Lou Gehrig's disease, ketosis

[Guest guest]

Roy Walford developed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis

(ALS) and did not consume a ketogenic diet, but did discuss ideas regarding

fasting,

did he not? For example, see http://www.thenaturalwoman.com/fasting.htm for an

apparently excellent introduction to CR and fasting. It was a noted

conclusion

for the discussion of CR to have reported:

'The most powerful thing you can do to live longer and be healthier and feel

better

and be immune to disease is to eat less food and eat the proper, whole, natural

foods so you're never hungry. " Calorie restriction " is the most effective and

proven

way of extending life known to science.'

Superoxide dismutase or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOD appears to be involved

in

ALS. The below review suggests that Ketosis may favor the prevention of ALS and

this may involve SOD.

Can ketogenic diet slow progression of ALS?

Siva N

Lancet Neurol. 2006 Jun;5(6):476

For the first time, researchers have shown that diet can alter the

progression

of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in a mouse model of the disease. In a new

study, Giulio Pasinetti (Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA) and

colleagues fed a high-energy ketogenic diet to transgenic ALS mice and showed

that

motor performance was preserved and motor neuron counts were significantly

higher

than in control mice ( http://tinyurl.com/eaoou http://tinyurl.com/lw72c ).

ALS is a rapidly progressive motor neuron disease that affects an estimated

20,000 Americans—with 5000 people in the USA diagnosed each year. About 5–10% of

cases are familial with 20% of these cases having a mutation in the enzyme

superoxide dismutase (SOD 1). The disorder is characterised by gradual

degeneration

and eventual death of motor neurons, which results in muscle weakness and a wide

range of disabilities. There is no cure for ALS as yet and patients usually die

within 3-5 years of symptom onset.

The cause of neuronal death in ALS is still unclear; however, decreased

mitochondrial activity has been associated with disease pathogenesis and ketones

have the ability to alter mitochondrial function. Pasinetti and colleagues

investigated whether a ketogenic diet affected motor performance, motor neuron

count, and mitochondrial ATP generation in SOD-G93A transgenic ALS mice.

Blood samples from mice that were fed a ketogenic diet showed an increase,

by

2.5 times, in the concentration of the principle ketone, D-beta-3

hydroxybutyrate

(DBH) and rotarod testing showed that these mice maintained motor function

longer

than mice fed a standard diet. At the end of the study, the researchers found

that

mice on the ketogenic diet had significantly more motor neurons in the lumbar

spinal

cord than control mice, and in-vitro experiments confirmed that addition of DBH

increased mitochondrial ATP synthesis.

“To my mind the most important findings relate to the apparent delay in

progression of motor performance associated with less severe motor neuron loss

from

the spinal cord of the animals”, Ince (University of Sheffield, UK) told

The

Lancet Neurology. “The effects of the ketone bodies on motor neuron survival in

culture adds a mechanistic element to this observational study.”

This is the first time that changes in diet have shown a positive effect in

ALS; however, the diet has yet to be tested on human beings. The researchers

have

just received approval to recruit patients with ALS to determine whether similar

findings can be found in human beings.

“With the possible advent of ketone esters for oral administration,

clinical

trials in ALS of dietary supplements might be possible in the near future”, says

Pasinetti.

-- Al Pater, alpater@...

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