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This is What the Ketogenic Diet Does to Your Brain
The clues are in the past and in the present
Stone-Age humans had a taste for large, fatty animals. They liked nothing better than a woolly mammoth, with its thick layers of delicious, unctuous fat. The farther north humans travelled during the Palaeolithic era, the more they relied entirely on megafauna for survival, as plant foods became less available. They were living in the Ice Age, after all.
Fast forward to 2024, and the megafauna have disappeared along with the ice. Instead, we have enlightened experts who engage in debates about whether it is safe to eat a ketogenic diet. Even though this diet bears a striking resemblance to the one on which we evolved for the best part of three million years, and studies consistently show that when people switch to a high fat and protein diet their health improves dramatically, the experts are concerned that to follow it might be folly, and hasten our demise.
Despite the dangers, our ancient forebears obviously did a remarkable job of surviving, because here we are today, discovering the benefits of our ancestral diet. While the focus has largely been on the weight loss effects of going ketogenic, attention is now turning to what this way of eating does to the brain.
