Glycogen is maintained and replenished during ketosis. page 3

[Owly]

Not true - the Bison Peoples (Lakota, Shoshone, Cheyenne, Blackfeet, etc.) ate very little in the way of fruits and vegetables. They ate bison meat and fat, with occasional other meats like antelope. Their history and diet is well documented by the early plains explorers from the US and Canada.

During the winter months, yes. In the summer months, they ate various berries, fruits, tubers, and other plant foods, and their travels followed the availability of prized wild foods. The traditional diet varied seasonally (and still does--there are still Aboriginal people who eat many traditional foods). In the winter months, yes, food consisted more of meat and fat with some conserved berries, but even then, there are methods that were used to store some foods in the cold ground over winter. Their diet was certainly lower in carbohydrate than the common SAD diet, but it was not zero carb or even as low carb as northern groups such as the Inuit. The bison were definitely a core food, but they were not the only food by far.

It's actually sort of ridiculous to only base one's ideas of Aboriginal foods on the records of the fur traders and explorers when those peoples are still around and still have traditional knowledge intact around their cultural foodways. A lot of work has been done by members of those communities to document their own histories, which have tended to be displaced in the North American cultural narrative by the stories told about them by outsider explorers and traders (which are not always wrong but are also not insider stories of a people).

There's an ongoing tendency in paleo/primal communities to neglect the abundance of information out there from actual Indigenous peoples on their own foodways, and I think we make a huge mistake in doing so because there's a lot to be learned by looking at the real dietary practices of the people we claim to want to emulate, and mythologizing them as people of some misty past misses a lot of opportunity for learning.

[Gorbag]

everyone will be able to produce enough glucose to refill liver glycogen - or you'd be dead. but the idea that your muscle glycogen stores will remain full on a ketogenic diet is fantasy.

That's what I also thought, but some people think that it still can be done, so what evidence can be brought on the table except from rodent studies with limited relevance for humans?

[Neckhammer]

That's what I also thought, but some people think that it still can be done, so what evidence can be brought on the table except from rodent studies with limited relevance for humans?

Yeah, I actually think there is some data out there on this. But, I'm not sure what my source is as this is from memory (may be from Phinney's book). Anyhow, on a long term ketogenic diet I believe that your muscle glycogen stores are approximately half of someone who may be carbing up. The difference then becomes what substrate the body utilizes at what intensities. Change in your bodies use of energy sources such as reported here :

The interplay of exercise and ketosis

I don't know of any large studies done to this effect, rather haven't looked very hard for them, but Peter Attai's N=1 is an interesting post.

[Daemonized]

This study is positive proof that it royally sucks to be a lab rat. This study still doesn't change the fact that ultra low carb diets are not the best choice for endurance athletes and rat studies make a piss poor basis to make dietary changes for anything other than the poor rats that volunteer for the next pointless lab experiment.

[Paleobird]

But there have been human lab rats as well. The decades and decades of children raised on a ketogenic diet to control epilepsy are examples. They have competed in school athletics and grown up just fine with no adverse effects on their health. Of course, once they hit puberty, they have been allowed to drop ketosis in favor of pizza and soda but, by then, a great many of them were completely cured.

[Gorbag]

Yeah, I actually think there is some data out there on this. But, I'm not sure what my source is as this is from memory (may be from Phinney's book). Anyhow, on a long term ketogenic diet I believe that your muscle glycogen stores are approximately half of someone who may be carbing up.

It also depends of what "carbing up" means here, and half of glycogen baseline will not be enough for top performance. Personally I know that my performance in sprint or weightlifting will be much better due to a higher internal pressure in the muscles due to glycogen and water. To get this, the muscles must first be somehow depleted and thereafter supercompensated and supersaturated with carbs, and proteins and/or fat cannot achieve this level of glycogen storage to my knowledge.

I don't know of any large studies done to this effect, rather haven't looked very hard for them, but Peter Attai's N=1 is an interesting post.

The problem with ketosis to my experience is not low intensity endurance kind training, but when you get anaerobic work such as intervalls, sprints and weightlifting...

I think the perfect athletic event for ketosis would be an Ironman triathlon or marathon running or ultramarathoning. Anyone who needs to be *just* under threshold for really long periods of time will capture most of the benefits of ketosis. But in my experience (and I believe Steve’s), do you have to give up some sprint capacity, so I would not recommend it even for the guy trying to win the Tour de France, as you still need to sprint when the pack moves.

Greg, if my goal were to win a gold medal I would probably have to change my diet. If you think about it (I’ll be doing an entire post on this), carbohydrates are in some ways like a performance enhancing drug — help with certain aspects of performance, but have some chronic harm associated with use.

[paleo-bunny]

This study is positive proof that it royally sucks to be a lab rat. This study still doesn't change the fact that ultra low carb diets are not the best choice for endurance athletes and rat studies make a piss poor basis to make dietary changes for anything other than the poor rats that volunteer for the next pointless lab experiment.

+1.

[Kata]

This study is positive proof that it royally sucks to be a lab rat. This study still doesn't change the fact that ultra low carb diets are not the best choice for endurance athletes and rat studies make a piss poor basis to make dietary changes for anything other than the poor rats that volunteer for the next pointless lab experiment.

Agreed. I'm not saying this study is bad science, but a lot of bad science has been done using rats, mice, rabbits, chickens - animals with totally different physiology than humans'- claiming that the effects these animals exhibited apply to us as well. The human lab rats Paleobird mentioned are much more relevant than a study on rodents.

[Gorbag]

But there have been human lab rats as well. The decades and decades of children raised on a ketogenic diet to control epilepsy are examples. They have competed in school athletics and grown up just fine with no adverse effects on their health. Of course, once they hit puberty, they have been allowed to drop ketosis in favor of pizza and soda but, by then, a great many of them were completely cured.

Evidence of what? That a ketogenic diet is just as good for glycogen replenishment related to athletic performance???

[Paleobird]

Evidence of what? That a ketogenic diet is just as good for glycogen replenishment related to athletic performance???

Obviously they were kids, not competitive bodybuilders. But what their example show is that it is very possible to lead a perfectly normal, physically active life as a growing youngster on a ketogenic diet without any adverse effects to health. Kids burn though a lot of glycogen too.

The studies on adult epileptics have not been going on for as many decades so there is not such a huge body of evidence yet but the exact same thing is happening so far in the studies done at Johns Hopkins.