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Transcript
- 01:55 About Emily Maguire
- 03:29 Emily’s “Low Carb Odyssey”
- 10:00 Emily’s Start on the Ketogenic and Low Carb Diet
- 13:07 Benefits of a Ketogenic Diet or a Low Carb/High Fat Diet
- 16:59 What does a Ketogenic Diet Look Like?
- 24:52 Weight Loss and the Ketogenic Diet
- 29:16 The “Low Carb Flu”
- 35:59 Research on Ketogenic Diets
- 44:41 Low Carb and Dementia
- 47:30 The Most Pressing Health Issue in the World Today
- 48:58 Final Thoughts from Emily McGuire
- 49:38 Where to Find Emily McGuire
Wendy Myers: Hello, my name is Wendy Myers. Welcome to the Liveto110 podcast! You can find me on my website, myersdetox.com or on my YouTube channel WendyLiveto110. Please go there and subscribe.
Today we have my friend, Emily McGuire on the podcast. I met her on Jimmy Moore’s Living La Vida Low Carb Cruise last year.
We had a really nice time. She’s such a nice person. She’s just very, very funny and sweet and I wanted to have her on the podcast to talk about a lot of interesting things she’s doing. She has been traveling around the world, talking to all the experts on the low carb diet and the different diseases that it’s helping and really honing in on the cutting edge research on the ketogenic diet. So, we’re going to talk about that today on the podcast.
Please keep in mind that this podcast is only informational in nature and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. So, please keep in mind, this is for entertainment purposes only. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before engaging in any treatment that we suggest today on the show.
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I spent many months designing the formula for this product. This has been a dream of mine. The works for many years is finally come into fruition. So, keep an eye out for Bio Rehab Supplements on Amazon.
Our guest today, Emily Maguire, she completed her BSc Nutrition and she went on to study for her Master’s in Obesity Science and Management. She is the author at LowCarbGenesis.com, her website. She’s keen to share the myths and truths surrounding the ever confusing and interesting topic of nutrition. So, am I!
And with over seven years of experience working within the commercial weight loss sector, she has unprecedented insight into the use of alternative nutritional therapies particularly the ketogenic diet.
For the past year, she has been touring around the world in order to get first-hand insight into what is really going on in the world of keto nutrition.
Emily, thank you so much for coming on the podcast!
Emily Maguire: Thank you for having me. It’s nice to see you again!
Wendy Myers: Yeah, you too! I met you on the Low Carb Cruise. I was your fellow presenter there. We were in Jimmy Moore’s Low Carb Cruise 2014. It was nice to have pina coladas with you. I guess we drank a little bit in the cruise.
Emily Maguire: Yeah. Funny one, the cruise. It’s mixing vacation with little bit of speaking. I think it’s nice. I think people see that we can also have a vacation as well.
Wendy Myers: Yes.
Emily Maguire: And having those cold pina coladas is okay.
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Emily Maguire: Yeah, I know. It’s fun. I went on this year’s one as well. So, that was interesting, another good line-up of speakers.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. So, what have you presented about on the cruise?
Emily Maguire: I presented about the trip that I’m doing at the minute. I know we were just speaking a little bit about it off-air. So, I’ve been traveling there for, oh, gosh! It must be about six months I think it is. I’ve been doing this crazy around-the-world trip and meeting everyone at the low carb, ketogenic, nutrition worlds.
I started off at South Africa and went from there to Australia, Australia to America. And my last stop was Canada before I head home.
So, yes, I presented on what I see as I’ve gone around what’s been going on from all these different countries and just a general overview of how I’ve been doing it basically.
Wendy Myers: You just went on the low carb odyssey.
Emily Maguire: I know! It’s quite funny because I’ve been doing it on my own as well. So, it’s this crazy person with an very even more crazy accent that’s turning up to these people’s offices and universities and all these kinds of things. It’s been really interesting. But I’m getting a bit sick living out of a suitcase.
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Emily Maguire: So, you take for granted the little things in life, but it’s been amazing so far.
Wendy Myers: What is your goal with the ketogenic odyssey that you’re taking?
Emily Maguire: Professionally, I’m looking to go back and doing my PhD. That’s kind of the overall, ultimate goal if you like. I want to go back and specifically look at ketogenic nutrition. As you pointed out as well, there are not that many people that are not only researching it, but using it around the world, particularly, in the UK as well.
So, I decided to set out on this trip and do a little bit of travel, I mixed in a little bit of professional aspect to this as well and head back. There’s a few options I got to start to consider, but I’m going to head back home before I definitely pick which place I ‘m going to end up in I think.
Wendy Myers: Nice. Nice. What are your top places that you think you want to study?
Emily Maguire: Oh! I don’t know if I can say yet.
Wendy Myers: No?
Emily Maguire: There’s definitely a few in Australia and the States as well. But there’s another couple perhaps back in London. So, whilst I’ve been waiting this for years, there’s more picking up over there as well which is quite exciting and interesting. So, I’m going to go back to UK and see what’s happening there.
Wendy Myers: Did you visit Christine Cronau when you were there?
Emily Maguire: I didn’t. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it up the east coast. I got up as far as Sydney and I started off in the west coast. I started off in Perth and traveled down to Adelaide. I met people there at the CSIRO Center, Manny Noakes and Grant Brinkworth. So, they’ve done a lot of research in low carb particularly diabetics.
And then, I moved on from there to Canberra. There, I met the amazing – have you come across the Merrymaker Sisters of Australia?
Wendy Myers: No.
Emily Maguire: Oh! Emma and Carla, Papas is their surname. The Merrymaker Sisters are just amazing! They’re based in Australia and did really great things out there. And Chef Peter Adams as well, I don’t know if you’ve come across Pete at all.
From there, I went to Melbourne and hung out with the Low Carn Down Under group. So, that’s Dr. Rod Tayler, there’s Dr. Gary Fettke, a whole bunch of them there.
And then, up to Sydney. That’s where I met Dr. Kieron Rooney. He is a professor at Sydney University that’s actually starting to do a lot of work looking at low carb diets, particularly looking at sugar, sweets in beverages. And he has started to look at the ketogenic aspect with cancer as well.
From there, I actually had to get over to the States and make it to PaleoFX. I cut my Australia part a little bit shorter, so I couldn’t get any further than the east coast unfortunately. But Gold Coast, Brisbane is actually probably one of the nicest parts of Australia. This means I have to go back I think.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I went there for two months when I was younger. It was beautiful. I did some scuba diving. No, I was not visiting low carbers.
Emily Maguire: [inaudible 00:07:52]
Wendy Myers: I was probably eating carbs and scuba diving. I did the exact opposite of what you’re doing. But I really like Christine Cronau, she was on the podcast some long ago.
Emily Maguire: She’s lovely. Christine’s lovely. Actually, I saw her when I was in South Africa. She was in the first International Low Carb Conference that was held in South Africa. There was a host of pretty much names that a lot of you will know. Jimmy Moore was there. We had Dr. Eric Westman and Steve Phinney, we had Aseem Malhotra from the UK. Diane Edwards was there and Christine was there from Australia. There was quite a few from Australia, so I got to see her there.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. She was a fellow presenter on the Low Carb Cruise 2014.
Emily Maguire: Of course!
Wendy Myers: Very odd because we look exactly alike. She’s my doppelganger from down under.
Emily Maguire: Oh, my God. She does actually. She won the crown of traveling the furthest that year as well.
After experiencing the jet lag from Sydney to LA as well and then flying straight to Austin, it is the worst jet lag I have ever experienced. The only thing I can say is thank goodness for PaleoFX because Robb Wolf and Dr. Parsley (I can’t remember his first name off the top of my head), they had that new sleep cocktail that they’ve just brought out. They gave it to me to try the first night and it was the best thing that I have ever tried with regards to sleep.
So, I cannot highly recommend that enough of anyone suffering from really severe jet lag because I was a walking zombie for about four days.
Wendy Myers: Oh, no! Well, that was nice of Robb to knock you out of PaleoFX. How sweet.
Emily Maguire: [inaudible 00:09:44] and get more. I was like, “I need to have more of these.” So, yeah, it’s highly recommended. I tried that. Before, I tried some of Dave Asprey’s stuff as well.
Wendy Myers: So, what got you so passionate about the Ketogenic or low carb diets?
Emily Maguire: It started when I was in undergrad for my degree. My degree was conventional. The way I was taught was the low fat, the “eat well” plate, as we call it in the UK.
When I got to my second year of undergrad, I took a place for the summer to help a commercial weight loss company. And being probably a typical student, I didn’t do much of due diligence behind the company, showing up on the first day and that’s when I realized they were a low carb company.
I pretty much almost never went back. I think I was going to go back after the first day because I actually thought I was going to have to report them or something. To me, that’s what I’ve been taught. It was all about low fat. We got taught one biochem class that basically ketosis is bad for you and gives you bad breath, so don’t do them.
So, I sat there on the first day. It was actually Dr. Eric Westman and Dr. Will Yancey’s work from Duke University that I started reading. Literally, the way I’ve explained it to people on this trip as well, it’s almost like going down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. You just started unraveling all these stuff that you just never even heard of and there’s just no way back basically. So, that was the start of it.
From there, I also had to finish my degree. And what was interesting was I had to say what my lecturers and things wanted me to write about to pass the exams. But at the same time, I was also learning. I’m reading all the science, but it’s kind of contradictory. So, I was interesting way. I know a lot of people find about it after they finish their degree.
And then, from there, I went on to do my master’s degree in Obesity Science. Luckily, that university was really quite open to looking outside of the box for dietary approaches. They actually quite encouraged it. So, my master’s thesis then was looking at low carbohydrates diet in diabetics, type II’s in particular. So, it all just came from there.
And then, the first time I ever saw or really went to specific ketogenic conference, if you like, was in 2011 at the American Society of Bariatric Physicians. It was part of the Nutrition and Metabolism Society. They had a conference pretty much on all ketone bodies. It was the likes of Eric Kossoff from the Johns Hopkins Centre, there was Tom Seyfried, Eugene Fine, Jeff Volek. I was a very naïve 22-year old turning up to this conference and I thought knew some stuff. Just the level of their knowledge of biochemistry just really, really was what enticed me. Science is what’s driven me and the academic side of it. From there, I was just completely hooked.
So, the long story short of it, I went from there. It’s just how this all panned out.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, you’re going to give the transcriptionist a run for her money with all those names.
Emily Maguire: I know!
Wendy Myers: What are some of the many benefits of adapting a Ketogenic diet or a low carb high fat diet?
Emily Maguire: There’s many. The first thing I’ll say with it as well is although there is a lot of benefits with regards to ketogenic (I mean, I’ll probably be a little controversial maybe when I say this as well), it’s not necessarily the be-all and end-all of dietary practices. It’s one aspect. It’s a dietary approach. For some people, it might not be the way to go for them. But for people that I’ve worked with and that I’ve seen in clinics from around the world, some of the benefits you can actually experience are really profound.
Weight loss is obviously one of them. That’s the standard everyone thinks they started going to ketogenic for. But there’s more research that comes out now finding benefits ranging from improvements in diabetes right down to treatments with regards to cancer. So, this is what you call “therapeutics” or “clinical aspects” with regards to ketogenic. So, ranging from epilepsy right to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and cancer as well, that side of it is really exciting!
Other people (and particularly, another side which is quite groundbreaking) is the performance and athletic side, particularly for endurance swimmers or any kind of endurance sport basically. They are now finding that the ketogenic diet, if you’re in this what’s known as “fat-adapted state”, you’re basically loading your body to switch from burning glucose predominantly to burning fats, then you can have so much and better performance. And that’s been seen with some really elite performers right down to people who just do recreational runs, marathons, et cetera.
There’s also a really good and documentary film that was aired. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Cereal Killers. That’s ‘cereal’ as in the cereal that we eat.
Wendy Myers: Oh, yeah! We watched that. We watched that with the free dinner for the Low Carb Cruise.
Emily Maguire: Yeah. Well, they made the second one and it’s called Run on Fat. The second one is basically based on this couple who decided to row from – my geography is terrible (and I’ve traveled the world). They decided to row from, I think it was, the west coast and over to Hawaii, I think it was, which took them about 30 days. And basically, they wanted to do it under a ketogenic diet. So, they wanted to do it completely fat-adapted.
Now, obviously all the conventional people were like, “You’re crazy! There’s absolutely no way you can do this without being carb-loaded effectively.” But they went about it and there’s this whole documentary based on it. They basically, obviously, did it. They completely fat-adapted.
So, there’s a lot more of these coming out, some really exciting research around it as well. I think a lot more athletes are going to be adapting that approach because not only is it good for the performance, it’s also really good for the recovery and it seems to help in injury as well.
And then, in terms of other aspects, a lot of people, when they start ketogenic diet, they report a lot better with regards to mental cognition. They have a lot more clarity. People reports a lot more improvements with regards to skin, et cetera.
So, there’s a whole host of what we call ‘anecdotal evidence’ and one case report.
So, there’s still a lot that needs to be studied. That’s why I’m quite careful. I think a lot of people can think that as more interest is generated with regards to ketogenic as well. I think we need to be careful that it’s not going to run away as this amazing cure for everything. Whilst I think it does have a place, I think there’s obviously lot of other aspects that will come into it. It’s lifestyle, it’s the way people sleep, people’s hormones, toxins, et cetera. All these things as well will come into play.
Wendy Myers: This might be a dumb question, but just for any listeners that don’t know, what does a ketogenic diet look like?
Emily Maguire: A ketogenic diet, generally, under the broad term, if you like, the carbohydrate content of a ketogenic diets needs to be at 50 grams of carbs per day for less. That’s the upper level, if you like, that we would say. For a lot of people who are insulin-resistant (so that’s people with diabetes, metabolic syndrome, fatty liver or people that predominantly hold their fat around their tummy area), they might do a lot better with a carbohydrate content of around about 20 to 30 grams.
On the other end of the scope, it is obviously a lot higher in fat than what a lot of people are used to. Again, the exact level of fat content will be very individualized and it’s also very dependent on why you’re following the ketogenic diet. So, for someone who’s epileptic or perhaps are on it for other therapeutic reasons like Alzheimer’s disease or for cancer, their fat level can go up as high as 90% of your total calorie intake sometimes. For other individuals, it can be as low as 65%.
So, again there’s a lot of these difference, percentages and things that are online. [Inaudible 00:18:17] I don’t necessarily like working with the percentages because it gives you this vague overview.
It’s also very dependent on the amount of calories you’re going to need as well. For example, an athlete, an endurance athlete, is going to need a lot more calories than someone who is obese and looking to lose weight, for example. Their percentages might look the same, but their absolute overall amount that they are taking is very different.
And then, the other factor is the protein. A lot of people, when they see or hear low carb, you automatically think this high protein aspect. I suppose way back, ten or twenty years ago, when our big dads still overeat a little bit on protein particularly with regards to ketogenic programs. But obviously, protein in itself is very glucogenic. That’s basically mean that your body can take the protein and synthesize it to glucose if it needs to.
Now, that’s not to say that the smallest amount – I think on the end of the scale (again, this is where we got to be a bit careful) is that you don’t want to undereat on protein as well. Proteins are so really vital to our overall health, our body functions. It’s like where everything grows on basically.
So, it’s basically what we call “moderate protein”. And again, it’s very dependent on the individual, it’s very dependent on your body weight, your muscle mass. That’s going to obviously vary.
Generally again, if you’re doing it for therapeutic reasons (for example, epilepsy, particularly in children who are really ill with epilepsy), they don’t have a lot lower level than a marathon runner, for example. The overall diet, the way that it looks, it’s probably similar to how a lot of people maybe eats.
And also, morning time, for example, could be a couple of eggs or some bacon, maybe a little bit of avocado if you can tolerate a little bit more carbohydrate content. Your lunch time could just be a salad, some protein option with something like olive oil on top (that’s your fat source in there).
And then, evening meal, again, just any source of protein with a vegetable source with either croutons or some of fat. Obviously, top it some fat as well.
Quite a lot of people, when you get very ketogenic, the ketone bodies themselves are very satiating –well, not the keton bodies themselves are satiating. But the ketone bodies can downplay your appetite basically.
So, what a lot of people do when they follow a Ketogenic diet is quite often they’ll have a meal in the morning or late in the morning time and they can go completely fine. They’re quite full throughout the day until evening time and they’ll have an evening meal.
Again, it’s sometimes getting out of this conventional thinking of, “We have to eat three meals a day with these two snacks.” That’s how a lot of people think you have to eat. But when you go ketogenic, a lot of the time, your body, the way it responds changes. So, I know a lot of people that would just eat twice a day with a little bit of a snack in between and that’s completely fine for their body.
So again, it’s just about having this individualized approach with it. For some people, they need the three meals a day. They just cannot skip breakfast, they cannot skip lunch and they cannot skip dinner. So, it’s really adjusting it to that individual basically.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I like that you talked about individualization. I agree that the ketogenic diet doesn’t work for everybody and everyone’s a little bit different. For me, I played around with it in the past. One of the very first diets that I tried was the Atkins diet written by Dr. Eric Westman. And I also have recently been playing around more with a low carb diet just because I’m trying to lose weight and just doing just a little experiment and what not.
I find that I can only eat twice a day. I’m just not hungry because of the ketones and what-not. I feel really good. I was able to do it a few years ago, as I’ve talked about jokingly on the cruise (and actually, everybody hate me). but now, I’ve been playing around more with it and it feels really good.
Emily Maguire: Good. Yeah.
Wendy Myers: But I like that you also talked about how when you eat too much protein, that can turn into sugar. I think a lot of people don’t realize that. They can’t just freely eat carbs or protein or any macronutrient and not suffer the consequences.
Emily Maguire: Yeah. I think more researches are coming. I remember when I first started to eat, started my research into carb way back when, there wasn’t much emphasis on the protein even then. So, we knew that that with the protein, the protein almost takes care of itself to a certain extent because protein in itself as a macronutrient. It’s very satiating as well.
So, just by nature, the way that the body metabolizes protein (obviously, it has more storage capacity for protein like it does for fats and carbs), then your body has this natural ability – as soon as you eat a really big steak, there’s just no way you can eat any more of that. It’s very different when you fat and carbohydrates.
So, it’s that kind of mechanism. But obviously, in an individual where their hypothalamus, et cetera, can effectively be damaged, if they’re metabolically damaged, then they don’t necessarily have signals and queues with regards to fullness after meals. Obviously, homrones come into play there as well.
So, I think the aspect with the protein is that some people could actually overeat it. I even find that we have some individuals where they weren’t getting improvements particularly in blood sugar as well. And what we were finding is that they were not only having their three meals a day and they were having an unlimited amount of protein snacks. That’s where the stumbling block for it was. And that is to say just because of the body’s ability to turn protein into sugar effectively and the body obviously uses that in place of the ketone bodies.
It’s a minefield in the beginning. Once you get it, then you know and you can start listening to your body. But in the beginning, it does take a little bit of a trial and error.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And you said that a lot of people are attracted to the Ketogenic diet or low carb high fat diets because they’re trying to lose weight. And so, do high ketones automatically translate to weight loss?
Emily Maguire: They don’t. And this is something that I find a lot of the time with the clients that I’ve had as well. So, a lot of people think that the blood reading that they get or the breath meter, if it blows red, then that must means you are highly into ketosis. But then, I get people that saying, “But I’m not losing weight.”
So, the way that it was explained to me (and this has been by some of the doctors and people that have worked in this for 20, 30 years) is that there’s a huge difference between fat-burning and weight loss.
So, when you’re fat-burning, if you take a blood measurement of the b-hydroxybutyrate or you’re blowing or you’re peeing on a sack or whichever which way you want to measure, that’s not necessarily correlate completely with regards to weight loss. That is more to do with particularly with the diet that you’re eating as well.
Quite often, you would hear people say that calories don’t matter. There’s just a big debate with regards to the calories, calories in equals calories out. And whilst I am not saying that that is not just the ‘calories in equals calories out’, it’s to do with quality of the calories that you’re eating, but if you’re eating in an excess of 3000, 4000 or something like 5000 calories and expect to lose weight and you’re sometime who’s particularly obese, then that is not going to happen.
A lot of people, there’s a trend now where they say “consume your fats in liquid form, whether it’s cooking oil or butter, et cetera and your coffee or tea” or whatever along those lines, if you do that quite consistently throughout the day, then what your body is going to be doing is it’s going to be taking the fat from food that you’re eating and burning that and producing ketone bodies.
So, just because you have a high ketone level doesn’t necessarily differentiate if your body’s got that from body fat or if it’s just got it from the food that you’ve just ingested.
A lot of people are saying (clients have come to me before), they’re stumbling or they’ve plateau. A lot of the time, it’s just a little bit because their calorie content is still a little bit too high.
Now again, a lot of people hear that, “Oh, but this has nothing to do with calories” and that kind of thing. It’s not within that certain sense, but calories do have to come into play.
From everyone that I’ve chatted from around the world, all the major within people within these, they all say the same, you can’t get away from that factor. But the major thing, what the plus is with regards to the ketogenic is that you can lower the calorie content ever so slightly even and you don’t have that hunger that happens when you just do standard 500 calorie deficit diet, for example. You don’t have those sugar cravings. You do feel full. So, you can do it just by taking a little bit of butter or taking a little bit of cooking oil or whatever it is that you may be adding in that’s just tipping that calorie content up ever so slightly.
And again, it not about putting people in a really low calorie diet at all. It’s not very focused on that. But for individuals, particularly if you get further down the journey, when you start off the ketogenic, it’s not necessary that you have to really focus on the calorie count. But as you get further down the line, if you’re plateauing and you’re not losing weight in particular, then you would really need to take a look at that.
So, yeah, there’s a huge difference between fat-burning and weight loss. And there’s a huge difference between your ketone bodes are high because of the foods that you’re eating or is it because your body’s burning its own fat.
Wendy Myers: We definitely want to be burning fat. I know I do.
Emily Maguire: Yes. People who are athletes and things, they can ingest a lot more fat. All these are going to burn that through their marathons and whatever they’re doing. So again, this is why it has to be really individualized. You got to be really careful that the broadness that’s now out there in the world wide web, et cetera.
Wendy Myers: And podcasters, a little lower fat, for sure. They stay around a lot.
Emily Maguire: A little bit.
Wendy Myers: So let’s talk a little bit about the low carb flu so to speak. When people are transitioning from moderate or high carb (typical American diet) to a low carb diet, what kind of things happen and what can people expect?
Emily Maguire: So, when you’re transitioning, as you said, there’s this kind of standard, what’s known as the “low carb flu” or the “Akins flu” sometimes it’s called.
So, within the first two to three days, some people can notice symptoms like headaches, lethargy, they get a metallicy taste in the mouth, they can have weak legs. Just generally, that’s why it’s called the “low carb flu.” You just don’t really feel that right.
Now, a lot of people get a bit put off by that. They think it’s a little scary. But the reason why it’s happening is, first of all, your body is getting used to the switch over in energy source. It’s getting used to using the ketone bodies over the glucose for energy.
And second of all, a lot of the reason it’s happening is because of a shift in the electrolyte balance. So, when you’re going to look at a carbohydrate diet, obviously, your body does dump out a lot of water, which is very well-known in the first couple of weeks. And with that water, obviously, there is then fluctuation with regards to sodium, potassium and magnesium as well.
So, really to overcome that first week with regards to keto flu, just take in a supplement, making sure you’re having extra salt on you fruits. Obviously, you make sure you replenish any of that that’s lost. And then, take in a magnesium supplement as well. It’s really beneficial for that aspect.
It should not run any longer than a week. Some people don’t even experience any symptoms. Again, it’s very individualized. It’s not to say that your body’s not burning fat. It’s just your body has been a bit more efficient than some other individuals.
And particularly, what your diet was like before as well. Maybe your diet has been a clean sort of diet before. It’s not going to be not as bad when you start going to that keto aspects.
But having that added salt with regards to magnesium as well can really, really help those side effects with it. And like I said, it’s shouldn’t last longer than about a week.
Wendy Myers:Yeah, when I tried the low carb diet before, many, many years ago, when I was first experimenting with different diets, I had found the willpower really hard to resist the sugar and things like that because my brain was wanting to make serotonin with these carbohydrates.
Emily Maguire: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: But I think now that I’ve healed my health, my adrenals, et cetera (as many of the listeners now) and I’ve balanced my neurotransmitters, I don’t crave sugar at all. I am able to do the ketogenic diet or to attempt much more effectively because I don’t have this white-knuckle craving for sugar because I have adequate serotonin levels.
Emily Maguire: Yeah. Initially, when people start (and particularly with people who are very sugar and carb addicted), what we know with regards to sugar now is sugar is so addictive. The media just now, it’s a really hot topic with regards to sugar (and that sugar film was another documentary that’s just coming out from Australia, so that’s one I can highly recommend for people to see). It was all this aspect about how people who have sugar day in and day out, they don’t actually realize how addicted you are until you have to come off it. That’s when you suddenly realized that your whole hypothalamus, the whole chemicals, et cetera transitioning within the brains is just so messed up.
And particularly with individuals who are overweight and who are obese, it’s even harder to make switches within the food supply.
They employ scientists specifically to get a formula for sugar fat and salt within certain foods, so that it completely messes up your brain. Your neurotransmitters [inaudible 00:33:11], it completely messes it up. That’s why you can sit and eat a whole bag of chips and not really think you’re feeling full because the scientists, they know how to put that together in such a way.
So, when you do first go keto or low carb, it can be a little bit difficult in the beginning. And using things like natural sweeteners where possible like Stevia, I really do recommend for my clients who are really struggling because I’d rather have that as a crutch and to start to transition to for them, so that once they really get into the – it’s a huge, huge change for a lot of people just fighting sugar and carbohydrates when that’s been your diet for so long.
So, transitioning. And then, once you’re feeling that you’ve got, Wendy, as you said, a little bit more will power, then trying to also pull back with regards to even the natural sweeteners. I’m not a huge fan of people being too reliant on them because I still think it doesn’t really allow your body to get away from this reliance on sugar and sweetness. When the sweetness even of a natural sweetener hits the tongue, the body doesn’t differentiate between if that’s sugar or Stevia. For example, it hits the tongue and it signals the brain that, “This is sweet.”
So there are a lot of different studies coming through. It’s probably an area that you could be on [inaudible 00:34:40]. But I’m just a huge fan of where if you can get away from that kind of sweetness, the better.
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Emily Maguire: But again, I would ask that once you can get past that initial stages of ketogenic, you don’t have these hungers and you don’t have these cravings.
There have been a few studies looking at particularly with regards to ketone bodies. There’s a specific hunger hormone called Ghrelin. What they find is that when individuals have a high level of ketone bodies circulating in their blood, the Grehlin level is actually suppressed and that’s one of the hormones that signal to your body to say that you’re hungry.
So, there’s all of these things and aspect with regards to ketone bodies that are coming out now to show that it might help almost kind of track body, if you like, and help you get over that stage of having the sugar cravings and these aspect with regards to wanting these kinds of food as well.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. First of all, I’m amazed at how little food I need. I used to have three meals a day and I just didn’t feel right. Now, I’m eating two small meals a day and I’m just blown away by how little food I can function on.
Emily Maguire:Yeah, I know. I know.
Wendy Myers: So, let’s talk about some of the types of research on ketogenic diets that you’re uncovering around the world?
Emily Maguire: Probably a lot of it, most have been in the States where some of the really exciting work is going on. A few of the places, I visited.
There is a doctor who’s based on Phoenix. Her name is Dr. Adrienne Scheck. She’s really, really lovely and so much great work that she’s got going on. She’s at the Barrow Institute. A lot of her work is looking at brain cancer. What’s really interesting about her work is she is actually looking at the aspect of ketogenic diet, but using it with standard care.
So, this is another aspect I think that again we’ve got to be really careful of at the minute. A lot of people out there are going to be thinking that the ketogenic diet is the thing that’s going to cure cancer. I personally haven’t seen enough evidence to say that we can completely say that that is 100% true.
I think there’s a lot of evidence now to say that one, it’s very good as an adjunct to the standard of care that we’re using. And I think for some people, it’s definitely been lifeline for obviously some of the procedures that they’ve gone through.
A lot of the evidence that’s going on just now is within animals and cell culture. So obviously, we still need a lot more human trials. That is what they’re going to start looking at at center in Phoenix. A lot more human trials are going to be coming out from there, which is really interesting and really quite exciting.
It is obviously predominantly in brain cancer. So again, from there, you cannot translate it to all the different types of cancer. But what they are going to be looking at next is they are going to be looking at brain cancer and metastasis, particularly with breast cancer.
So, it’s really growing and evolving. And what’s quite interesting is what I spoke to Adrienne about, the funding aspect, obviously, and how that care is going to be received in different levels. So, there’s a lot of interesting work.
And what was really interesting about her as well, we’re speaking about ketogenic diet, as a scientist and as a researcher, you’re purposely trying to go out to prove yourself wrong. Generally, you can’t go into a study having a bias (but that’s not always the case). So, generally, [inaudible 00:38:25] hypothesis and try and prove that wrong there.
One thing that Dr. Scheck was saying was that she can’t really believe. If you think something is too good to be true, it probably often is particularly in science. But what she has been finding is that these ketone bodies just seem to have so much of a positive impact. And if we can put it that way, particularly with regards to the downplaying of cancer pathways, it’s really quite exciting.
So in aspect, if you can put this particularly alongside – and I don’t question our standard of care. One of the questions that I asked her was, “If you put this with regards to standard of care, does it help in terms of downplaying the side effects with regards to radiotherapy and chemotherapy?”
The problem with that is that not only are you trying to kill the cancer cells, but normal function cells can also die often. That’s why you get a lot of the side effects with cancer. Again, she doesn’t have [inaudible 00:39:34] outside of research. But anecdotally, she’s finding that people who have been on a ketogenic diet seem to not have as many side effects. So again, you cannot go out and say that this is the be-all, end-all. But anecdotally, it’s what we’re seeing.
And the major thing with the ketogenic diet as well, particularly with cancer, is it don’t seem to do any harm. So, by someone who can only eat Ketogenic diet, yes, it can be a little bit difficult to follow, particularly with people who are going through chemo and radiotherapy. They can have changing palates. They might not be able to tolerate meat, for example. So, all these different aspects, if you are going to go on it, you really need to work with someone who’s trained properly in the ketogenic diet. Get advice, get help from that side of it. But it does seem to be really promising.
And then, there’s obviously Dominic D’agostino, he’s at the University of South Florida who’s doing a whole host of really, really amazing and interesting work that’s coming out over there.
Also, Thomas Seyfried who’s in Boston. Thomas Seyfried, he’s the major person that’s taken the metabolic theory of cancer forward. And from there, that’s where other people sprung from. And he has a really interesting character to visit in his lab. And his lab, he teams up ketogenic diet more with a fasting approach with it. He actually thinks that it’s more towards the calorie restriction rather than just purely the carb restriction. That’s why it’s working with the cancer cells.
And in his lab, he actually has pretty much all of his students and everybody who works there, they have this competitions. When I turned up, they had all just started a three-day fast. They’ll all take their blood sugar levels and their ketone levels. It’s like a contest to see who can get the lowest in blood sugar and then the highest in their ketone level because of what he used in there.
There’s a newspaper that’s just come out from him. He’s looking up at what’s known as an index. So, the other thing that, for example, if someone has cancer, we don’t know what level of ketone bodies they should get to just like we don’t know should your blood sugar level be as low as possible? A lot of this is really, really unknown.
What he’s found is this kind of index that he likes. For an individual, you base what you want as a calculation which is based on this paperwork (that I can give you the link to) that basically shows that the lower your blood sugar level and the higher your ketone body level for that individual seems to be a therapeutic kind of window.
Again, this is very new research. It’s been piloted. We see them more in adults. But it’s just really interesting work that’s coming from there. And they’ve done a lot of their own experiments on themselves and find things like caffeine, for example, the impact of that has in ketone body levels. They found that it can actually lower ketone body levels and certain types of alcohol as well.
Wendy Myers: Sorry, I’m lowering my ketones. I’m lowering my ketones.
Emily Maguire: You’re lowering it a little bit. Apparently, the more expensive one you buy, the less impact that has in your ketone body levels.
Wendy Myers: Here we go again.
Emily Maguire: So, that’s obviously [inaudible 00:42:57].
Wendy Myers: When I drink, I don’t drink very often. But when I do, I do it right.
Emily Maguire: Also red wine as well. And lastly, probably the most exciting was when I went to see Professor Jake Wilson and Ryan Lowery. They’re at the University of Tampa. They have worked quite closely with Dominic D’Agostino and also Dr. Jeff Volek as well in Ohio (who I also went to see). And between all three of them, there’s been a lot of work with regards to performance.
I know that Jake and Ryan, I think hopefully they might be a study coming out soon that’s looking at ketogenic, particularly with regards to para-athletes, which there is not a lot evidence in there at all, so then a lot of people think that you can’t get muscle gains with the ketogenic or you can’t have the strength or the power, et cetera. But there’s a lot of work now coming out from Jake and Ryan’s lab. So, I think for anybody interested on performance, really keep an eye on those two and what they’re doing. Their work is pretty amazing. They’re completely my go-to people for the performance aspect.
Dr. Jeff Volek, as well, I went to see his lab in Ohio and it’s just phenomenal. He just finished the faster study which again is looking at elite athletes. And I know Bane Greenfield is one of the participants in that study. So again, he’s got a lot of amazing evidence over there. It’s not going to be published yet. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to tell you all about the research. They showed them to me. But I think there’s going to be a lot of amazing work to come from there ranging from performance right down to the gut micro biome as well. I’m really, really excited.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, let’s talk a little bit about low carb diets can help improve dementia or reverse it. Lately, the statistics are that 50% of people developed dementia in the forms of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, et cetera. So, can you talk a little bit about how low carb diet can help in those conditions?
Emily Maguire: Alzheimer’s got termed I think last year or the year before as type III diabetes. That’s the new buzz coming out with it. Basically, what we find is there’s a link, again, with high sugar levels and high insulin levels. They’re finding the impact that has in the brain in particularly amylar plaque deposition that happens with it.
So, the problem when you have Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, dementia, et cetera is really linked to high blood sugar levels and high insulin levels.
So, by lowering, obviously, your carbohydrate content with a low carbohydrate diet, that can automatically can help with that. And what studies have found is that people, when you put them on a ketogenic diet is that their scores, their cognition scores have improved.
The major thing obviously with dementia and Alzheimer’s, et cetera is that there’s no preventive studies. I don’t really know if there could be any preventive studies that you could be ethically approved for. But what it seems is this overall advice. Make sure your blood sugar level is as low as it goes for health in terms of what’s right for you – and that’s consistently low, your HbA1c level because this is our aspect, the glycosylated hemoglobin, which is a measurement predominantly in long-term diabetes management. But it’s this glycosylated hemoglobin and build up that seems to have the impact with regards to the cognition aspect as well. It comes into play with regards to Alzheimer’s, et cetera.
So, making sure that you have a blood sugar that’s stable most of the time and with that, also taking care of your insulin levels as well, that seems to be what’s having the biggest impact.
And when it comes to the research with regards to the Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, on the other flipside of it, what a lot of the work is looking at now are things like MCT oil, coconut oil. There’s lots of studies going on to looking at things like folic acid, which is an MDT, which is [inaudible 00:47:02] with a little carbohydrate approach can really help individuals who have already developed dementia, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. It seems to have improvements in their cognition.
Wendy Myers: Dave Asprey is happy about that.
Emily Maguire: Yes.
Wendy Myers: MCT oil.
Emily Maguire: Yes.
Wendy Myers: Yes.
Emily Maguire: You could find some studies with them there.
Wendy Myers: Well, I have a question I like to ask all of my guests. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
Emily Maguire: I think I would have to say obesity and the umbrella that comes with it. So, obviously, the co-morbidities that come with obesity from type II diabetes, metabolic syndrome to cancer, cardiovascular disease.
Obviously, you can develop things like diabetes, insulin resistance without necessarily being overweight. But again, from traveling around, from the majors of western countries, I’ve just been really shock to see what it’s been like in every country I’ve been to.
We are living in epidemic that is just set to get worst. Diabetes in itself, I know the figures in the UK that if we don’t get this diabetes under control, by the year 2030, we’re going to cripple NHS, which is our health system. And that’s just for diabetes. That’s not taking into consideration cardiovascular, insulin resistance or anything along those lines.
So, for me, I think that plays the most pressing. And that probably fits an umbrella around lots of other conditions within there. We have our major problem more with over-nutrition than we do with malnutrition.
So, it’s pretty scary.
Wendy Myers: Was there anything else you want to add to our low carb conversation?
Emily Maguire: I don’t think so, just to say that it’s really exciting. I mean, I’m really excited by the science and researches that’s coming with it particularly the therapeutic aspect.
The only thing I want to say again (I’m just trying to stress that) is that this isn’t just a miracle cure that if you just do this, it’s going to fix everything. Take that with it, not get too evangelic with it. It might not be right for everyone. Lead by example. If it’s right for you, other people will follow suit with it.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Why don’t you tell us a little more about where they can find you and maybe any other projects that you have on the horizon?
Emily Maguire: So, you can find me at my website which is LowCarbGenesis.com. Now, I’m just starting to take on clients again actually. Obviously, I’ve put a lot of that on hold because I’ve been traveling across different time zones. So, people can contact me there if you want help on starting on ketogenic or low carb or anything along those lines.
I do have other projects coming up which we will be able to talk about in the next few months. So, my social media again is just Low Carb Genesis. That’s on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.
Wendy Myers: Well, thank you very much again for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.
Emily Maguire: Thank you for having me. It’s so good to finally chat to you again. It’s been so long after the cruise.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I know! We’ve been meaning to do this for a while.
Emily Maguire: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: And listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. You can find me at myersdetox.com. There you can learn about how to heal your health conditions naturally and detoxification, my favorite subject. You can also learn about my healing and detox program Mineral Power at MineralPower.com. Thanks again for listening to the Live to 110 podcast.
