocated a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet.

What were proposing is sort of a revised version of the Atkins diet, Verdin said.

CHOLESTEROL

Verdin said even though the mice in his study were fed Crisco, there appeared to be no negative effect on their hearts or cholesterol levels.

Actually, we did not see any of this, Verdin said. That is a very paradoxical thing. This diet tends to improve cholesterol and triglycerides.

Verdin said while more research needs to be done, There is a whole group of biohackers who are not waiting for us to the do the clinical trials.

For example, Bulletproof Executive, a Seattle-based company, sells Bulletproof Coffee: a coffee blended with butter from grass-fed cows. According to Bulletproof founder Dave Asprey, he was inspired to create the ketogenic beverage after imbibing a cup of tea mixed with yak butter during a trek in the Himalayas.

Verdin said people following the ketogenic diet have reported improved mental function, including increased clarity and powers of concentration. The Verdin lab is exploring beneficial effects of a ketogenic diet in a mouse model of Alzheimers disease.

Adhering to a ketogenic diet which prohibits the consumption of virtually any fruit, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes or other carbohydrate is notoriously difficult, Verdin said.

In the long run if we want this type of discovery to really have an impact we have to be looking to directly administer the ketone bodies themselves, Verdin said. That is one direction were working on. Weve synthesized a whole series of these BHB precursors and were feeding them to mice to see if we can recapture some of the same effects as with the whole diet.

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Buck Institute study suggests high fat diet may be healthy - The Mercury News

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Home » Diet » Buck Institute study suggests high fat diet may be healthy – The Mercury News