Ketosis - Good Or Bad??

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Over my life time I've done a lot of research on low carb diets like Atkins (and even Stillman, the precursor to Atkins) and followed these otherwise "harmful" diets for the dramatic weight loss results I wanted (before I became aware of how otherwise harmful they were regarding nutrition). More recently I've bought and read every book I could find on water only fasting, and have put the info into practice many times. At the risk of insulting people's intelligence, I'll simply state that both of the above-mentioned approaches DEPEND on ketosis to do what they do. Ketosis enables the body, in the absence of carbohydrate intake, to supply the brain with ketones from metabolism of endogenous and exogenous materials in the body, instead of the glucose it normally uses. Fortunately, the brain evidently does just fine on ketones. Because of this marvelous flexibility the overall body metabolism becomes "protein

sparing" rather than attacking lean body mass to convert protein into glucose to supply the brain. All this seems very logical to me, even though I've taken the information on faith, and've never seen any scientific references to back it up. It just seems to be common knowledge because of repetition. Another positive characteristic of being in ketosis is the complete lack of hunger while it's working. Whatever the negative aspects of ketosis may be, they seem to be outweighed by the positives. Based on the above, I'm very concerned about juice fasts and the various cleanses like the Master Cleanser, that are essentially HIGH carb diets, but very low calorie diets. These are the very conditions that CAUSE the body to attack lean body protein to make up a glucose deficiency for the brain, and the ketosis process is being blocked because of the carb intake. Yet when you read the literature on juice fasting and

cleanses, they claim the same advantages of water only fasting, i.e. detoxing, no hunger, allowing the body to heal itself, etc. but with gentler "healing crises" from release of toxins versus the water only fast, and don't require the absolute bed rest required for optimum results from water only fasting. I can see where they virually free the body of the enormous energy requirements for digestion, and make that energy available for detoxing. But, I don't see how you can have it both ways, i.e.the benefits of ketosis by doing exactly the opposite of what brings on the ketosis in the first place??????? I can rationalize the lack of hunger aspect, by assuming any low fat combined with low sodium diet will kill appetite because fat and salt are both appetite stimulators that actually lead to "addiction". The water only fasting literature about why it works has been around for a

long time. Have the juice fasting and cleansing people simply co-opted what the water only practitioners are saying, to suit their purposes, without actually having scientific proof? This point has kept me from going any where near juice fasting and cleanses until recently. I still have uneasy concerns because of the "protein sparing" or not issue. Comments? Frank

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