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How Keto may harm your liver and overall health?

Many people keep a Keto diet to alleviate their suffering from insulin issues and help them reach ketosis, which is the condition when your body burns fat instead of carbs. However, many health experts are against this weight loss method because it may have harmful effects on your liver and overall health. In this article, we will discuss the potential harm of Keto diets and why they should be avoided.

What is Keto Diet?

A Keto diet is a diet that restricts your intake of carbs in favor of dietary fats. All carbohydrates are transformed into glucose and stored as glycogen in your body. This diet aims to run out all the stored glucose, which causes you to enter ketosis and produce ketones in equal amounts. These ketones can be used as a source of energy for the brain or your muscles during low activity or when suffering from starvation. ketosis can also be used to fight off cancer because it takes away blood sugar and increases keto acids for energy production.

How do Keto diets cause Liver Damage?

Keeping Keto for a long time can damage your liver because ketones are a product of fat burning. 

  • When you follow a Keto diet and produce excessive ketones in your liver, they are sent to the small intestine and converted into glucose. This leads to the dysfunction of the Glucose-6-phosphate enzyme, which is responsible for breaking down glucose. If this enzyme stops working, excess glucose will be stored in your liver as glycogen, causing fatty liver disease.
  • Another way Keto diets can damage your liver is by causing oxidative stress. This occurs when there is excessive production of free radicals that usually lead to cell death and damage of the organelles like the mitochondria. 
  • Oxidative stress can also lead to several other problems like cancer, neurological issues, heart disease, and chronic fatigue. When exposed to high levels of ketones for an extended period, your liver will eventually suffer from oxidative stress. If this happens too frequently, it will result in hepatic encephalopathy, a form of dementia that causes severe brain damage and depression.

How to Avoid Keto Diet Damage?

In order to avoid damaging your liver after a Keto diet, you need to have healthy meals that are low in carbs and high in fat. Finish your meals with coconut oil and green tea, which provide a good amount of calories for the day but will not cause damage to your liver.

In addition, you may want to consider avoiding Keto diets if you are suffering from Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency or other glucose transporter deficiencies. If this is the case, then it is recommended that you do not go on a Keto diet.  Those people who are suffering from diabetes must also only go on a Keto diet for two or three days a week, during which time they must start to monitor their blood sugar levels, in order to control the damage that these diets can cause.

Role of online food delivery in Keto Diet Damage

One of the largest concerns people have when it comes to Keto diets is the fact that they make it easy to order high-fat and low-carbs food, and this has led many Keto dieters to think of ways in which they can get good quality food without the keto diet, that can include eating delivery services. However, when you are on a Keto, the risk of liver damage and weight loss increases significantly because you must use fat for energy instead of carbs. In addition, eating out almost always requires refined carbohydrates from white bread and other processed foods like French fries, pasta, and many others. Many people choose delivery services like Dinnerly, which is reviewed comprehensively here, because they also offer surprisingly delicious low-carb, low-carb options. Dinnerly and other food delivery services also have many low carb and keto-friendly options, so you do not have to worry about the health risk of eating out if you are on a Keto diet.

How to eat Keto?

According to the latest guidelines, Keto dieters should restrict the carbohydrates they eat to a maximum of 25g or 5% of their daily calories. This is much lower than the amount recommended by many health professionals who used to recommend around 50g of carbs per day. Even though many studies prove the safety and effectiveness of a low-carb diet, you should not follow it because it can adversely affect your liver and overall health. You must carefully monitor your intake and keep in mind that following this diet only for short periods will not be enough for you to reach ketosis. Instead, you should first look at your overall health and determine whether you are experiencing any symptoms of liver damage or other diseases.

Keto Nutrient Restrictions and Liver Disease

If you have been following a Keto diet for a while and want to change it, the trick is to make sure that you reduce your intake of fats and increase the intake of carbohydrates. You can do this by avoiding foods high in fat like oils and red meat or fatty dairy products like cream and cheese. Instead, eat green vegetables such as broccoli, spinach, kale, and many others. If you follow these guidelines, you will transition from a Keto diet to a healthy one without experiencing any side effects.

Conclusion

Keto diets can have adverse effects on your health because they require you to reduce your intake of carbs and affect your liver. You have to be extremely careful when following a Keto diet and avoid foods high in fat because these foods contain saturated fatty acids, which can damage your liver. Eating foods high in carbohydrates will help you increase your weight loss because they give you energy, but at the same time, they will not affect your liver adversely. If you go down this path, stay away from sugar and unhealthy fats and eat low-carb vegetables instead, you will be able to maintain a healthy weight without experiencing any issues with Keto diets.

 

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