Has Eliezer tried a ketogenic diet in the past? If so, the result of that seems an important input to predicting the result of this. If not, shouldn’t you (also) try giving this to someone who has used ketogenic diets in the past? Experiment with small changes and good controls.
He has tried a ketogenic diet, and he did not enter ketosis
Options:
Ketosis Resistance
Too many carbs? Did the diet wrong?
Didn’t stay on the diet for a long enough? Less than a month?
Drank lots of water, diluted urine test?
If he can rule out the other options, and he didn’t lose any weight, it might be ketosis resistance.
By the way, metabolic disorders are usually a sign that a person will get diabetes at some point.
There is this thing called Ketosis Resistant Diabetes Mellitus. At least one person has fixed it using diet.. I’m pretty sure that this paper is describing a previously known diet-based insulin sensitivity improving procedure, although it’s hard to tell without access to the full paper.
I’m not sure whether the ketosis resistance and the diabetes are linked, or whether both ketosis resistant and ketosis susceptible people both acquire high insulin resistance at equal rates, but the interaction matters if you want to use ketosis for weight loss.
I doubt Eliezer Y. has full blown diabetes yet, since it would have been diagnosed already, but since metabolic syndrome is usually a diabetes precurser and a sign of insulin resistance I consider it worth looking into. Diabetes type-2 proper is just the extreme end of the insulin resistance spectrum coupled with the pancreas not compensating properly.
(Disclaimer: my field is neuroscience, not medicine. I just idly read about metabolism sometimes because it’s important for brain things, and because people I care about have diabetes.)
Weak prediction: He won’t enter ketosis this time either, and will instead get weaker and/or faint. I assume he’s done the standard genetic tests that are available, but I’d be concerned he isn’t capable of ketosis.
I’ve done the test on 23andMe, but I didn’t find anything related on ketosis resistance. If you know where to look, please point it out because I’m interested as well.
Figuring out what genetic markers might or might not help seems like the kind of thing Metamed might be helpful for, but it’s pretty expensive. A cursory literature search turned up one or two things, but as I’m neither expending a lot of time on it nor an expert in the area, I don’t think it would be useful to pass on.
A lack of actual ketosis, in a ketosis-inducing situation, is a pretty strong indicator of that something is going on—figuring out what is potentially valuable, if you could find a friendly geneticist. Pointing that out is the most I can do.
What is the experiment?
Has Eliezer tried a ketogenic diet in the past? If so, the result of that seems an important input to predicting the result of this. If not, shouldn’t you (also) try giving this to someone who has used ketogenic diets in the past? Experiment with small changes and good controls.
He has tried a ketogenic diet, and he did not enter ketosis. You’d have to ask him for more details than that, for I know them not.
Options:
Ketosis Resistance
Too many carbs? Did the diet wrong?
Didn’t stay on the diet for a long enough? Less than a month?
Drank lots of water, diluted urine test?
If he can rule out the other options, and he didn’t lose any weight, it might be ketosis resistance.
By the way, metabolic disorders are usually a sign that a person will get diabetes at some point.
There is this thing called Ketosis Resistant Diabetes Mellitus. At least one person has fixed it using diet.. I’m pretty sure that this paper is describing a previously known diet-based insulin sensitivity improving procedure, although it’s hard to tell without access to the full paper.
I’m not sure whether the ketosis resistance and the diabetes are linked, or whether both ketosis resistant and ketosis susceptible people both acquire high insulin resistance at equal rates, but the interaction matters if you want to use ketosis for weight loss.
I doubt Eliezer Y. has full blown diabetes yet, since it would have been diagnosed already, but since metabolic syndrome is usually a diabetes precurser and a sign of insulin resistance I consider it worth looking into. Diabetes type-2 proper is just the extreme end of the insulin resistance spectrum coupled with the pancreas not compensating properly.
(Disclaimer: my field is neuroscience, not medicine. I just idly read about metabolism sometimes because it’s important for brain things, and because people I care about have diabetes.)
Well, this seems like a major hint.
Weak prediction: He won’t enter ketosis this time either, and will instead get weaker and/or faint. I assume he’s done the standard genetic tests that are available, but I’d be concerned he isn’t capable of ketosis.
Are you thinking of any in particular?
The one that comes to mind is 23AndMe, but I know there are others.
It may or may not be useful. I’d expect him to have checked that, though.
I’ve done the test on 23andMe, but I didn’t find anything related on ketosis resistance. If you know where to look, please point it out because I’m interested as well.
Sorry, I don’t.
Figuring out what genetic markers might or might not help seems like the kind of thing Metamed might be helpful for, but it’s pretty expensive. A cursory literature search turned up one or two things, but as I’m neither expending a lot of time on it nor an expert in the area, I don’t think it would be useful to pass on.
A lack of actual ketosis, in a ketosis-inducing situation, is a pretty strong indicator of that something is going on—figuring out what is potentially valuable, if you could find a friendly geneticist. Pointing that out is the most I can do.