What is a ketogenic diet? It is a diet that consists of eating high fat foods and protein along with eating low carb foods. It is used to mostly treat epilepsy in people. What this diet does is confuse your body into using the fats for energy instead of using the carbs as energy. Usually what our bodies do is process the carbohydrates we consume for energy instead of fats to fuel our brain. Although if our bodies are on a low carbohydrate diet, our liver will take the fat we eat, process it and transform the fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies (compounds). The compound then passes through your brain and will replace the glucose as your number one energy source.

When there is a high number of the compound (ketone bodies) in your blood, the medical term for it is ketosis. Ketosis leads to a reduction in the number of epileptic seizures one may have those are the plus from what is a ketogenic diet topic.

The first therapeutic diet for epilepsy gives almost the correct number of protein so that the body may function properly including the growth of muscle, tissues and so on, and repair of the body. Protein also provides the same consistent weight for the age and height of the patient. This original diet provides an amazing 4:1 ration by examining how much the fat weighs in one’s body to the total of protein and carbs.

Closer look at what is a ketogenic diet history

This ketogenic diet was created in the 1920’s, almost 100 hundred years ago. The purpose of this diet was to find a treatment for pediatric epilepsy. So what is a ketogenic diet? It is a diet which is high in fat and low in carbohydrates and a normal amount of protein consumption.

One interesting fact is that mostly all of the fat is created of molecules. These molecules are named long-chain triglycerides. However medium chained triglycerides are produced from very fatty acids that have shorter carbon chains in them than the long chain triglycerides, which are more ketogenic. Another version of this diet is know by the name of MCT ketogenic diet. However this diet uses some form of the coconuts oil that contains a lot of MCTs and provides around half the calories. So for this diet a lot less fat is needed to be consumed and a large proportion of carbs and protein can be eaten which in return allows a larger choice of food varieties.

The Results of what is a ketogenic diet?

The results of the diet helped half of the people who have tried it. Although not everyone benefited from this diet it helped the rest. In the year of 2008 there was a case study done, controlled study and it showed that this diet did help benefit the patients for treating refractory epilepsy in children that took this ketogenic diet. Although this diet works for children, there is still evidence that this diet can help benefit adults as well.

This post should have given you a slight idea of what is a ketogenic diet. Some parts of this article may be confusing, just read it over and you should have a much more clear view of what is a ketogenic diet..