The “keto flu” can occur when people change their food, going from carbohydrates and sugars to a protein-based diet. Your body will go through withdrawals and some people will experience flu-like symptoms.
Join Dr. Martin as he shares why it happens and why he doesn’t particularly like the keto diet… all in today’s episode.
TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE
Announcer: You're listening to The Doctor Is In Podcast, brought to you by MartinClinic.com. During the episode, the doctors share a lot of information. As awesome as the info may be, it is not intended to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease. It's strictly for informational purposes.
Dr. Martin: Well, good morning everyone. How are you? Once again, welcome to another live this morning and hope you're having a wonderful start to your day. Okay guys, I got asked this question the other day. Dr. Martin, what is the keto flu? Is it a real thing or not? Okay, so I got to give you some background. If you don't eat carbs, okay? If you don't eat carbs or you eat very little carbs, your body has no choice but to change fuels. So when you hear the word ketosis, which has become very popular today. Look, I don't mind the word, I just don't like keto foods per se. Keto this and keto that. You can go to Costco or grocery stores and you see keto foods that doesn't make 'em healthy foods. They're usually full of crap oils, the bad oils, and they may be low in carbs, but I don't like them particularly. I mean that. The snacks and the keto this and the keto that.
Look, if you want to eat keto, eat eggs, meat, and cheese, because that is what your body is designed for. So when you hear that word, ketosis, just understand what it is. Body changing fuel. I venture to say, okay, I just venture to say that a hundred years ago, most people, and I'm not saying everyone, I'm just saying most were probably into ketosis most of the time I think farmers and whatever, they just ate so much eggs, meat and cheese. Not that they wouldn't eat any carbs, but they didn't eat a lot of carbs compared to what we eat today. Now I got to tell you, I've got to bring you back to the 1920s when they used the ketotic diet for epilepsy and they found it to be extremely effective. And I'm going to tell you in a minute why that would be.
So just understand, your body is going to either burn as fuel. You're going to burn either sugar, carbs, once they get into your gut, are turned into sugar, nevermind the sugar that you're adding to foods that gets as fuel. And as long as you're burning sugar as fuel, glucose, you're not going to burn fat as fuel. It's an impossibility. So the idea with lowering your carb intake and the reset is all about guys changing fuel. When you change fuel. What did I read the other day? Let me see if I can find it. Oh yeah, the same amount of calories. Let me just see if I can find it on my feed here. Hold on a minute. Oh, it's in my emails. Okay, I read, okay. I can't remember how many Oreo cookies, calories, but anyway, I'll look it up after guys. Okay, if you have this many Oreo cookies, I think it was six or whatever. And then beside that, you put two eggs. They're the same amount of calories.
We have been talking about calories, not me, but we when I mean society, medicine, nutritionists, dieticians, they were educated on calories. Eat less, move more. You want to lose weight, eat less, move more. Calories, okay, not quality quantity, okay, two eggs. What's better? Two eggs or Oreo cookies. Same amount of calories, okay? And I got to give you the number. I just can't remember. Same amount of calories, but guys, it's the fuel. You have to get this, and I know my audience knows this because I talk about it all the time. Go to the airport, okay? I'm still fascinated. I was a kid and my dad, I think to get us kids out of mom's hair on Sunday or whatever, take us out to the airport. In those days it was a vicount. Oh my word. I was born in the days of Noah, according to my grandchildren. Viscounts and they used to land and we were fascinated by it.
But guys, what I'm saying to you, go to the airport, okay? On your next trip, you're in the plane and you'll see a fuel truck there, right? Especially the big airports. I mean, those fuel trucks are all over the place. What do you think they're putting in those jets and those jumbo jets? Do you think they're putting in the same octane that your car, I put 87 in my car. I used to have a sports car, my midlife crisis, I had a little Audi sports car and it had a turbo engine. And I remember the guy that sold it to me said, now listen, Dr. Martin, listen to me. Don't put that 87 in there. Don't even put the 89 fuel in there. You put 93 fuel in this car, 93 octane. Okay? You know what I found out? Man, oh man was it ever difficult to find 93? Hardly any gas stations had it, but the guy said, if you don't use 93, you're going to ruin the engine. I said, okay, I'm listening. I don't understand anything, but I'm listening.
Guys, your body was built not to burn glucose, but to burn fat. When you burn fat, ketones, okay? Your body gives you high fives because you're using high octane fuel. Okay? So think of yourself as a lean, mean fighting machine, your body, but you got to give it the right fuel. And people misunderstand this. Ketosis scares the living life out of most doctors because they mix it up. They're thinking of their medical school days when a diabetic could be other things too, but mostly diabetics, their blood sugars out of control and they go into keto acidosis, not ketosis, ketoacidosis, and their body's turning on itself and eating itself. And it's very serious and it can kill you. That's ketoacidosis, but it's not ketosis, okay?
And I don't talk about ketosis that much because I don't want people to like keto foods. I don't like them. And I want you to eat what your body was designed to eat. And that is eggs. It ain't calories because Oreo cookies, let's say six, it may be, I dunno, six equals two eggs. What's better for you? What fuel is better? It's not calories. It's not calories. It's quality. It is rocket fuel. You see your brain, okay? And I got to talk about your brain first. Your brain is headquarters, okay? It's headquarters, your central nervous system and your brain headquarters. It is absolutely so sensitive to what you're eating because it's the federal government. Whatever you eat, it gets 25%. That little brain that takes up what? 2% of your body weight. It is a energy consumer. Big time. And this is why I was telling you about epilepsy. Anybody that you know with a neurological problem, if you could convince them to burn a better fuel, you have no idea how good that is for them. Okay?
So I had to give you that background before I talked to you about, because somebody asked me the other day and it was posted on our private Facebook group, Dr. Martin, I'm eating the reset and I don't feel good. I don't feel good. Well, you didn't realize how unwell you were. You didn't realize it because no one told you that you have been consuming the wrong fuel for years and years and years. You have never allowed your brain nor the rest of your battery packs your mitochondria to get the best ATP that they could get because you've been eating carbs. People live on carbs, they might have a little bit of meat or whatever, but they're carboholics, and that turns to sugar. And the body will always always burn that fuel first. It'll always burn your sugar.
And again, I use another illustration, okay? We're going from the airport to your log cabin, okay? Pretend you have a log cabin and you have a wood stove, okay? And you're going to bed at night, okay? And you'd like to keep a fire going while you're sleeping, okay? Give me some paper here, okay? Oh, there's an old newspaper, there's a magazine or whatever. I brought a lot of paper and I'm going to put that on the fireplace and that's going to heat our house. No, it's not going to heat your house. It's the wrong fuel. You need logs. You don't want paper and twigs, okay? You want to be an unhappy camper, eat paper and twigs, bread, pasta, rice, cereals, sugar, sweets, pastries, muffins, bagels, pancakes, juice. Your body is now burning paper and twigs or you filled up your tank with 87 octane. That's all right for your car guys, but it's not all right for your body.
And then another big problem, and we won't even get into it today, is these bad fats, these seed oils that the industry changed their name to vegetable oils. Proctor and Gamble and canola oil and all this bunch of nonsense like margarine. Your body wasn't made for that. But let's get back to the paper and twigs. So your body is used to it because all it has been doing for the last several years is burning carbohydrates, sugars as fuel. If you burn sugars, fuel, are you going to drop dead on the spot? No, you won't. Okay? But your body wasn't designed for it, but you won't drop dead on the spot, okay? If your body is so used to that and then Dr. Martin, that quack tells you to do the reset, okay, well, your body going to make a big adjustment and some worse than others when you change fuels. Your body is going, holy smokes, I'm not used to this. What did you just give me? You mean today we went through the whole day and all you gave me were eggs and you didn't have any carbs to burn. Your body's going, hello, what are you doing? There's a big change happening.
Now you got to trust that this is the best thing for your body. It's the best thing because, and I am sure I've convinced you not only of the fuel, but of the benefits. Because once you see, when you're eating bread, let's follow a piece of bread for a second. Dr. Martin, it's 12 grain, whole wheat, multi-grain, yada, yada, yada grain, okay? I don't care. I don't care. It's still turning to sugar rapidly. It's still paper and twigs. Dr. Martin, when I eat fiber, isn't fiber what I need in that whole grain, 17, this and that to it? Nah, it's still going to be sugar. It's burned as sugar, it's burned as glucose. And when that happens, you guys know this physiology 101, what happens? Your body, your pancreas, your ball point pen, that's the size of your pancreas, is releasing. You eat bread, you secrete insulin, lots of it. You eat pasta. Yeah, but Dr. Martin, it's whole wheat pasta. I don't care. It's still going to be sugar, okay? It's still going to be sugar and your body is still going to burn it as sugar.
How about cauliflower pasta? Okay, it's better. I agree. It doesn't burn as quite as fast, but it's still going to be sugar. You still need insulin. You don't need as much, but you still need it. Isn't cauliflower pasta better for you? It doesn't taste as good. Hey, I married an Italian. Okay, now listen to me. Listen Linda's and Larry's, the memo. Let's get into the keto flu. The number one reason you get symptoms, one, you're changing fuels. You get that. You understand that? Not everybody going to get these symptoms, but a lot of people do. It's because they didn't realize it. They didn't realize it. I had someone tell me yesterday, Dr. Martin, I didn't realize how many carbs I was eating in a day and they were almost like a vegetarian. Like they thought they vegetables and fruits and they weren't eating bad in a way, but they weren't burning fat at all. They weren't burning ketones at all. They had too many carbs. And they said to me, I had no idea how many carbs I was eating. I said, well, you eat carbs, you need insulin. When you need insulin, insulin first of all is going to store fat. That's its job, takes sugar out of the bloodstream, out out out the traffic cop and parks it. It stores it. It stores sugar as fat. Okay?
Now, okay, you got it? It ain't calories, it's fuel. Your body's going to make an adjustment. For some, I'll post this after guys. Okay, I will. I'm going to show you the symptoms of sugar withdrawal and cocaine withdrawal. I'll post it. Sugar withdrawal. Well, here it is. Depression, headache, anxiety, exhaustion, intense cravings. This is sugar withdrawal. They feed mice or rats, I don't know which one it was. They put a sugar cube through a maze and the mouse has to run through a maze and they give it sugar for the first time in its life. Then they put the mouse back at the start and it's got to go through that maze. Guys, it races at 200 miles an hour to get another fix and then, okay, and look, this might be animal cruelty or whatever. I'm just telling you the experiment they did. Now just before they get the fifth or sixth time, that mouse goes crazy. It's hooked. It was hooked on the first sugar cube. Now they zap it with the electrical volts so that you don't want to go near that sugar. You're going to get zapped. You know what? The mouse don't care. It's as bad as cocaine.
Do you think if you are changing fuels and you're a carboholic, my name is Tony and I'm a carboholic. Your body is so used to that fuel, it was hooked line and sinker, and now you switch fuels. Your body's going what? You might get withdrawal because one of the things they know, Dr. McKewen, if she's on with us this morning could talk to you a lot more about this than me, with her PhD in psychology. But I took enough psychology in university just to be dangerous, but I know this, the reward center, dopamine, that dopamine rush when you're eating sugar, dopamine when you have cocaine, dopamine rush. When you're down, comfort foods. Why do you think you like comfort foods? Did they really comfort you? No. They just give you a dopamine rush. You're hooked.
You think the food industry is stupid? Do you think the food industry didn't do it on purpose? The tobacco people, when they lost their jobs, the people who knew that tobacco hooked people, they lied and people died. They all transferred. They got job transfers. When the tobacco industry, it's not out of business, but when it went way down, right? You know what they jumped into these addiction specialists? Food, and you think they're stupid. They know the reward, and that's why people get hooked. Look at the people today. If you don't think there's no people hooked, carboholics, I feel sorry for them. They're told about calories. They're not told about fuel. They don't understand fuel, they haven't been told. Go to Costco, look at the carts, go to the grocery store. From cookies to crackers to breads to noodles, and it cost you a fortune today. Don't get me started on groceries.
I'm telling you guys, but withdrawal, the keto flu. Well, look, part of it is dopamine. Part of it is that, and your body is making a huge adjustment, but it's so good for you. You have to trust the process. Do you know what happened after the 1920s with ketosis and epilepsy? The food industry got involved and because they can influence medicine, they scared the living life out of doctors. You can't go into ketosis. That is dangerous. Even today, when you get take a nutrition course, any course anywhere, unless you take it from me, you take a course, almost any course anywhere at any time, they'll tell you that your body needs sugar. Your body needs glucose. It must have some glucose. That is propaganda. It's not true. It was proven a hundred years ago, the Inuit formally called Eskimo. They lived on blubber, they lived on fat, they lived on seal, organs and fish and caribou and whatever. They didn't know anything about a carb. What's a carb?
And it was never, I mean, this is recorded history, guys. There wasn't Inuit running after, I need to eat, so I'm going to kill a caribou or whatever. They're chasing a caribou and they have a heart attack. There was no such thing. They didn't have heart disease. What? They didn't die of heart disease. The polar bears ate them. That's how they died. Seriously, guys, they didn't know what cancer was. Did you know that? You can read about this guys. Cancer. What's cancer? They didn't die of cancer. They died of old age. They died because the polar bears ate them. I'm not saying they didn't die of any infectious disease and they would. Like modern medicine has done some wonderful things, guys, but they didn't die of chronic diabetes. They didn't have diabetes until they eat our food.
I did a lot of lecturing over the years, and I always had the First Nations. They loved me. Okay? They did because make 'em laugh and laugh at themselves a little bit, but laugh at me, right? And I'd say to 'em, look, see this white face here. I'm pale face. I said, okay. I would go. I spoke probably a hundred times or more on reservations or invited, and I love the first nation people with all my heart, but I'd make 'em laugh. I said, you see the pale face me white man, we took your land and we're killing you. What? I know you took our land. And then I said, yeah, but we're killing you. You know how we're killing you? We're making you eat our foods. You see McDonald's? Don't eat that stuff. It's meant to kill you. And they would just, what? Well, I said, look, you never had diabetes until you ate our food, and now you're 10 times more likely to become a diabetic because your body wasn't meant to eat carbohydrates. Your body wasn't meant to live on carbs. Your body, especially you guys were meant to live on fat and protein. What? Well, I said, go back to hunting. Go back to the land. Live off the land and you'll see you're going to be a lot healthier, okay? They get a big chuckle out of it. Okay? Yeah, the white man. I said, well, we brought you McDonald's. We brought you fast foods.
I go in some places and all the kids were drinking these slushies. I said, you know what a slushie is? That's diabetes in a drink, guaranteed to make you a diabetic or your money back. I said, you know how much sugar is in there? You think your ancestors had slushies? I didn't get into everything about the keto flu. To be continued. Changing fuels. Remember that. Okay guys, I was having fun. Okay? Now I don't know about you guys, but I was having fun today. Okay, now what's Friday? Question and answer Friday. Get your questions in. Okay? We're waiting. We're waiting. We love you. We're waiting, okay? We want your questions. I love answering your questions. Okay? We love you guys. We'll talk to you soon.
Announcer: You've reached the end of another Doctor Is In Podcast, with your hosts, Doctor Martin Junior and Senior. Be sure to catch our next episode and thanks for listening!