[g_podcast id="8428124"]
Today I have a great guest, Julia Tulipan. She is a keto lifestyle coach, book author and developer of several online courses.
I have known Julia for a long time and we meet at least twice a year, at the LCHF Congress in Düsseldorf and at our annual network meeting in Salzburg.
Julia originally studied biology and zoology. In 2013, however, she set up her own business as a nutrition coach. She explains how this came about in this interview. She is currently studying for a Master's degree in clinical nutritional medicine, which she will complete in April 2019.
Thanks to her extensive training, she takes a very holistic approach to her consultations. Optimal and personalized nutrition is one aspect of this, while stress, sleep, regeneration and micronutrients are other important pillars that she incorporates into her advice.
In this fascinating interview, she tells us how you can boost your performance with nutrition. Whether for sport, your job or your hobbies.
Julia: Welcome to my podcast, dear Julia. Great to have you here!
Julia T.: Hello and thank you for inviting me!
Julia : I already introduced you a little in the introduction and told you that you originally studied biology and zoology. How did you get from animals to humans?
Julia T.: Like many people in our industry, it was due to my own suffering. I've always been interested in nutrition, but after following the traditional advice of eating lots of whole grains, exercising a lot, eating little, lots of soy, no fat and counting calories, etc., I was so broken at some point that nothing worked anymore. Then I started thinking and looking up the studies and questioning the whole thing and when you actually read the primary literature, the scales fall from your eyes. So I was forced into this topic so much that I developed a kind of passion for it. I thought to myself, if others feel the same way I do, I want to share it and understand it even better. That's how I got into it.
Julia: Very exciting. Can you tell us a bit about how you felt before you discovered it? And how did you feel afterwards, after you had put what you had read and learned into practice?
Julia T.I was never really overweight in the sense of being a bit chubby. At around 15, when you start to change hormonally and physically and are confronted with ideals of beauty and start to compare yourself and your body with others, I started with classic diets so that I was underweight. At some point in my mid-20s, I started to invest more by taking a closer look at what I was eating or what I could eat even less of. Looking back, I realized that with I had to deal with depression. You often don't know at the time how you would have felt otherwise, but looking back I know that it was depression. I sought help from various psychotherapies, but the fact that something could be to do with my diet wasn't a consideration for me at the time because I ate healthily. Of course I had a pizza now and again, but I always cooked, even as a student. The depressive feelings were almost always there - the basic mood was melancholy, very easily discouraged. I then started to put on weight despite exercising 5 times a week and eating 1000CAL at the 'peak', so to speak. Which was measured quite accurately because I weighed myself on the precision scales. Nevertheless, I put on weight and felt quite bad mentally. I think sometimes you have to be really down in the dumps to say 'What I've been doing isn't working. I need to try something else'. That was quite interesting because the first thing I did was start cutting out cereal. My parents didn't see me for a few weeks because I was in Sweden at the time and they didn't know that I was changing anything about my diet. However, they immediately noticed my change in character. I was much more positive and had a different charisma, which was very interesting feedback.
Julia: And you only cut out wheat? Or all grains?
Julia T.Not just wheat. Grains in general. I cut out everything like bread, pasta, things like that and also sugar. I didn't eat a lot of sugar or sweets before because I already ate so few calories and actually ate a very healthy diet. I didn't eat white bread or other fast carbohydrates before I made the switch and was actually already on a healthy diet, so to speak.
The additional step was simply that I cut out all the cereals.
The change in character was really interesting .
From then on, it's been a long journey with lots of trial and error since 2011/2012. Of course you can see changes, especially in my character, sleep quality and energy. All these things have improved very quickly. The weight and body shape, which were the things that bothered me the most, took a long time.
Julia: What do you attribute this to in hindsight?
Julia TOn the one hand, I believe that some things simply need time to heal. And I think - and you will certainly be confronted with this again and again - that people ask how quickly they can expect a change and, for example, whether they will be 20 kilos lighter in 3 months, something like that. It didn't just take me 3 months to get to where I am now. I've been eating and living a certain way for 30 years. Maybe too little sleep, too little vitamin D and not paying attention to other important things. I can't expect that in 3 months everything will be fine and everything will be gone. I think the whole thing is a healing process. The information available on the internet now cannot be compared with what it was like in 2012. A lot of things were just starting to blossom then. That's why I tried out and learned a lot myself. As a result, the process of course even longer if you have to test and find out everything. There are certainly several aspects to it.
Julia: And how are you today?
Julia T: Good!!!
Julia: Great! So you've been able to keep what you've earned, so to speak?
Julia T.: Exactly! It's quite funny, I'm approaching 40 soon and 30 is already a world collapse for many people and for many people 40 is practically the death sentence. In my circle of friends, where everyone is the same age, it's already an issue: 'For God's sake, 40!!! Now it's going downhill! And for me, I have to say, it's all uphill. I've never been so fit and I've never felt as healthy as I do now. It's definitely an uphill climb for me. And this experience is something I wish for everyone. That it doesn't go downhill from 30 and that it's not normal to have no strength, be tired, lose your hair, etc.
Many people just accept it, along the lines of 'it's just the way it is when you get older'. But that's nonsense. I have the opportunity to make decisions every day of my life. The decision can be: Today I'm going to change my diet. Today I'm going to start training. Today I'm going to do something for myself - get some fresh air, go out in the sun. It's never too late to make a change.
Julia: That's right. We wanted to talk a bit more about performance, performance and nutrition today. You work in the field of ketogenic nutrition. Can you briefly explain what a ketogenic diet is?
Julia T.: Ketogenic nutrition is a special form of carbohydrate-reduced nutrition. Special in the sense that it is very high in fat. As far as protein is concerned, it is said to be in line with requirements. In other words, it is very individual. Not really high, but in the moderate range. What makes the ketogenic diet so special and gives it its name is that you put the body into a metabolic state in which it starts to produce very special molecules. And these are ketone bodies. A prerequisite for the ketogenic diet is that I produce and can detect these ketone bodies. You can imagine that this is a very quickly available energy unit in the body. We have sugar and bodies in fat. But fats are very long molecules, for example: fat does not dissolve well in water. So fats have to be specially transported. It is also not so easy for them to get into the cells and they cannot supply the brain with energy. We then have the ketone bodies that the body makes itself. These are very short and small compounds that are transported very easily and can supply the brain with energy wonderfully and replace some of the sugar and get into the cells easily. That's a rough outline of what the ketogenic diet is.
Julia: You've explained it really well! If you think about exactly what you've explained, that actually means that our brain doesn't necessarily only need sugar.
Julia T.: Exactly. The brain can use 70% of its The brain can only cover its energy requirements via the ketone bodies and the rest remains glucose, or lactate can also be used by the brain as an energy source.
Julia: And where does the brain get the glucose from if I eat a low-carb diet?
Julia T.: Low carbohydrate is not carbohydrate-free. It depends on the individual, of course, but in its strictest form it's about 20 grams of carbohydrates per day. For some people it can be more, e.g. 80, 90 or even 100 grams. If I'm very sporty and exercise a lot, this can also be within limits. That's one side of it. A little is added from outside, but on the other hand the body has the ability to produce sugar itself. Fats are stored by so-called triglycerides - these are 3 fatty acids that are attached to a glycerol. Three fatty acids are attached to its backbone and when these fatty acids are used to produce energy, or ketone bodies are made from them, this glycerol is released and I can make glucose from the glycerol. I can make glucose from the breakdown of triglycerides. For a long time it was believed that the formation of new sugar was based on amino acids. There was always a thought in the back of my mind: Oh God! If I eat too little sugar, my body will break down muscle mass (protein) to make sugar from the amino acids. This may indeed be the case initially, but the moment ketone bodies are produced and fat is mobilized, I actually have the opportunity to turn the glycerol into new sugar. This means that the amount of amino acids that are still used only play a small part.
Julia: And how can we take advantage of this ketosis? What does it do for us?
Julia T.: Ketosis has many interesting effects. If we think about performance, or stress resistance, energy and energy provision as a topic, then we have the advantage that when I am in a state of ketosis or have developed the flexibility that the body can easily switch back and forth between burning fat and sugar as an energy source, I can take out a lot of stress. I think almost everyone will have experienced how we were all sugar junkies in the past. Often, two hours after eating, you would have a cold sweat or a kind of shivering, as if your blood pressure was plummeting. This feeling of hypoglycaemia is also stressful for the body.
I can deal with these kinds of energy crises very well when I am in ketosis or have developed the flexibility to allow the body to use fat ketone bodies and sugar as required. Many people have forgotten this flexibility, which is why I shouldn't have to eat every two hours. We all carry enough energy reserves with us, so there's no need to eat every two hours. If I can't do that and have to eat every two to three hours, then it means I've lost this flexibility. But I can regain it and - if I have this flexibility - I can remove stressors and, for example, the stressor of hypoglycaemia, which would be one aspect.
Another aspect is inflammation. Also Inflammation is a stressor that challenges our body on a daily basis and I think that we all have some kind of energy quota per day. This energy can be used up for different things, e.g. when I have to make a lot of decisions or when there has been an emotional strain. You may also know this from situations where you say that it has cost you a lot of energy. For example, a phone call that is so stressful that you actually have no energy left to do anything else. Inflammatory processes also drain these energy reserves and the interesting thing is that, on the one hand, ketone bodies themselves have an anti-inflammatory effect.
There is a receptor in the immune system called NLRP3 inflammasome. Essentially, this imflammasome regulates the release of inflammatory messengers and ketone bodies inhibit this imflammasome. This is really demonstrable. We can really show that ketone bodies have an anti-inflammatory effect on the cell. You have to imagine that all these cell processes are not easy to visualize or to research.
We haven't had the opportunity to visualize these signalling pathways for so long. In earlier studies, we often observed that people with chronic inflammatory joint diseases improved as a result of ketosis, but nobody knew why. Only recently have we really been able to explain these processes mechanistically as to why this is the case. And that is just one aspect. What is also interesting - for example in sport - is that regeneration, or the ability to regenerate, is improved when athletes use a keto regime.
Here, too, we didn't know why for a long time, but a lot has happened in recent years! We now know that ketone bodies act as antioxidants. They scavenge free radicals and any kind of inflammatory process produces free radicals, which means that we have an influence on inflammation again. Of course, I also promote inflammation through training because I cause muscle damage, and if I obviously work on several levels, firstly via the imflammasome and secondly as an antioxidant itself via all these processes, it can now be seen that this regenerative capacity is improved.
What applies to athletes can also be transferred to similar performances when I think of entrepreneurs or mothers who work virtually 24/7 without a break and perhaps also have a job. These are people who have to perform at a high level and even these people, or if you are not involved in high-performance sport but have a very strenuous job, can benefit from regenerating faster or better, as you can use these antioxidant properties of ketones.
Julia: To regenerate faster, but also to concentrate better, to be more alert in the morning, to sleep better. How do you explain that with sleep? Why do people suddenly sleep better?
Julia TWhen I'm not so flexible in terms of my metabolism, often with this long overnight fasting phase where you don't eat anything while you sleep, your body can't cope, so to speak. It's often the case that at 2-3 o'clock wakes up at night and is wide awake and fit. This is because the blood sugar drops. It is depleted and there is nothing to replenish it and at the same time the ability to mobilize ketone bodies and fat is not there.
This means that we end up in an energy crisis, which the body naturally notices. The brain in particular reacts very sensitively to such energy crises when it realizes thatno energy is coming. It reacts by releasing the stress hormone cortisol and cortisol stimulates the production of new sugar in the liver. And cortisol makes you alert. If you look at healthy cortisol curves, they have a daily course and should be highest in the morning and fall throughout the day to be low in the evening. The cortisol surge should start around 5 a.m. because that's what wakes us up. Of course, if cortisol peaks at night, this has a massive impact on the quality of sleep and you can quickly eliminate this with the ketogenic diet and when I have this flexibility again. It's not just about ketones, but also about the body becoming good at using fats again to make ketones, among other things.
Julia: The whole range, actually. That we can use what we actually have available. Right?
Julia T.: Exactly. As needed, so to speak, because glucose has its uses. Of course we need it, but not in the quantities that are currently available and glucose has its uses, especially when it comes to providing energy quickly. In sport, for example, during very explosive training sessions. But we have started to use glucose forever, no matter what.
Julia: Or for people who then take maltodextrin to get through an exam, that's where the wildest tricks are used.
Julia TYes, exactly. The interesting thing is that if you offer the brain glucose and ketone bodies, it prefers to absorb the ketone bodies. This is actually selective. It prefers ketones when both are available.
Julia: That means the ketogenic diet would be a more natural form. Can you say that?
Julia TWell, I think on the one hand it has to do with the fact that it was not the exception in our evolutionary history to have so much sugar available. It's actually unusual. That doesn't mean that we were constantly in ketosis, certainly not. That was perhaps in temperate latitudes, where there are seasons and winter (no vegetation for half a year anyway). It can be assumed that we were perhaps more seasonally in ketosis, but certainly also these longer periods of fasting and not constantly eating something every two hours.
This alone simply gave us this flexibility. Perhaps ketones are so readily used by the brain because they play a central role in early childhood development. A newborn baby that is breastfed is actually in ketosis. Even if breast milk is not super high-fat, i.e. it already has a lot of carbohydrates, we are the only fat primate babies. There are no other primates other than us that have fat babies. A chimpanzee, a bonobo, they are all very thin babies. Our babies are fat and they need this fat because this fat is necessary to ensure the supply of energy in the first few months of life.
They can't absorb it from food. In the metabolism, you also have to take into account the fat that the baby mobilizes from its own body fat and then you end up with a moderate ketogenic diet, so to speak. Children, even toddlers, get into ketosis much more easily. This can also be seen in epilepsy, where children are often treated with a ketogenic diet. They get into very deep ketosis very easily, which is much more difficult for adults. This means that something else might be going on in their metabolism that simply favors this. And at this very early stage of development, ketones are not only a source of energy, but also a source of building materials.
Julia: I think we've pretty much reached the end. What would interest me now, of course, is if someone says 'I'm always tired, I need energy. That would be something I would like to try' How can the person find out more? I know that you and three other authors have written a book together - The Keto Compass. I'm sure that's one thing people could find out about, isn't it?
Julia T.: Definitely. We've tried to gather together all the latest knowledge and explain it in such a way that you can understand it even if you don't have a doctorate in biochemistry. It is structured in such a way that it is understandable for the layperson. If you want to delve a little deeper, you can. But you can also skip it if it's too much for you. That would certainly be a good start! You'll certainly already have a good basis.
Julia: I'll be happy to link to it in the follow-up notes. You also have a course that you can take if you want to learn and need more information and someone to ask. It's not always so easy - for some people it works really well and others may have one or two initial problems with the changeover. Would you like to say something more about this?
Julia TOn the one hand, I provide advice, so to speak, but my experience is that it is usually better to receive support over a longer period of time. That's why I've developed a 12-week program called KetoSMART. It's an online learning platform where information is released in weekly chunks. The whole thing is accompanied by five personal coaching appointments. I set it up this way because it makes no sense for me to explain to someone what carbohydrates and fats are. These are all things you can read up on. Nevertheless, these questions keep coming up and that's why I've offered it as a course. I really want to use these personal discussions to solve the individual problems and see how you can individualize this, because there are one or two stumbling blocks. If you've been working on the topic for as long as I have and have tried out so much yourself and worked with so many people, you can get a lot out of the way. Learnings that you may no longer need to do, that simply go faster in order to achieve success more quickly.
You can really make a lot of progress in these 12 weeks. That with Weight is one thing, but many more people can actually benefit from the energy side. If that's there, then almost everything else follows by itself. But if I'm too exhausted to get anything done - and I know what it's like - then you can still make it happen. It's just difficult! It's about showing that it's not a character flaw that I have, but an organic problem on a cellular level. The energy supply is not working as it should. But I can fix that. Nutrition is certainly not everything, which is why I also look at other aspects(sleep, stress management, micronutrients, gut health, etc.). It's important to address everything and see if you need to bring in another specialist if there are any major problems. It's a combination of many factors. My experience has shown that 12 weeks really makes sense. It's a nice round number where you can learn a lot, solve a lot of problems and achieve good results. You can actually see successes and you come across a lot of problems that you can tackle in a personal conversation.
Julia: That sounds great! Where can people find you online, what is your website called?
Julia T:You can find me at www.juliatulipan.at
Julia : Is there anything else you would like to mention at the end to round off the interview?
Julia T.: Maybe that you can't actually break anything if you give it a try. It's definitely worth a try. It's not like you have to amputate your arm for it, where there's no going back, but it's definitely something you can just try for 4 weeks. It's a trial, an experiment - is it working or not? I'm sure that if you approach something in a relaxed way, you can definitely take something with you. Even if it turns out afterwards that it's not for you after all. You can definitely give it a try!
Julia: I can really underline that. Would you say that 4 weeks is the amount of time you should definitely take?
Julia T.: Definitely!
Julia: Many, many thanks for the many interesting suggestions and that we now have a better understanding of the ketogenic diet. It was really great fun! I wish you all the best!
See you soon at the LCHF Congress. Thank you for your time!
Julia T.: Thank you so much for the invitation, I was very happy about it!
So that was the interview with Julia, I hope it made you curious to perhaps try out a ketogenic phase yourself!
We also briefly mentioned the LCHF Congress in the interview. It's a really great event, not just for experts, but really for everyone. As far as I know, it's the best German-speaking event for learning more about nutrition and related topics, and especially for meeting other like-minded people. And the speakers are always available for a quick chat and to answer questions during the breaks, which is definitely part of the charm of this event.
Blog article by Julia Tulipan on the topic:
LCHF Congress:
https://www.expert-fachmedien.de/lchf-veranstaltungen/lchf-kongress-2019/
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Today I have a great guest, Julia Tulipan. She is a keto lifestyle coach, book author and developer of several online courses.
I have known Julia for a long time and we meet at least twice a year, at the LCHF Congress in Düsseldorf and at our annual network meeting in Salzburg.
Topics in the interview are
:- Julia Tulipan's own health story of suffering
- How she has managed to be in the best shape of her life today
- How she defines a ketogenic diet
- What effect a ketogenic diet has on our performance
- And: what nutrition has to do with things like recovery and sleep
Julia originally studied biology and zoology. In 2013, however, she set up her own business as a nutrition coach. She explains how this came about in this interview. She is currently studying for a Master's degree in clinical nutritional medicine, which she will complete in April 2019.
Thanks to her extensive training, she takes a very holistic approach to her consultations. Optimal and personalized nutrition is one aspect of this, while stress, sleep, regeneration and micronutrients are other important pillars that she incorporates into her advice.
In this fascinating interview, she tells us how you can boost your performance with nutrition. Whether for sport, your job or your hobbies.
She came to nutrition through her own suffering
Julia: Welcome to my podcast, dear Julia. Great to have you here!
Julia T.: Hello and thank you for inviting me!
Julia : I already introduced you a little in the introduction and told you that you originally studied biology and zoology. How did you get from animals to humans?
Julia T.: Like many people in our industry, it was due to my own suffering. I've always been interested in nutrition, but after following the traditional advice of eating lots of whole grains, exercising a lot, eating little, lots of soy, no fat and counting calories, etc., I was so broken at some point that nothing worked anymore. Then I started thinking and looking up the studies and questioning the whole thing and when you actually read the primary literature, the scales fall from your eyes. So I was forced into this topic so much that I developed a kind of passion for it. I thought to myself, if others feel the same way I do, I want to share it and understand it even better. That's how I got into it.
Julia: Very exciting. Can you tell us a bit about how you felt before you discovered it? And how did you feel afterwards, after you had put what you had read and learned into practice?
Julia T.I was never really overweight in the sense of being a bit chubby. At around 15, when you start to change hormonally and physically and are confronted with ideals of beauty and start to compare yourself and your body with others, I started with classic diets so that I was underweight. At some point in my mid-20s, I started to invest more by taking a closer look at what I was eating or what I could eat even less of. Looking back, I realized that with I had to deal with depression. You often don't know at the time how you would have felt otherwise, but looking back I know that it was depression. I sought help from various psychotherapies, but the fact that something could be to do with my diet wasn't a consideration for me at the time because I ate healthily. Of course I had a pizza now and again, but I always cooked, even as a student. The depressive feelings were almost always there - the basic mood was melancholy, very easily discouraged. I then started to put on weight despite exercising 5 times a week and eating 1000CAL at the 'peak', so to speak. Which was measured quite accurately because I weighed myself on the precision scales. Nevertheless, I put on weight and felt quite bad mentally. I think sometimes you have to be really down in the dumps to say 'What I've been doing isn't working. I need to try something else'. That was quite interesting because the first thing I did was start cutting out cereal. My parents didn't see me for a few weeks because I was in Sweden at the time and they didn't know that I was changing anything about my diet. However, they immediately noticed my change in character. I was much more positive and had a different charisma, which was very interesting feedback.
Julia: And you only cut out wheat? Or all grains?
Positive change in character by leaving out grains
Julia T.Not just wheat. Grains in general. I cut out everything like bread, pasta, things like that and also sugar. I didn't eat a lot of sugar or sweets before because I already ate so few calories and actually ate a very healthy diet. I didn't eat white bread or other fast carbohydrates before I made the switch and was actually already on a healthy diet, so to speak.
The additional step was simply that I cut out all the cereals.
The change in character was really interesting .
From then on, it's been a long journey with lots of trial and error since 2011/2012. Of course you can see changes, especially in my character, sleep quality and energy. All these things have improved very quickly. The weight and body shape, which were the things that bothered me the most, took a long time.
Julia: What do you attribute this to in hindsight?
Julia TOn the one hand, I believe that some things simply need time to heal. And I think - and you will certainly be confronted with this again and again - that people ask how quickly they can expect a change and, for example, whether they will be 20 kilos lighter in 3 months, something like that. It didn't just take me 3 months to get to where I am now. I've been eating and living a certain way for 30 years. Maybe too little sleep, too little vitamin D and not paying attention to other important things. I can't expect that in 3 months everything will be fine and everything will be gone. I think the whole thing is a healing process. The information available on the internet now cannot be compared with what it was like in 2012. A lot of things were just starting to blossom then. That's why I tried out and learned a lot myself. As a result, the process of course even longer if you have to test and find out everything. There are certainly several aspects to it.
Julia: And how are you today?
Julia T: Good!!!
The decision to live healthier is up to us
Julia: Great! So you've been able to keep what you've earned, so to speak?
Julia T.: Exactly! It's quite funny, I'm approaching 40 soon and 30 is already a world collapse for many people and for many people 40 is practically the death sentence. In my circle of friends, where everyone is the same age, it's already an issue: 'For God's sake, 40!!! Now it's going downhill! And for me, I have to say, it's all uphill. I've never been so fit and I've never felt as healthy as I do now. It's definitely an uphill climb for me. And this experience is something I wish for everyone. That it doesn't go downhill from 30 and that it's not normal to have no strength, be tired, lose your hair, etc.
Many people just accept it, along the lines of 'it's just the way it is when you get older'. But that's nonsense. I have the opportunity to make decisions every day of my life. The decision can be: Today I'm going to change my diet. Today I'm going to start training. Today I'm going to do something for myself - get some fresh air, go out in the sun. It's never too late to make a change.
What is a ketogenic diet and what does it have to do with performance?
Julia: That's right. We wanted to talk a bit more about performance, performance and nutrition today. You work in the field of ketogenic nutrition. Can you briefly explain what a ketogenic diet is?
Julia T.: Ketogenic nutrition is a special form of carbohydrate-reduced nutrition. Special in the sense that it is very high in fat. As far as protein is concerned, it is said to be in line with requirements. In other words, it is very individual. Not really high, but in the moderate range. What makes the ketogenic diet so special and gives it its name is that you put the body into a metabolic state in which it starts to produce very special molecules. And these are ketone bodies. A prerequisite for the ketogenic diet is that I produce and can detect these ketone bodies. You can imagine that this is a very quickly available energy unit in the body. We have sugar and bodies in fat. But fats are very long molecules, for example: fat does not dissolve well in water. So fats have to be specially transported. It is also not so easy for them to get into the cells and they cannot supply the brain with energy. We then have the ketone bodies that the body makes itself. These are very short and small compounds that are transported very easily and can supply the brain with energy wonderfully and replace some of the sugar and get into the cells easily. That's a rough outline of what the ketogenic diet is.
Julia: You've explained it really well! If you think about exactly what you've explained, that actually means that our brain doesn't necessarily only need sugar.
Julia T.: Exactly. The brain can use 70% of its The brain can only cover its energy requirements via the ketone bodies and the rest remains glucose, or lactate can also be used by the brain as an energy source.
Julia: And where does the brain get the glucose from if I eat a low-carb diet?
Julia T.: Low carbohydrate is not carbohydrate-free. It depends on the individual, of course, but in its strictest form it's about 20 grams of carbohydrates per day. For some people it can be more, e.g. 80, 90 or even 100 grams. If I'm very sporty and exercise a lot, this can also be within limits. That's one side of it. A little is added from outside, but on the other hand the body has the ability to produce sugar itself. Fats are stored by so-called triglycerides - these are 3 fatty acids that are attached to a glycerol. Three fatty acids are attached to its backbone and when these fatty acids are used to produce energy, or ketone bodies are made from them, this glycerol is released and I can make glucose from the glycerol. I can make glucose from the breakdown of triglycerides. For a long time it was believed that the formation of new sugar was based on amino acids. There was always a thought in the back of my mind: Oh God! If I eat too little sugar, my body will break down muscle mass (protein) to make sugar from the amino acids. This may indeed be the case initially, but the moment ketone bodies are produced and fat is mobilized, I actually have the opportunity to turn the glycerol into new sugar. This means that the amount of amino acids that are still used only play a small part.
Julia: And how can we take advantage of this ketosis? What does it do for us?
Julia T.: Ketosis has many interesting effects. If we think about performance, or stress resistance, energy and energy provision as a topic, then we have the advantage that when I am in a state of ketosis or have developed the flexibility that the body can easily switch back and forth between burning fat and sugar as an energy source, I can take out a lot of stress. I think almost everyone will have experienced how we were all sugar junkies in the past. Often, two hours after eating, you would have a cold sweat or a kind of shivering, as if your blood pressure was plummeting. This feeling of hypoglycaemia is also stressful for the body.
I can deal with these kinds of energy crises very well when I am in ketosis or have developed the flexibility to allow the body to use fat ketone bodies and sugar as required. Many people have forgotten this flexibility, which is why I shouldn't have to eat every two hours. We all carry enough energy reserves with us, so there's no need to eat every two hours. If I can't do that and have to eat every two to three hours, then it means I've lost this flexibility. But I can regain it and - if I have this flexibility - I can remove stressors and, for example, the stressor of hypoglycaemia, which would be one aspect.
Anti-inflammatory effect
Another aspect is inflammation. Also Inflammation is a stressor that challenges our body on a daily basis and I think that we all have some kind of energy quota per day. This energy can be used up for different things, e.g. when I have to make a lot of decisions or when there has been an emotional strain. You may also know this from situations where you say that it has cost you a lot of energy. For example, a phone call that is so stressful that you actually have no energy left to do anything else. Inflammatory processes also drain these energy reserves and the interesting thing is that, on the one hand, ketone bodies themselves have an anti-inflammatory effect.
There is a receptor in the immune system called NLRP3 inflammasome. Essentially, this imflammasome regulates the release of inflammatory messengers and ketone bodies inhibit this imflammasome. This is really demonstrable. We can really show that ketone bodies have an anti-inflammatory effect on the cell. You have to imagine that all these cell processes are not easy to visualize or to research.
We haven't had the opportunity to visualize these signalling pathways for so long. In earlier studies, we often observed that people with chronic inflammatory joint diseases improved as a result of ketosis, but nobody knew why. Only recently have we really been able to explain these processes mechanistically as to why this is the case. And that is just one aspect. What is also interesting - for example in sport - is that regeneration, or the ability to regenerate, is improved when athletes use a keto regime.
Here, too, we didn't know why for a long time, but a lot has happened in recent years! We now know that ketone bodies act as antioxidants. They scavenge free radicals and any kind of inflammatory process produces free radicals, which means that we have an influence on inflammation again. Of course, I also promote inflammation through training because I cause muscle damage, and if I obviously work on several levels, firstly via the imflammasome and secondly as an antioxidant itself via all these processes, it can now be seen that this regenerative capacity is improved.
What applies to athletes can also be transferred to similar performances when I think of entrepreneurs or mothers who work virtually 24/7 without a break and perhaps also have a job. These are people who have to perform at a high level and even these people, or if you are not involved in high-performance sport but have a very strenuous job, can benefit from regenerating faster or better, as you can use these antioxidant properties of ketones.
Why does sleep also improve?
Julia: To regenerate faster, but also to concentrate better, to be more alert in the morning, to sleep better. How do you explain that with sleep? Why do people suddenly sleep better?
Julia TWhen I'm not so flexible in terms of my metabolism, often with this long overnight fasting phase where you don't eat anything while you sleep, your body can't cope, so to speak. It's often the case that at 2-3 o'clock wakes up at night and is wide awake and fit. This is because the blood sugar drops. It is depleted and there is nothing to replenish it and at the same time the ability to mobilize ketone bodies and fat is not there.
This means that we end up in an energy crisis, which the body naturally notices. The brain in particular reacts very sensitively to such energy crises when it realizes thatno energy is coming. It reacts by releasing the stress hormone cortisol and cortisol stimulates the production of new sugar in the liver. And cortisol makes you alert. If you look at healthy cortisol curves, they have a daily course and should be highest in the morning and fall throughout the day to be low in the evening. The cortisol surge should start around 5 a.m. because that's what wakes us up. Of course, if cortisol peaks at night, this has a massive impact on the quality of sleep and you can quickly eliminate this with the ketogenic diet and when I have this flexibility again. It's not just about ketones, but also about the body becoming good at using fats again to make ketones, among other things.
Julia: The whole range, actually. That we can use what we actually have available. Right?
Julia T.: Exactly. As needed, so to speak, because glucose has its uses. Of course we need it, but not in the quantities that are currently available and glucose has its uses, especially when it comes to providing energy quickly. In sport, for example, during very explosive training sessions. But we have started to use glucose forever, no matter what.
Julia: Or for people who then take maltodextrin to get through an exam, that's where the wildest tricks are used.
Julia TYes, exactly. The interesting thing is that if you offer the brain glucose and ketone bodies, it prefers to absorb the ketone bodies. This is actually selective. It prefers ketones when both are available.
Julia: That means the ketogenic diet would be a more natural form. Can you say that?
Julia TWell, I think on the one hand it has to do with the fact that it was not the exception in our evolutionary history to have so much sugar available. It's actually unusual. That doesn't mean that we were constantly in ketosis, certainly not. That was perhaps in temperate latitudes, where there are seasons and winter (no vegetation for half a year anyway). It can be assumed that we were perhaps more seasonally in ketosis, but certainly also these longer periods of fasting and not constantly eating something every two hours.
Newborn breastfed children are in ketosis
This alone simply gave us this flexibility. Perhaps ketones are so readily used by the brain because they play a central role in early childhood development. A newborn baby that is breastfed is actually in ketosis. Even if breast milk is not super high-fat, i.e. it already has a lot of carbohydrates, we are the only fat primate babies. There are no other primates other than us that have fat babies. A chimpanzee, a bonobo, they are all very thin babies. Our babies are fat and they need this fat because this fat is necessary to ensure the supply of energy in the first few months of life.
They can't absorb it from food. In the metabolism, you also have to take into account the fat that the baby mobilizes from its own body fat and then you end up with a moderate ketogenic diet, so to speak. Children, even toddlers, get into ketosis much more easily. This can also be seen in epilepsy, where children are often treated with a ketogenic diet. They get into very deep ketosis very easily, which is much more difficult for adults. This means that something else might be going on in their metabolism that simply favors this. And at this very early stage of development, ketones are not only a source of energy, but also a source of building materials.
Where can you find out more about the ketogenic diet?
Julia: I think we've pretty much reached the end. What would interest me now, of course, is if someone says 'I'm always tired, I need energy. That would be something I would like to try' How can the person find out more? I know that you and three other authors have written a book together - The Keto Compass. I'm sure that's one thing people could find out about, isn't it?
Julia T.: Definitely. We've tried to gather together all the latest knowledge and explain it in such a way that you can understand it even if you don't have a doctorate in biochemistry. It is structured in such a way that it is understandable for the layperson. If you want to delve a little deeper, you can. But you can also skip it if it's too much for you. That would certainly be a good start! You'll certainly already have a good basis.
Julia: I'll be happy to link to it in the follow-up notes. You also have a course that you can take if you want to learn and need more information and someone to ask. It's not always so easy - for some people it works really well and others may have one or two initial problems with the changeover. Would you like to say something more about this?
Julia TOn the one hand, I provide advice, so to speak, but my experience is that it is usually better to receive support over a longer period of time. That's why I've developed a 12-week program called KetoSMART. It's an online learning platform where information is released in weekly chunks. The whole thing is accompanied by five personal coaching appointments. I set it up this way because it makes no sense for me to explain to someone what carbohydrates and fats are. These are all things you can read up on. Nevertheless, these questions keep coming up and that's why I've offered it as a course. I really want to use these personal discussions to solve the individual problems and see how you can individualize this, because there are one or two stumbling blocks. If you've been working on the topic for as long as I have and have tried out so much yourself and worked with so many people, you can get a lot out of the way. Learnings that you may no longer need to do, that simply go faster in order to achieve success more quickly.
You can really make a lot of progress in these 12 weeks. That with Weight is one thing, but many more people can actually benefit from the energy side. If that's there, then almost everything else follows by itself. But if I'm too exhausted to get anything done - and I know what it's like - then you can still make it happen. It's just difficult! It's about showing that it's not a character flaw that I have, but an organic problem on a cellular level. The energy supply is not working as it should. But I can fix that. Nutrition is certainly not everything, which is why I also look at other aspects(sleep, stress management, micronutrients, gut health, etc.). It's important to address everything and see if you need to bring in another specialist if there are any major problems. It's a combination of many factors. My experience has shown that 12 weeks really makes sense. It's a nice round number where you can learn a lot, solve a lot of problems and achieve good results. You can actually see successes and you come across a lot of problems that you can tackle in a personal conversation.
Julia: That sounds great! Where can people find you online, what is your website called?
Julia T:You can find me at www.juliatulipan.at
Julia : Is there anything else you would like to mention at the end to round off the interview?
Julia T.: Maybe that you can't actually break anything if you give it a try. It's definitely worth a try. It's not like you have to amputate your arm for it, where there's no going back, but it's definitely something you can just try for 4 weeks. It's a trial, an experiment - is it working or not? I'm sure that if you approach something in a relaxed way, you can definitely take something with you. Even if it turns out afterwards that it's not for you after all. You can definitely give it a try!
Julia: I can really underline that. Would you say that 4 weeks is the amount of time you should definitely take?
Julia T.: Definitely!
Julia: Many, many thanks for the many interesting suggestions and that we now have a better understanding of the ketogenic diet. It was really great fun! I wish you all the best!
See you soon at the LCHF Congress. Thank you for your time!
Julia T.: Thank you so much for the invitation, I was very happy about it!
So that was the interview with Julia, I hope it made you curious to perhaps try out a ketogenic phase yourself!
We also briefly mentioned the LCHF Congress in the interview. It's a really great event, not just for experts, but really for everyone. As far as I know, it's the best German-speaking event for learning more about nutrition and related topics, and especially for meeting other like-minded people. And the speakers are always available for a quick chat and to answer questions during the breaks, which is definitely part of the charm of this event.
Blog article by Julia Tulipan on the topic:
- https://paleolowcarb.de/ketose-training-und-performance/
- https://paleolowcarb.de/burn-out/
- https://paleolowcarb.de/performance-und-leistung/
LCHF Congress:
https://www.expert-fachmedien.de/lchf-veranstaltungen/lchf-kongress-2019/
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