Encore Episode: The Side Effects of the Keto Diet that No One is Talking About
Episode 139
On today’s episode of Integrative Wellness Radio, Dr. Nicole discusses the infamous Keto Diet. While the Keto Diet has proven to be beneficial for weight loss, mental health, and repairing cells it might act as the complete opposite for individuals who have foundational health issues. During this episode, she uncovers some of the adverse side effects that are often caused by the keto diet and details out why some people react differently or experience “Keto-Flu”. If you are considering going keto, this is a must-listen. Interested in working with IWG? Book a complimentary consult call to learn more using this link: https://bit.ly/IWRcall2022 Noteworthy Time Stamps: 01:03 The benefits of a ketogenic diet 04:01 Healthy and not so healthy ways to go into ketosis 06:20 Possible adverse reactions of keto 07:13 Does your body know how to burn fat? 8:37 Burning fat releases toxins 9:43 There is toxicity all around us 13:30 Clearing the filtration systems of your body 16:00 Is toxicity the issue? There’s testing available 18:43 Be your own health advocate 19:36 Symptoms of a failed filtration system 21:30 How to get your filtration system working again 24:50 Exploring a modified version of keto
Topics: keto, diet, unknown, brain, health, episode, body, burning
Key takeaways from this episode
- Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey.
- Nicole. **Unknown:** So some of you may have heard of the keto diet, and some of you may have even heard of this concept of the keto flu.
- Keto is an amazing, amazing diet. **Unknown:** It has tremendous benefits for the brain, but it's not necessarily for everyone.
- But for those of you who have not, I'm just gonna elaborate a little bit further on the keto diet, what it is, but then also dive into what are some of these adverse symptoms that you can actually get when you embark on the keto diet.
- So they have found when they move the body from a sugar-burning state or a glucose-burning state, and they move it into a fat-burning state, we produce something called ketones, and ketones are very beneficial for the brain and for the repair and the restoration of the brain.
Pull quotes
Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems.
Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey.
Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here on my own. **Unknown:** Hello, everyone.
Transcript
**Unknown:** I've been up all night, no sleep. Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems. No sleep. Dive into Integrative Wellness Radio with Dr.
**Unknown:** Nick and Dr. Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey. I'm always dreaming. Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here on my own.
**Unknown:** Hello, everyone. So welcome back. I am Dr. Nicole.
**Unknown:** So some of you may have heard of the keto diet, and some of you may have even heard of this concept of the keto flu. But for those of you who have not, I'm just gonna elaborate a little bit further on the keto diet, what it is, but then also dive into what are some of these adverse symptoms that you can actually get when you embark on the keto diet. Okay, so as we get into just the foundation of what is keto, so keto is a diet that is having a lot of press these days. There's a lot of people talking about it in the realm of weight loss, brain health, being able to repair mitochondria, being able to control seizures and other types of neurological disorders, and yes, it has been proven in research to benefit all of those above conditions.
**Unknown:** And one of the, the biggest things of why keto exists in the first place, 'cause keto has been around for a really, really, really long time, and it's mainly been recommended, uh, by different physicians that are focusing on neurological disorders, especially in the realm of seizures. So they have found when they move the body from a sugar-burning state or a glucose-burning state, and they move it into a fat-burning state, we produce something called ketones, and ketones are very beneficial for the brain and for the repair and the restoration of the brain. So how it really plays a role in seizures is that when you are in ketosis, you actually can really stabilize the brain waves because in the event of a seizure, you usually have very overactive brain waves. Um, a lot of your neurons are very, very close to something called threshold, so meaning the most minor stimulus can really cause a overabundance of firing or an abnormal firing of your neurons.
**Unknown:** So this could really be the case in a mild form that the, the overfiring or the abnormal firing of neurons could be something like ADD or ADHD. It could be, you know, uh, you can call it that or you can just say lack of concentration, um, hyperactivity. And then it also, in a severe or an extreme case, can be seizures. So the point of the diet was to be used in the event that somebody is having this very overactive brain with imbalanced brain waves and put the body into ketosis in order to balance that out and control the abnormal neurological activity.
**Unknown:** So in the event of people embarking on the ketogenic diet, they've also found that they benefited from a weight loss standpoint, or they found that they just had more energy, or they just felt more clear and more calm. So the diet is being used for a variety of different reasons. And as you get educated on how to get yourself into ketosis, what you will find is really just eliminating out most sugars and carbohydrates from the diet and really amping up your protein and fat content. So don't get me wrong, there is many ways that you can get into ketosis, but there are ways that are healthy and there are ways that are not so healthy.
**Unknown:** So some people are embarking on ketosis or the ketogenic diet so they can be eating a bacon cheeseburger with no bun, of course, uh, guilt-free. So don't get me wrong. When you are amping up your fat content, you really wanna consider what is healthy, but also what's right for your body, and you don't necessarily want to be overloading your body with a lot of these high, high fat animal proteins as well as tons and tons of dairy. You wanna find a really nice balance with using a lot of your plant-based oils, olive oil, olives, coconut, coconut oil, coconut milk, and then also bringing in meats that are very, very clean, everything from pasture-raised to grass-fed, grass-finished.
**Unknown:** Uh, for those of you that do not know what that means, um, and this is really just so important because I understand for those of you out there that are struggling navigating through the grocery store, yes, it is confusing. Yes, it is overwhelming. But what you will find often enough is that when you go to the store and you're spending extra dollars on getting grass-fed, what that technically means is that the, uh, the farmer or, you know, the farming industry can feed the cow grass for three-quarters of its life and in the last quarter of its life, it can actually pump it full of corn and grain to, uh, really allow the animal to gain more weight, which means that if it weighs more, they get more money for the animal. So it is very important for you to understand that grass-fed is not necessarily the best, but grass-fed and grass-finished is the best.
**Unknown:** Um, so when you start looking for that, you will find that it is a lot harder to find opposed to just grass-fed. Okay, so circling back to really the premise of, of my article that I wrote for Mind Body Green wasWhen somebody decides that they're going to try out the ketogenic diet, some people do absolutely amazing right off the bat, and some people actually have a lot of adverse reactions. And the adverse reactions are up for interpretation for who you're talking to as the expert. And some of those adverse reactions include everything from fatigue to dehydration, maybe you lose your appetite, maybe you start noticing that your bowel movements are really off.
**Unknown:** Some people shift into constipation. Some people shift into diarrhea. Uh, some people feel dizzy or their sleep starts to become really off, and some people just notice that their mood is on a complete rollercoaster. But these are some of the symptoms that you can experience.
**Unknown:** And then other people can literally feel like they have a flu. They feel nauseous. They have a fever. They have body aches.
**Unknown:** And depending on who is explaining why this might happening, there is a lot of reasons for it. Uh, some experts say that it's because maybe your body doesn't know how to burn fat properly. Because if you've had such a high-sugar diet and a high-carbohydrate diet for a really long time, then your body's so used to running on that as fuel that when you try to shift it into a fat-burning state, it almost doesn't know what to do. So that can definitely be part of the puzzle.
**Unknown:** The other part of it can be just straight up sugar detox because maybe your diet was so abundant in processed foods or high levels of sugar, and especially some of those processed sugars like high-fructose corn syrup or even artificial sweeteners, and your body could legit be going through a withdrawal process from cutting those things out. But through all of my research and looking at the reasons that a lot of the experts are, are saying that people develop the keto flu symptoms, it really always came back to sugar withdrawal and the body potentially not knowing how to burn fat properly. And I, I really felt that there was a huge piece of the puzzle that was missing. They were kind of missing the fact that when your body starts to burn fat, your body then catapults into a detoxification because most toxins live in the fat tissue.
**Unknown:** So if you start to ramp up your fat burning and you have a lot of toxins in your fat tissue, you might find that you get quite sick. And I'm gonna go into what those toxins are or what toxins are in general 'cause I know that that's u- up for interpretation and some of you listening might not even know, you know, the level of toxicity that we're all exposed to on a day-to-day basis. But when you start to burn fat, it is very, very important to understand that burning fat is great, but it is going to create some level of a detoxification effect, and you have to be equipped to know what adjunct types of therapies you might need to be doing to make sure that your body is fully supported. So again, I'm gonna definitely dive into that to give you all of those pieces of the puzzle.
**Unknown:** So before I do that, uh, getting into toxicity as a whole. Uh, when you're dealing with toxicity, this is not one thing. This is not just, you know, toxins that maybe we get exposed to from, you know, pollution in the air. There is toxicity all around us.
**Unknown:** Uh, a lot of us have heard, you know, different things about mercury being in fish, especially if we've been pregnant and, you know, w- they say don't eat fish when you're pregnant. Um, the other things they tell us is, you know, make sure to be careful with, um, uh, changing cat litter when you're also pregnant because, you know, you could be exposed to different types of infections. Um, but when you look at the bird's-eye view of toxicity, we're getting exposed to toxicity from our food, the per- products that we put onto our bodies, the products that we use to dye our hair, paint our nails, make us look beautiful. There are toxins even in some of the avenues of plastic surgery like Botox.
**Unknown:** People-- Most people getting Botox don't even know what Botox is. Uh, that's called Clostridium botulinum. It's botulism, and botulism creates paralysis. So if you inject it into a focal area, you will paralyze the muscle, which will get rid of your wrinkles.
**Unknown:** So we have to really understand some of these things that we're doing to ourselves, especially with all of the beauty craze, and every single celebrity, in my opinion, looks the same these days because they all are getting the same types of procedures and the same fillers and the, you know, the same just whatever, different types... I, I'm so clueless when it comes to plastic surgery, but, you know, I just feel like everybody's looking the same these days. But outside of the food, outside of the personal products, there is a lot of different toxins and additives that are in our prescriptions. They're in our over-the-counter medications.
**Unknown:** We also are getting exposed to things, um, in old buildings. You know, a lot of us l- uh, love these old buildings, Victorian homes, for their charm. And yes, there is some massive upsides of living in an older home because they didn't use necessarily a lot of the, like, spray insulation and a lot of the cheap building materials. But then at the same time, they used other types of materials like lead paint and asbestos before they knew better.So there's definitely the pros and cons when it comes to old construction versus new construction.
**Unknown:** But at the end of the day, a lot of us need to be aware of water damage buildings because mold is such a common thing that I see affecting people's health on a day-to-day basis. I would say 99% of the people that I work with have mold affecting them to some capacity. Maybe it's from their past, maybe it's from too many antibiotics, 'cause by the way, antibiotics are made from mold. Um, and it also can be from their current environment, if they're living in mold, if they're working in mold, if they are working as a teacher in an old school.
**Unknown:** Really, the, um, i- it's kind of endless with the possibilities. And then another big one, kind of going back to food, is plastic. A lot of the water that we're drinking is in plastic water bottles. We're heating up our food in plastic Tupperware.
**Unknown:** So at the end of the day, I'm not doing this to overwhelm you. I'm really allowing you to understand that toxicity is not uncommon, and these are toxins that normally our body is equipped to deal with. So the problem is, is that over a lifetime, we are constantly being exposed day to day, hour to hour, and it gets to the point that our body's internal filtration systems start to struggle, and they start to become less resilient. So to kind of elaborate and make this make more sense is that when we start to age and we get older, we start to notice different things about our bodies.
**Unknown:** We start to notice that our workouts aren't as easy as they used to be, or we're not recovering as fast. Or we go out and have a glass of wine, and we feel hungover for three days, when back in the day, we used to drink till 3:00 in the morning and then be able to get up the next day to, like, go to class. And we notice that our bodies are just not as resilient as they used to be. And the reason that this happens is because our body's filtration systems are becoming overloaded, and the major filters of your system are a lot of the organs that we tend to get removed, and one of them is your tonsils.
**Unknown:** Another one is your gallbladder. Another one is your appendix. And then the other ones that you can't really get rid of, 'cause you can't really survive, is your liver, um, your lymph nodes, you can technically remove some lymph nodes, um, and then your kidneys are the other filtration system. So when it comes to our body's internal filters is if these filters are getting bombarded over and over and over again for years upon years, it's gonna get to the point that the filters are at max capacity, and now we're struggling to get rid of the things that our body normally would get rid of.
**Unknown:** So it's like almost the fact of getting a brand-new vacuum, using it every single day for a month, and then at the end of that month, you're gonna notice that you can't really use your vacuum anymore because the filter's at max capacity. So you go, you dump your filter, and now problem is solved. Everything is good to go. So I'm going to actually teach you the methods of how you can clear your filtration system so that your body can obviously bounce back.
**Unknown:** But at the end of the day, if the filters are a- already at max capacity and you are holding on to some level of fat tissue, the toxins are going to then get stored in the body, and they're going to get stored in your adipose tissue, which is called your fat tissue. So now you read up on the ketogenic diet, and you're dealing with some brain fog, and you're, you know, really wanting to lose some weight. So you say, "All right, let's do it. Let's, let's try it out and see what happens." And you get really sick, and you assume that, you know, the diet's just not right for you, or you ate the wrong thing, or, or whatever the case may be, and really, at the end of the day, you catapulted your body into a detox state.
**Unknown:** So if you are someone who has been down this road and you did keto and you felt really sick, it's very important for you to understand that you might have a bigger problem on your hands because you might be dealing with a huge component of toxicity. So there is definitely testing available that really helps you to clarify, um, are you toxic? And one of those tests is a heavy metal test. Uh, we actually opt to do something called an Oligoscan in our office at Integrative Wellness Group because what that does is it measures intracellular heavy metals.
**Unknown:** Uh, so it actually looks at what is in your cells, uh, primarily because toxins don't really live in the blood. They live inside of tissue, so again, fat tissue, or they can live inside of your cells. So heavy metals is one starting place. There is also another company called Great Plains that, uh, does a, a toxin panel, and they test you for 172 different types of toxins.
**Unknown:** This is everything from toxins that are in your medications, that are in your over-the-counters, that are in your personal products, in your plastics. So that's a really eye-opening test because that gives you a really good idea of how many toxins your body has accumulated just from your day-to-day life. Uh, so these are all really, really important things to consider if you are feeling like crap, number one, or you did the keto diet and you felt bad going through it. Um, another really great tool is if you take a look at a website called scorecard.org, that can actually, uh, you can type in your zip code, and it will show you all of the pollution that is in the air, in the water, and it will also tell you the companies and industries that have contributed to the toxicity in your area.That is extremely, extremely eye-opening and I know even, um, I've been talking about that app for a couple of years now and every time I go and speak, um, all over the country, I'll have people um, I'll, I'll be giving the presentation, I'll ask, "What's the ZIP code to this area?" And when we type it in, people are always mesmerized to see how toxic, uh, the air and the water is in their local environment.
**Unknown:** Uh, but I know even for New Jersey our air quality has become increasingly more compromised over the past five years. I don't really know why, but it has. So, um, so unfortunately the world is getting more toxic, it is not getting less toxic at this, at this time, so we just need to be our own health advocate because if we are feeling terrible and then we're getting blood work done and everybody's saying everything looks good, we start to kind of feel crazy. And I will tell you, you just haven't had the right testing and if you get the right testing, it will actually reveal what's going on with you.
**Unknown:** Uh, so don't, you know, feel discouraged or, or feel crazy or feel like you're anxious. Uh, it's just you haven't had the right testing yet. Okay. So for those of you resonating with all of this information, um, some of the really key symptoms for you to also know, um, if your body's filtration systems are not working, um, so a couple of things.
**Unknown:** First, like I said before, you're the person who drinks the glass of wine and feels sick for three days. Um, another thing is, is that you potentially have cellulite. Uh, you are finding it very difficult to sweat, even if you go to the gym, you do cardio, maybe you're just like glistening, you're not really sweating, sweating. Um, as a female, you might also, uh, notice that or been told that you have dense breasts or fibrocystic breasts.
**Unknown:** You might also have circulation issues, something called like Raynaud's disease or just generally have, uh, cold hands and feet. As a male, you might notice that you have skinny arms and legs, but you have a belly. Some people call it a beer belly. It's not really a beer belly.
**Unknown:** It means your, uh, detoxification pathways don't work. Uh, it means your lymphatic system is very compromised. Uh, you might have a lot of skin issues, so again, skin issues have a lot to do with your lymph nodes being super gunked up with crap. Um, mold is a, is a big one and strep, just so you know.
**Unknown:** And, uh, the other thing too is you might also notice that you're having a lot of trouble metabolizing like medications and even caffeine. That actually goes back to your liver. So you might notice like caff- you're very sensitive to caffeine or you're very sensitive to like taking an aspirin or a Motrin or a Midol. Um, so these are all signs that your detox pathways and your filtration systems are overloaded.
**Unknown:** So depending on what your symptoms are, there is a couple of important things to know, and again, you can dive deeper into this if you check out my article on Mindbodygreen. But when you're dealing with the person who doesn't sweat or you're dealing with the skinny arms and legs but the distended, you know, quote unquote beer belly or, um, someone who maybe even has varicose veins or a lot of skin issues, this all stems back to your lymphatic system. So on your own, some of the things you can research is, uh, one is called dry brushing. Dry brushing is an amazing tool to get your lymph moving that you can do at home.
**Unknown:** Dry brushing, uh, once you, uh, we actually have a video on Integrative Wellness Group on YouTube, and you can watch, uh, how to do it, but you can buy a dry brush on Amazon. Another one is rebounding. Rebounding is the fancy term for jumping on a trampoline. Uh, movement is so, so important for your lymph nodes.
**Unknown:** And then, uh, some of the all more, um, more elaborate types of therapies for the lymph, and again, these are things that we do in our office 'cause they're more medical grade, is infrared sauna, which is a type of heat that heats you from the inside out almost like a fever would to help you burn off toxins that are in your lymph nodes. And then we also have something called ionized foot baths. Uh, ions are like magnets to toxins, so these, um, ionized foot baths are amazing ways to get the mobility of these toxins moving, and you will find that after the foot bath, a lot of people think that toxins are coming out of their feet. That's not really how it works.
**Unknown:** Um, what's going to happen is you're going to mobilize a lot of these toxins, uh, through your, your regular, uh, detox pathways. So you'll find that you'll be eliminating toxins over the next few days through your urine and your bowel movements. So if you're more of the person that finds yourself really sensitive to, um, uh, sensitive to like alcohol or medications or you're even finding that it's very difficult for you to process fats like cream sauces, um, too much cheese, et cetera, this is all a sign that your liver gallbladder might be compromised, um, as a detox pathway. So some easy tools is amping up your cruciferous vegetable intake.
**Unknown:** That's gonna be everything from your kale to your Swiss chard to your broccoli and your cauliflower. Um, celery, celery juice included, is an amazing way to support your liver. Um, and then another really important thing is soluble fiber. So I know soluble fiber kind of goes against the grain of what keto is, but if you're somebody who did terrible with keto because you went all protein and all fat and you didn't have any soluble fiber in your diet, that can definitely make you constipated.
**Unknown:** So if you're somebody who did keto and got constipated, it's probably because you have a lot of toxicity in your liver and you need more soluble fiber to keep things moving along. Um, the best form of soluble fiber that I find that I recommend often is steel cut oats.So something to, uh, to keep in mind 'cause again, everybody's body's so different. This is not about, like, the one size fits all. Keto is an amazing, amazing diet.
**Unknown:** It has tremendous benefits for the brain, but it's not necessarily for everyone. And you have to keep that in mind, and you might need to make a modified version of keto for yourself. So maybe, you know, 80 to 90% of your diet is going to follow the strict keto guidelines, but maybe you incorporate a little bit of soluble fiber here and there so that you can make sure that your bowels are being supported. So again, it's, it's definitely up for interpretation.
**Unknown:** And if you don't know how to do it, work with a professional that, that does and that really, truly understands your blueprint and what your body needs. So overall, kind of summing this up is ketogenic diets are absolutely amazing. They can provide you with a ton of benefit. But if you embarked on it and got these flu-like symptoms or negative symptoms, it's probably because you started a detoxification process.
**Unknown:** So it's not about just doing away with the idea of keto, it's about kind of taking some of these tools and deciphering, are you having toxicity, and is your toxicity more lymphatic based? Is it more liver based? Is it more gut based? And if you go through the article, you'll find in depth some of the tools that I talked about with the dry brushing, the infrared sauna, you know, amping up certain foods in your diet that can help to support you along your ketogenic process.
**Unknown:** So I hope you really enjoyed this. Definitely keep your eye out for new episodes every week. I hope you enjoyed this, and definitely head over to Mindbodygreen and check out my article, uh, called The Reason for Keto Flu That No One Is Talking About. All right, guys.
**Unknown:** We thank you for being a listener and subscriber to Integrative Wellness Radio. If you're looking to learn more about Integrative Wellness Group as well as Dr. Nick or Dr. Nicole, you can check out integrativewellnessgroup.com.
**Unknown:** All night, no sleep. 'Cause I feel like I'm always dreaming. Wide awake, that's okay
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
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