Maybe you can see this as more compelling evidence: https://consensus.app/search/does-ketonic-diet-improve-alzhe...

>Cognitive Effects and Clinical Outcomes > >Multiple systematic reviews and clinical trials report that ketogenic diets (KD) or ketone supplementation can lead to improvements in cognitive function, daily living activities, and quality of life in people with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease 413141819. Chronic KD interventions (3–4 months) have been associated with increased cognitive test scores and improved memory performance 1418. Some studies also show positive changes in Alzheimer's biomarkers, such as reduced tau and increased amyloid-beta 42 in cerebrospinal fluid 7."

Well, thanks. That's certainly better than what made it into wikipedia. But honestly: no? Only 41% of papers answering "yes" to an engaging and evocative hypothesis, in the era of the replication crisis, and especially after a decade and a half of the hypothesis sitting around in general lore, generally means "no, duh" in my experience.

As the site itself says, "evidence is still limited and more research is needed", which is definitely not "compelling". My money still sits on "nerd wish fulfillment". But we'll see.

Yeah, there are studies suggesting neurons, far more so than many peripheral cells, are especially vulnerable to insulin resistance. So by the time you see systemic insulin resistance by standard measures, the brain may already be slipping. I suppose this is why ketonic diet has any role in restoring cognitive function.

The idea that paleo/keto is all buttered meat is strange and fairly recent, with wish fulfillment probably being strongly involved. Meat would have been a luxury not available for all meals so other tissues like tendon, tripe, and skin would have been common ingredients. That plus other changes like boiling most meals and serving them with the boil water make a huge difference in the nutritional profile.

> The idea that paleo/keto is all buttered meat is strange and fairly recent

To be clear: the dietary theories here (such as they are) are surely rigorously defined and subsume all sorts of choices for how to get fats and avoid carbs.

But to a person, every solitary practitioner I've ever met has implemented their Atkins/paleo/keto diet with almost exclusively meat.

It's a MEAT! diet because nerds love MEAT!.

I read “Prolonged Meat Diets with a Study of Kidney Function and Ketosis” by Walter S. McClellan and Eugene F. Du Bois, Journal of Biological Chemistry (1930). The original paper that kicked off all the Atkins diet ideas. It made quite a point of the fact that the two men participating started off thinking that they'd like eating all meat, and quickly realizing that they began craving fat and organ meat to an extent that it ended up making up the majority of their diet.

Keto is a meat diet because you can’t find much else to eat that won’t kick you out of ketosis. Even most vegetables have too many carbs.

Paleo does not necessitate so much meat.

> kick you out of ketosis

FWIW, that notion of "ketosis" as a magical metabolic state is very much a part of the voodoo I'm talking about. The medical community does not recognize that kind of thing. Ketosis is understood broadly as a disorder along a spectrum leading to ketoacidosis, and real doctors worry about treatment.

The idea of riding the enzymes like a knife edge to hack your metabolism is very much not supported by real research and consensus, and most experts think it's borderline insane.

Perhaps, and I’m sure any diet in which you cannot eat vegetables is a bad long term idea for most people. But if you pee on the strip and it changes color you lose weight faster than caloric restriction accounts for, if you eat too many peas and it stops changing color you don’t.

So people do it, and when they do, they must eat nearly only meat because there’s not much else.

> But if you pee on the strip and it changes color you lose weight faster than caloric restriction accounts for, if you eat too many peas and it stops changing color you don’t.

And it's that logic exactly that I'm characterizing as "voodoo". You're trying to cite as obviously true what research simply hasn't shown. "I read it on a blog and it works for me" is the first step on the road to ivermectin and chemtrails.

Double blind study or GTFO basically.

They are both fad diets. Plain and simple.