What Is Ketosis Anyway?

The carb craze may be responsible for thrusting the term ketosis into the mainstream vernacular. Before that, it was a word you rarely heard outside of medicine. Before Dr. Atikins and the low carb evangelists came along, you could relegate ketosis to a power point slide in an occasional diabetes lecture and be done with it. Now it seems like ketosis is the in-word with soccer moms and zone dieters alike. And, while its conceptual popularity has grown, there’s still a lot of misunderstanding floating around about what ketosis is and what it means for your body. Much like belly button lint and the popularity of boy-bands, the ketosis phenomenon is well known yet somewhat mysterious and difficult to explain. So let’s review. If you don’t have time for the long answer, here’s the short and sweet version: Ketosis is the term for abnormally high levels of ketone bodies in the blood. Ketones are created when the body breaks down fat for energy. To understand the process of ketosis, and how it progresses to its cousin ketoacidosis, we first need to do a quick review of the functions of the liver and pancreas and the body’s preferred metabolic pathways. Wait … where are you all going? Come back. This won’t be nearly as painful as it sounds, I promise. You might remember from our review of the abdominal organsthat the liver acts as a kind of metabolic warehouse, storing carbohydrate...
Source: The EMT Spot - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: EMT Source Type: blogs