Understanding the Science Behind Lowcarb/Keto & Diet

We live in a world where people are confused about what science is. Some people think they are being all sciency when they call people they disagree with ‘science deniers’ for not accepting things like global warming, evolutionist philosophy, or the diet-heart hypothesis by blind faith.

Science is not about blind faith. It’s about things we know by testing them out, often by double-blind experiments where not even the scientists involved know which patient is getting the shiny new drug and which is getting an inert pill (placebo.) We need to know the science behind our way-of-eating, even if the learning curve may be difficult. Here are some things to remember.

• Doctors’, nurses’ and dieticians’ opinions are not pure science. Dr. Jason Fung, a nephrologist (kidney specialist,) estimated in his whole medical training he got about 4 hours worth of lectures on nutrition— and he is a kidney specialist, and the number one cause of kidney disease is Type 2 diabetes— a condition that all acknowledge is diet-related. I once had a nephrologist tell me that diet had no effect on kidney disease and that I should prepare for my coming dialysis by taking home a DVD even though I told her I had no DVD player. And I had a nurse tell me that continuing my low-carb way-of-eating would make my brain non-functional because brains need glucose from dietary carbohydrates. Remember, medical people are people, too. Their opinions MIGHT come from reading medical journals, but they might also come from a WRONG magazine article they read in their teens or something their grandmother told them.
• Case studies are good, but… A case study is a good start in developing scientific knowledge, but it is only as good as the quality of the observations. If a doctor tells a heart attack patient to eat ten bananas a day, and the patient eats bananas but also quits smoking and exercises more, the fact that the patient goes ten or twenty years without any further heart problems might be due to quitting smoking and being more active rather than being a proof that bananas cure heart disease. And what if the patient SAYS he’s eating all those bananas but isn’t, really, or doesn’t tell the doctor about the smoking and the exercise thing for some reason? 
• Scientific studies on lab animals don’t always apply to humans. I’ve read about an early study on dietary fat where the researcher fed some rabbits a lot of fat and the rabbits had higher cholesterol. But rabbits don’t normally eat a diet like that, and humans have been hunters and meat eaters for a long time so fat IS part of OUR natural diets. 
• Scientific studies must be well designed and without preconceptions. Suppose a scientist is keen on strict vegetarian diets. He does a study— but finds the vegetarians for the study from posting notices in health food stores and gyms, and gets the control group from a random group of middle-aged blue collar workers. His vegetarian group probably has far fewer smokers and couch potatoes than the control group, and are perhaps younger. If the scientist does not control for those factors, he does not know if the vegetarians are healthier because of their lesser-smoking, more-exercising, and younger status or because of the diet. 
• Understanding a scientific study may require using a dictionary. Scientific studies in scientific journals are not written in regular English! For example, studies on a low-calorie diet may call it a ’Semi-Starvation’ or even a ’Starvation’ diet— not what we say in normal English. And it may have scientific terms you don’t know. Keep a notebook beside you, write down words you don’t know, and look them up in a good dictionary. 

Even if you think you are not particularly smart or well-educated in regards to science, you can learn more about the science behind the low-carb way-of-eating. I have found that the book ‘Good Calories, Bad Calories’ by Gary Taubes, a science journalist, is a good way to learn more. Taubes references scientific studies by the boatload, and explains what they mean. The book IS rather challenging, so if you find it hard, read just a few pages every day and keep a dictionary handy when you read. 

Sciency greetings from,

Nissa Annakindt, nutritional science geek