Welcome to the Nutrition Science Podcast, where we help you cut through the noise and make informed science-based decisions about nutrition and your health.

How's it going, everyone?

Welcome back to another episode of the Nutrition Science Podcast.

I'm your host, Dr. Adrian Chavez, and today we are going to be discussing the pros and cons of a ketogenic diet.

We're going to start by discussing what a ketogenic diet is.

We're going to discuss what the scientific definition of a ketogenic diet is versus what

often gets promoted online in books as a quote-a-quote ketogenic diet.

We'll talk about the medical applications of a true ketogenic

diet and how it can be beneficial for specific health outcomes. We'll talk about some of the

potential benefits for using the ketogenic diet that gets promoted widely for specific reasons as well.

And then we'll discuss some of the cons of following a ketogenic diet and wrap that up with

some conclusions about who may want to consider following this type of diet, who may not,

and some things to think about if you are going to be following this type of dietary approach.

So let's start by discussing what a ketogenic diet is.

So a ketogenic diet is a diet that

is meant to put someone into ketosis. What is ketosis? It's a state where your body is creating what are

called ketone bodies. And these are going to be used as a source of energy when you're not getting

any sources of glucose. So this is a way for your body to create

additional energy when you're not taking in carbohydrates. When I say glucose, most carbohydrates

get broken down, primarily get broken down into glucose and that glucose gets put into

our bloodstream. That's our primary source of energy for tissues throughout

our body. Our brain, our heart, rely heavily on glucose and when we don't consume enough glucose,

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