I have been on a mission to become the best me possible lately. The most recent change I'm going to be making is switching to a ketogenic diet. A ketogenic diet is when you switch your major source of energy from carbohydrates to burning fat instead. This a hudge dietary change as a vegetarian. To "kickstart" the ketosis process I am going threw a 36 hour water fast(also going to be ingesting sodium, potasium and magneseium to avoid the "keto flu"). The water fast will force my body into getting used to burning fat as the major energy source rather then carb's. The goal is to ingest less then 40 grams of carbohydrates per day, And fast completely from carbs for 10 hours per day.
There are TONS of benefits of switching to a ketogenic diet, Helps prevent cancer, Increase in stable energy, neuroprotective benefits, Increase in cognitive function, Reduction of "over activity in the brain", Eating tons of DHEA and fats also helps increase the mass of your brain. Ketogenic diets are also great for alot of people who are trying to loose weight, who have epilepsy, diabetes, high blood pressure, acne, alzheimers and the list goes on and on.
Here are a few quotes from the National Institute of Health about ketogenic diets.
"On each of the final 5 d on the diets, ketone diet–fed rats ran 32% (P < 0.05) further than did the Western diet– and carbohydrate diet–fed rats (Fig. 2A). Ketone diet–fed rats were the only group that increased running performance from baseline, averaging 22% (P < 0.05) further each day over the 5 d."
" Supplementation with a ketone ester improved running performance on a motorized treadmill and working memory during a maze test. Mechanistically, ketone ester supplementation was found to increase the free energy available from ATP hydrolysis in the isolated, perfused rat heart under conditions of increased work."
Source:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5102124/
"During the five days of acquisition training, the escape latency of the rats in each group decreased day by day, but the average latency of the KD rats was less than that of the STD rats began on the fourth day (Fig 2B), indicating that KD treatment enhanced spatial learning ability."
"Spatial learning and memory were assessed by the MWM after multi-modal stress exposure. All animals swam without difficulty and no differences in swim speed were observed between diets or stress (p = 0.95 and p = 0.92, respectively, data not shown). A non-significant trend was observed for a main effect of stress on path length (p = 0.07), suggesting that exposure to stress resulted in a trend for increased swim distance. This effect reached statistical significance on day 4 (two-way ANOVA, main effect of stress, p = 0.02, Figure Figure3C).3C). Individual analysis of daily path length revealed that KD-fed rats swam significantly shorter distances when compared to NIH-31-fed rats on both days 2 and 3 (p = 0.05 and p = 0.04, respectively) regardless of exposure to stressors."
Source:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5430035/