Let's discuss what a low carb diet is, some facts about ketosis and a ketogenic diet, and it’s potential use in cancer prevention. Let’s start by discussing what a low carb diet is...
Low carb diets have become popular because of their use in aiding weight loss, but there are many benefits for chronic diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, chronic pain, as well as cancer.
Although there is no official definition of a low-carbohydrate diet, many nutrition professionals would consider less than 40% of total calories from carbohydrates to be low. That’s less than 200g per day of carbohydrates in a standard 2000 calories per day diet.
For your reference, once slice of multi-grain bread has about 20g of carbohydrates. Carbohydrates include anything labeled as fiber, starch, or sugar, and don’t only include candies, cakes, bread, and rice, but also include legumes, vegetables (which are starches and fibers), and fruits (which contain fiber and sugars).
The standard “healthy” diet is usually 250-300g or 50-60% carbohydrate, 45-80g or 20-35% fats, and 75-100g or 15-20% protein. This is what people tend to consume if they’re not eating a lot of fast food or processed food and stick to vegetables, and healthier carbs and fats. As people eat out more or consume more processed food, then the carbohydrate numbers go up, as do the calories and often fat. In cases like that, it’s typically the “bad” types of fats too, such as trans and saturated fats.
Let’s now look at low carb, high fat diets. There are two, I guess you could say, categories of low carb diets that I often discuss with people. One is a standard low carb, high fat aka LCHF diet and the other is a ketogenic or keto diet.
Let’s start with low carb, high fat diet. This is when carbohydrate intake is about 100g per day in a standard 2000 calorie per day diet, which is carb intake being about 15-20% of your dietary intake, and fats are around 130-145g per day and 60-65% of your dietary intake. That leaves protein at 75-100g, or 15-20% of your dietary intake.
An LCHF diet is typically my goal for patients.
The second type of low carb diet I often talk about is the ketogenic diet. When looking at a ketogenic diet, which is a very high fat and very low carb diet, the carb intake is typically less than 50g per day. That’s half of the carb intake I recommend for an LCHF diet. Below 50g of carbohydrates per day is often where ketosis occurs. The fat content in a keto diet is 170-180g per day or 75-80% of your dietary intake, leaving protein at 75-100g or 15-20% of your daily intake.
What is ketosis?
So I just mentioned the word ketosis, which occurs when carbohydrate intake is less than 50g. But what is ketosis? Let’s go through that.
Carbs (sugars & starches) are the preferred fuel for your brain and muscles. They use carbs first, whenever they’re available. This is why maintaining stable blood sugar can affect your attention, mood, and energy level.
However, when very low amounts of carbs are available for fuel, your body starts making compounds known as “ketones.” These are your body’s “backup fuel.” And your body makes them from fat. Ketogenic literally means “the generation of ketones.”
After a while of being on a diet very low in carbs, your blood level of ketones increases. This is the metabolic state known as "ketosis." It's the same process that your body goes through if you've fasted for 72 hours and depleted your supply of carbs as fuel. That's the trigger for turning fat into ketones.
Pro Tip: “Ketosis” from a ketogenic diet is not the same thing as the dangerous condition known as “ketoacidosis.”
So to recap, ketosis is when your body starts burning fat instead of carbohydrates for fuel.
You may be asking now, why are LCHF diets beneficial?
It is starting to look like more and more evidence is accumulating showing that restricting carbohydrates has the potential to inhibit tumor growth, extend survival rates, enhance treatment outcomes, and reduce the risk of cancer development. And a nice thing is that, as long as you’re maintaining a healthy amount of calories for your body, there does not seem to be any adverse effects with following a low carb diet.
Low carb diets have even been shown to preserve muscle mass and improve the quality of life, even in metastatic cancers. The key though is to ensure you’re still getting enough calories to fuel the energy processes in your body, which for most moderately active people is around 2000 calories per day.
The majority of the research on carbohydrate restriction comes from the ketogenic diet. But the keto diet isn’t often sustainable for people, and there is also some evidence showing that a LCHF diet can still be beneficial, and is a bit easier to follow and maintain.
What is the Evidence?
Although much of the scientific literature on low-carbohydrate diets pertains to epilepsy, 60 relevant studies were found looking at keto diets and cancer, with 4 being clinical trials.
The majority of studies published to date have investigated the effect of low-carbohydrate diets on brain tumors. A number of studies investigated its effect on prostate cancer, breast cancer, and metastatic cancer, and some studies evaluated the diet’s ability to enhance treatment.
How does the LCHF diet help work when it comes to cancer?
First off, carb restriction typically means that people are consuming fewer processed and fast foods. Therefore, there are fewer pro-inflammatory foods in the body. Inflammation is a hallmark for cancer development and progression.
Secondly, a man named Otto Warburg hypothesized that healthy noncancerous cells can generate energy for life from both glucose and fats, whereas cancerous cells can only generate energy by fermenting sugar and can’t use fat as a fuel. Therefore, you can exploit the reliance of cancer cells on glucose as a therapeutic intervention by restricting the availability of glucose by removing most carbohydrates from the diet.
I just want you to know, when it comes down to it, the MOST important way to eat healthy, is the way that works for you. A LCHF diet is not for everyone. If we can switch your nutrition to include more vegetables, quality protein, and healthy fats, with fewer preservatives, unhealthy fats, and fast food meals, then that’s still going to fuel your body, boost your immune system, and make you feel better.
So, where do you start?
We’re going to approach this in a step-by-step way. The first step is to learn a bit about the macronutrient content - the carbs, fats, and protein - in your food.
I highly recommend that you download a free nutrition tracker, such as MyFitnessPal or NutritionIX and begin logging your food. It will breakdown the fat, carb, protein, and caloric intake in your phone. You can set your macros percentages to the recommendations for a LCHF diet mentioned above and aim to be around those guidelines while continuing to track your nutrition over a few weeks. After a bit of time, you’ll start to learn what will keep you within those guidelines without having to track your food.
If tracking your food on an app is something you REALLY don’t want to do, then I suggest you start writing your food down in a food journal. We tend to pay better attention to what we eat and therefore get more info when we write things down. Once you've written some meals down, start googling protein, or fat, or carb content in the food that you're eating (one at a time). Write them down and add them up to see if you're within the guidelines mentioned above for LCHF diets.
Once you start learning about the protein, fat, and carb content in your food, you can begin to choose foods that suit your desired requirements.
This is not an easy task. If you aren't familiar with macros and making meal plans, it would be wise to reach out to a trained professional, such as a nutritionist or naturopathic doctor for assistance. Once you've had help for several weeks with learning about the macros in foods, you'll now have newfound knowledge for life to make recipes and meals on your own that promote an anti-inflammatory habitat in your body that is not conducive to cancer growth.