Dr. Annette Bosworth

I was about to give up on like, why can I not pee a ketone?

Why does every, I mean, I'm a doctor.

I'm trying to use this for my brain patients, but I'm afraid to tell them about it.

Because I personally cannot pee a ketone.

I mean, I was trying to follow 50 carbs, then I tried to do 30 carbs, and then I tried to do none, but I just couldn't make it long enough into that ketogenic state.

And what had happened is at least a decade of high insulin.

Three babies, full practice, busy life, you know, on call, those kinds of things that are all dangerous if you're going to try to have a peak brain.

I took my kids on a 22-mile hike around the city on Memorial Day in the name of troops as mental health.

And I said, if I am not peeing a ketone after walking 22 miles, having fasted for a day, then I'm for sure that this diet is a phooey.

So that's how much energy it took for me to pee a ketone because I was very insulin resistant.

I had been making excess insulin for a decade.

And I'm a doctor.

I should have known that.

My sugars were fine, my hemoglobin A1C wasn't bad, but that excess insulin, that stored sugar, that stored glycogen, it took forever to get that low.

And only after I fasted and then walked 22 miles did I pee a ketone.

So when you ask the question, how long does it take?

I do a much better job now of telling people how to get there because I almost gave up thinking this is junk science.

I could probably flip back in within 12 hours.

Yeah, I hear that a lot, but I have thousands of patients that have been doing it for years.

And what happens is as soon as they exit from the ketogenic diet and they start to feel the trash build up again, meaning the joints that didn't hurt forever now hurt.