The Keto Diet Can Cause Colds

The keto diet can cause colds

The ketogenic diet can cause symptoms that resemble those of the common cold. Scientists have described the "keto flu" in people who have recently switched to this diet.

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The ketogenic diet can cause symptoms that resemble those of the common cold. Scientists have described the "keto flu" in people who have recently switched to this diet. They published their research in Frontiers in Nutrition.

The keto diet gained prominence about 100 years ago for the treatment of epilepsy. Over time, it has gained immense popularity as a weight loss aid, although large studies have not confirmed its effect. The ketogenic diet is a diet low in carbohydrates, high in fat, and moderate in protein. With such a diet, the body receives a large number of calories from ketone bodies, and not from glucose.

The scientists wanted to describe and summarize the symptoms of the "keto flu". These side effects of the keto diet have often been reported in the media: according to them, the symptoms of a cold appeared in the first week of the keto diet and disappeared after about a month. But they received little attention in the scientific literature.

The authors of the study found about 101 Internet users who analyzed how the "keto flu" is described. They identified 54 symptoms in these descriptions, the most common of which were described as "flu", "headache", "weakness", "nausea", "brain fog", "gastrointestinal discomfort".

"We found that it is common for keto dieters to report flu-like symptoms on internet forums in the first weeks," said study co-author Dr. Emmanuel Bostock of the University of Tasmania.

Scientists cannot explain the nature of these effects of the ketogenic diet. But they suspect that microorganisms that live in the human intestine may play a role in their origin. Under the influence of a change in diet, they change, and this does not go unnoticed for a person.

An important limitation of this study was that all information was obtained exclusively from online communication of people whose stories were not documented.