Radiation Day 20 – A Keto Diet Brain Dump
Today’s beam room music rundown:
- Nothing, nada, zilch
I have yet another data point correlating the presence of only the two male techs (J&O) with the absence of music.
After treatment today, I met up with an Olin alumna who generously drove a minimum of 30 minutes to Beacon Hill to have coffee and give me an in-person brain dump on medical keto. It was awesome! I’ve got notes, URLs, products, and many more questions to pursue.
Also, it’s always fun to meet Olin alumni who experienced the place long(ish) before I arrived. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that they tend to be passionate, kind, curious, motivated, and intelligent people. It’s nice to get a glimpse of the kind of person I might expect my current and recent students to grow into being.
I’m interested in hearing more about the medical keto- what’s the scoop? (+1 for Olin Alums!!)
In short, medical keto is just a more strictly regulated ketogenic diet that relies heavily on maintaining a consistent ratio of fat to protein plus total carbs. It was developed primarily to treat epilepsy, and practitioners dial in an individual’s ratio until seizures stop. Another big difference between medical keto and modified Atkins or low glycemic diets is that the ratio must be maintained in all servings of food (not on a longer timescale like an entire day) to ensure that cells are consistently metabolizing primarily fat and maintaining a stable ketone to glucose ratio. Unfortunately there’s no good metric (like number of seizures in epilepsy sufferers) for cancer patients to help determine the proper ratio, so it’s a bit of a guessing game for now.