In recent months, more and more Hypothyroid Mom readers have been writing to me about their experience with the ketogenic diet. And it has really caught my attention. Many have raved about KETO helping them dramatically reduce weight and feel more energetic. Others have even reported an improvement in their thyroid lab tests that has resulted in a reduction in their thyroid hormone replacement medication dosage. wow!
A Hypothyroid Mom reader named Pat started following my Hypothyroid Mom Facebook page in the early days when I had only a few hundred followers (we’re up to 1 million now!). I’ve been blessed to become good friends with many of my followers over the last 5 years. She wrote to me about her experience with the ketogenic diet:
“I lost inches almost immediately. I don’t weigh myself but I’m down 1 1/2 to 2 sizes. My heartburn is significantly less and gas is almost gone.”
However I’ve also heard from a few readers experiencing side effects including fatigue, headaches,muscle cramps, anxiety, nausea, and flu-like symptoms.
I’ve been digging around the internet. It seems that some health experts caution that the ketogenic diet can disturb a woman’shormones. However I’ve heard from enough women with hypothyroidism of all ages raving about the benefits, to know there must be more to it.According to this double board-certified OB-GYN and Regenerative and Anti-Aging Medicine expert, an ALKALINE ketogenic diet may be the most powerful lifestyle change that women and men can make.
Written by Dr. Anna Cabeca, OB/GYN
“Nausea and fatigue overrode any benefits like weight loss or improved health,” 47-year-old Liz told me about her massive misfire trying a ketogenic diet for three months.
While research studies overwhelmingly showed benefits to a ketogenic diet, I had found a lot of patients and clients had side effects.
Traditional ketogenic diets neglect alkalinity.
Over the years guiding patients through ketogenic diets, I eventually discovered the missing component creating many of these roadblocks and negative reactions. Traditional ketogenic diets neglect alkalinity, which for women this can especially become disastrous.
After years combining research with empirical evidence from hundreds of patients, I juxtaposed a ketogenic diet and alkalinity with myKeto-Green® Diet, which becomes the perfect plan for fat loss and optimal health by allowing your body to use fat for fuelwhilestaying alkaline.
Ketogenic proponents got it partly right by utilizing fat as fuel. So did alkaline-diet folks by recognizing how crucial staying alkaline becomes to stay lean and healthy.
But combine the two andbam, you’ve got a really powerful plan.
When you stay in ketosis too long – this especially becomes true for women – your body becomes acidic, creating chronic inflammation that forces your body to hold onto its fat stores.
I’ve seen this play out numerous times among female patents: The very diet that supposedly helps you lose weight and get healthy actually makes you fat and sick!
That’s where the alkaline part comes in: You create a win-win dialing down inflammation and other problems while maintaining a fat-as-fuel state.
Getting alkalinebeforegoing keto stacks the fat-loss and health benefits in your favor.
Acidic or alkaline?
We’ll need to flash back to high school biochemistry, where you’ll probably remember studying pH and acid versus base (alkalinity). If you can’t recall, or would rather not go back mentally, let me provide a brief refresher course. (I promise to be painless and brief.)
The pH scale ranges from one to 14. Seven is neutral. Anything higher than seven becomes alkaline (base); anything lower than seven is acidic (acid).
Using that scale, human blood is quite stable at about 7.4, making it alkaline. The ocean has a pH ofabout 8.1. The optimal pH for a pool is 7.4, about the same pH as human eyes and your mucous membrane.
Growing research show an alkaline state is healthier for your body,and most tissues and cells maintain an alkaline pH balance.
Your blood pH doesn’t change, and even slight deviations above or below that 7.4 ideal become extremely life threatening.
On the other hand,things like food can make your urine and salivary pH more or less alkaline. Measuring those fluctuations reveals cellular health.
When we measure the body’s acid-alkaline state, we’re not talking about blood pH (remember, that remains steady at about 7.4 unless you are extremely ill or near dying).
The rest of your body, however, carries different pH levels. Your stomach, which must be very acidic to break down food and kill ingested pathogens, maintains a pH less than 3.0. The vagin*’s pH is 3.8– 4.4. Your skin has a pH below 5.From that understanding, every system’s pH becomes very finely tuned to optimize its functions.
When experts talk about maintaining optimal pH, they’re referring to urinary – not blood – pH. Checking your urine pH can provide clues to cellular health, mineral status, and lifestyle consequences. You can find inexpensive pH urine test strips online to make it super simple to test your own pH.
Food pH – what is an alkaline diet?
What you eat plays a tremendous role in your urine alkalinity. One study inThe British Journal of Nutritionfounda more alkaline diet with copious amounts of fruits and vegetables and lower meat intake helped create a more alkaline urine pH.
That brings us to food pH. In the 1960’s, scientists began analyzing the chemical components of foods. From that research, they labeled foods as acid or base.
Assigning pH values to particular foods can be confusing for several reasons.Some foods have a different pH outside the body.So, for instance, while acidic with a pH of two outside the body, lemon actually creates analkalizingeffect insidethe body.
A general rule of thumb is that because of their mineral content, fruits and vegetables are most alkaline. Meat, poultry, dairy, sugar, processed foods, grains, and caffeine are acidic. As if you needed another reason to ditch it, soda has a pH of 2.5.
Designing the right pH diet – neither too acidic nor alkaline – ultimately becomes about balance.
Rather than aiming for a completely alkaline diet,consider your diet’s net effect. I utilizethe 80/20 ruleamongpatients: Eat about 80 percent alkaline foods (with a ton of veggies) and 20 percent acidic with protein-and-health-fat-rich meats.
So you might combine grass-fed beef with lots of vegetables like broccoli and spinach.Always choose foods with higher mineral content and fewer (acid-forming) toxins.
Whenever possible, choose organic since conventional foods often grow in mineral-depleted, toxin-loaded soil.
Ready to add in Keto?
A Ketogenic diet puts you in a fat-burning state calledketosis.(don’t you just love the sound of “fat-burning state”?)
Ketosis is all about what your body uses as fuel.
Eating high carbs= high blood glucose (sugar), high insulin, stored fat… and low fat burning, low metabolism and belly fat.Your body’s fuel source is glucose,not fat.
Let me explain.
When you eat carbs your body’s blood glucose increases and spikes your blood sugar. Your body releases more insulin as a reaction to elevated blood glucose levels. Insulin is produced to get the glucose from your body and into the cells. There it gets converted to energy. Your body burns the glucose to make its energy and then insulin tells the cells to store their energy as carbs or fat (the unhealthy and dreaded belly fat).
When you eat a lot of carbs on an ongoing basis (like many Americans do, eating a lot of processed foods, sugar, alcohol, soda and such!) insulin is continually stimulated. This can lead to a health condition called insulin resistance, where the cells start to resist the insulin. When this happens, your blood sugar just continues to rise and you can become diabetic. Along with diabetes, many other health issues including heart disease and even dementia have been associated with insulin resistance.
We were just not designed to consume cereals for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and breads with dinner.
But what happens if you don’t eat carbs?If you don’t eat carbs, you eliminate the production of glucose – and the production of insulin – so your body looks around for something other than glucose to burn for energy…and what does it burn?Stored fat!
The ketogenic diet works by keeping the body’s carbohydrate stores almost empty. Yourbody starts burning its own body fat for energy, helping you lose weight quickly. It will also burn fat that you’re consuming through your diet, assuming you are eating healthy fats (not Trans fats, etc.).
What do I eat?
Secret Hacks
- Be aware of underlying issues.Difficulties getting alkaline – which as I said, you should dobeforeyou go into ketosis – could signal numerous problems including toxicity, inflammation, high sugar, toxins, too little or much cortisol, or mineral insufficiencies. Some of these are easy to remedy; for others, a functional practitioner can pinpoint these and other underlying issues.
- Test, don’t guess. Rather than guessing, you can check your urine pH and ketones. Dark green signifies you arealkaline. Use Keto alkaline test strips
to easily measure your alkalinityandketone levels. While not perfect, they are the only way to really know whether you are in ketosis. For clients like Liz, these strips provided a tremendous clarity to know exactly whether she was alkaline and keto – and to troubleshoot if shewasn’t. - Upgrade alkaline. The few times Liz didn’t hit her mark with test strips, bumping up alkaline foods usually did the job. Great foods to maintain alkalinity include greens, bone broth, apple cider vinegar, and my favorite, Mighty Maca. Cook your greens more to absorb them better and get alkaline more quickly. Taking a teaspoon to a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar before your meals will help digestion and alkalinity. If you want to step things up, try my Alkaline Elixir recipe: six ounces of water, 1 teaspoon Bragg’s Apple cider vinegar, 1 teaspoon Lemon juice, and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda. Add maca to get added alkalizing and detoxifying benefits.
- Always buy quality.Especially when it comes to fat, buying free-range, grass-fed, non-genetically modified (GMO) foods becomes crucial. Whenever possible, choose organic since conventional foods often grow in mineral-depleted, toxin-loaded soil.
- Do modified intermittent fasting. I have patients go 13.5 to 15 hours between dinner and breakfast – really easy if you’ve eaten a substantial dinner high in quality fats – to force their body to find energy reserves beyond stored glucose, burning fat instead. Think of intermittent fasting as turning up the dial a few notches with an already-amazing plan. Additionally, research shows that intermittent fasting can significantly reduce the risk of breast cancer recurrence (JAMAoncol 2016).
- Don’t try to be perfect.“I had some red wine last night and, OK, some dark chocolate,” Liz emailed me one morning, confessing testing showed she definitelywasn’tin ketosis or alkaline. I told her “Me too!” and not to worry and get right back on track. Real life happens, and to stay keto-alkaline completely is rare. Do your best but give yourself a little leeway. The principles work! Keep at it.
- Look beyond diet. Hydration becomes crucial. So does sleeping well. Stress, exercise, healthy bowel movements, and healthy relationships all contribute. Oxytocin, a hormone released when you hug, love someone, or have an org*sm, also creates alkalizing benefits. So many of us suffer from hormone effects as we age that impact our feminine parts and our happiness (and there are many things you can do to address embarrassing urinary leakage or vagin*l dryness and pain…so that you will be able to have a happier life and relationship) The Keto-Alkaline principles also temper cortisol and improve insulin sensitivity – this is key to healthy longevity.
to easily measure your alkalinityandketone levels. While not perfect, they are the only way to really know whether you are in ketosis. For clients like Liz, these strips provided a tremendous clarity to know exactly whether she was alkaline and keto – and to troubleshoot if shewasn’t.AboutDr. Anna Cabeca
Dr. Anna Cabeca is an Emory University trained gynecologist and obstetrician, a menopause and sexual health expert, international speaker and educator.
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