Paul explains why insulin is essential for electrolyte management and overall kidney health. He disproves the notion that insulin resistance comes from excess insulin, therefore suggesting that a ketogenic diet can be harmful for overall kidney health.
Let’s start with the kidney and the actions of insulin in terms of electrolyte maintenance which i think is the single biggest problem for a lot of people there’s a lot of reasons a ketogenic diet is not a good thing for humans but let’s start with this mechanism of insulin at the level of the kidney when i was doing a ketogenic diet i didn’t understand this and
Nobody ever showed it to me i only found it after the fact and i thought aha this makes so much sense why wasn’t i taught this in medical school why didn’t i understand this why doesn’t anyone talk about this the overarching theme of the next few points will be that insulin is beneficial for humans that when you eat carbohydrates things like fruit or honey you
Do have a postprandial insulin spike some would fear that i would say that is beneficial that is the reason your kidneys are holding on to electrolytes that is the reason you do not have electrolyte problems that is going to trigger changes in your hormones which are beneficial changes in sex hormone binding globulin as i hinted at earlier which are beneficial all
Sorts of positive changes changes in glutathione which are beneficial come from that postprandial insulin spike too much insulin is a bad thing but too much insulin i believe results from pathologic insulin resistance which is almost never caused by excess insulin in humans i think that a lot of people in the ketogenic space believe that insulin resistance comes
From excess insulin and i would say no i have not seen convincing evidence of that in humans look at me i am eating 200 perhaps 300 grams of carbohydrates some days i have a lot of insulin postprandially i’m extremely insulin sensitive as insulin sensitive as anyone on a ketogenic diet or anyone on a carnivore diet why is insulin not inducing insulin resistance in
Me because insulin doesn’t cause insulin resistance in normal human physiology i would say that other than laboratory situations where someone is hooked up to an insulin drip it is essentially impossible to get insulin induced insulin resistance in a human outside of a laboratory setting these laboratory derangements are possible but no human the worst human on the
Planet is not drinking coca-cola 24 hours a day perhaps there’s somebody out there somewhere but that’s essentially what you’d have to do drink coca-cola and only coca-cola and wash it down with other processed sugar all the time to get the amount of insulin that is simulated by a laboratory insulin drip to create insulin induced insulin resistance someone eating
Twinkies a few times a day something i’m not a fan of is not going to create insulin induced insulin resistance i think that the vast majority 98 plus percent of insulin resistance aka metabolic dysfunction is caused by metabolic arrangements related to seed oils those being excess linoleic acid in the human organism that destroy our metabolism i’ve talked about
That in other podcasts in great depth so let’s establish this piece carbohydrates especially fruit and honey do not cause insulin induced insulin resistance in humans insulin has benefits i’ll show you some differences between sucrose and fruit and honey later in the podcast but let’s go to the benefits of insulin that you will never hear about in the ketogenic
Community at the level of the kidney insulin’s impact on renal sodium transport and blood pressure and health obesity and diabetes insulin has been shown to have anti nitric actions in humans and animal mammals nitrous natures is the loss of electrolytes in the kidney okay so the majority of renal sodium transporters are controlled by insulin in the kidney several
Groups using primary cell culture have demonstrated that insulin can directly increase activity of the epithelium sodium channel sodium phosphatase co-transporter the sodium hydrogen exchanger type 3 and the sodium potassium atpase et cetera et cetera so insulin is well known to have critical actions in the kidney when i was on a ketogenic carnivore diet no
Amount of electrolytes no amount of salt magnesium or potassium believe me i tried i tried way too much potassium orally a couple of times it’s very dangerous do not do that could resolve my electrolyte deficiencies because i had no signaling in the kidney to hold on to those things you can help a little bit by giving yourself salt especially if you’re doing a
Fast which is a whole separate podcast but once you get over a few days of ketogenic diet fasting your electrolytes are not going to be fixed by supplementation with any amount of electrolytes i think that is the wrong thing for humans to be doing i know people who are doing 20 plus grams of salt per day and still had issues it’s not the way to fix it you have
A sieve your kidneys are losing sodium when you lose sodium you’re losing potassium when you lose potassium you’re losing magnesium and chloride and calcium all the electrolytes get out of whack how do you fix it don’t fear insulin get good carbohydrates and you will fix this issue so that is the first major issue that i have with the ketogenic diet and i look
Forward to talking to ken berry and tom delauer about this
Transcribed from video
How insulin is beneficial for humans By CarnivoreMD