On today’s episode of Jimmy Makes Science Simple on the LLVLC Show, Jimmy tackles a new study that has important information concerning Alzheimer’s Disease.

“I bet all of these participants would have done even better with higher fat intake.”

Jimmy Moore

Today on Jimmy Makes Science Simple on LLVLC (@jimmymakessciencesimple) I have a February 23, 2021 study published in the journal Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy entitled “Randomized crossover trial of a modified ketogenic diet in Alzheimer’s disease.”

READ THE STUDY HERE: Randomized crossover trial of a modified ketogenic diet in Alzheimer’s disease | Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy | Full Text (biomedcentral.com)

New Zealand researchers at Waikato Hospital in Hamilton, New Zealand used a modified ketogenic diet over a 12-week period on patients with a diagnosed case of Alzheimer’s disease. Primary outcomes included basic cognitive tests and quality-of-life improvements. Secondary outcomes included cardiovascular risk marker changes. The ketogenic diet beat low-fat by every measure!

While I always appreciate new research that shows benefits with nutritional ketosis, I’m always flummoxed by the rationale for why researchers do things the way they do. In this study, they modified the ketogenic approach by lowering the fat to 58% of calories and feeding the participants in excess of 15% of calories from carbohydrate. Since they were measuring a neurodegenerative condition and looking for what effects ketone bodies would play in the brain, it was odd they insisted on a version of keto that only produced mild ketosis.

If they examined all the research of epilepsy another neurodegenerative diseases, then they would’ve seen a very different diet—upwards of 90% fat. I think they could have gone in between the diet they chose and the therapeutic diet for epilepsy and shown far greater results. Their concern was compliance with the diet and they included sweets in what they offered.

Despite these challenges in the research, I think it’s a pretty good study because we don’t have enough positive papers on Alzheimer’s disease with a ketogenic approach. Hopefully this study proves the efficacy of the intervention and they will do larger scale studies for they can do a more therapeutic level of ketogenic diet. I enjoyed sharing this one with you all today!