Alcohol is Ketogenic -Paleo Quick Tip of the Day podcast

One of the hardest things to come to grips with in the field of health is what is actually true- and what isn’t!  This is obvious if you look at medical and standard nutritional advice concerning fat- the standard advice is that fat is bad bad bad- especially saturated, animal fats!

And if you have been following the ancestral or Paleo diet, or even any current research- you know that avoiding saturated fats is a wrong decision.  Good, God-made animal fats like tallow, lard, or butter are wonderful choices to build and protect your health and wellness.  Cholesterol is actually good and necessary, not something to be avoided and to treat as the spawn of the devil.  

On the converse side: vegetable oils are awful, fake foodstuffs that will give you migraines, and deprive your body of the true nutrients is needs in order to thrive and be healthy.  Vegetable oils are to be avoided at all costs, and this is very difficult if you are eating out on a regular basis.  Fast foods, Asian cooking, and processed foods in boxes and packages are all loaded with vegetable oils- keep all of these to the absolute minimum.  The perfect antidote to bad foods all about us, destroying our collective health?  Mostly- COOK YOUR OWN FOOD AT HOME WITH WONDERFUL INGREDIENTS!

And now- the ultimate lie, (along with so many, many others that we have literally been “fed” over the years- 

Alcohol is actually wonderfully 

KETOGENIC!

Yes, my paleo friends, I am not making this up.  Your brain loves alcohol!  It processes it preferentially, like a ketone body itself, since it is a really fast, clean burning fuel, unlike sugars and carbs.  (In contradiction with the common myth, alcohol does not get converted into sugar in the body!)  Actually, a good way to look at it is to imagine the alcohol being easily (some might say too easily) broken up into ketone-like bodies that are used preferentially by your brain for fuel!

Yes, your brain loves alcohol!  Perhaps too much so, which is why you have to watch your intake, and moderate it.  

But the surprising takeaway, that you will never hear from most health “professionals”, is that alcohol can actually help to keep you in ketosis, and actually lowers your blood sugar.  If you could put these two benefits of alcohol into a pill or supplement, or a prescription drug: you would make tons of money!  

But, bottom line, it’s just plain old alcohol that does the trick.  If you just drink small amounts, it will burn those preferentially as I said earlier- it will burn these alcohol ketones first.  So, that means if you are overeating with carbs and sugars, it will wait to burn those inferior foodstuffs.  It’s as if you were presented with prime rib simultaneously with corn dogs- which would you choose to eat first??

But, if you are eating a good ketogenic or even a standard paleo type of diet- well, you won’t have a problem with excess crap food to burn up.  Your happy brain and body will simply run quick, clean, and happily on the ketone/alcohol first thing, and then move on to the grass fed prime rib, or pastured eggs, or whatever else you have laid in store for them in your interior pantry…

Just keep the alcohol source a low carb one.  Despite everyone going crazy about how awful beer is (it’s barley- a gluten filled grain for God’s sake!), it is ‘liquid bread’!  It’s not- for one, it’s fermented- this neutralizes almost anything, making it far healthier.  For the other, if you choose a cheap, light beer- it is not only corn, the least harmful grain for most- it is fermented and light, and quite low carb.  Just don’t drink a case-full!

Hard liquor mostly has no carbs at all, if you don’t mix it with crap like soda pop!  Take it neat.  And wine is fine- as in all liquors- moderation is the key!

And if anyone looks at you like you like you have no knowledge of health at all, if you are drinking alcohol of any sort; well, just knock the chips and vegetable-oil soaked dip they are taking in, along with the diet soda pop right from their non-ketogenic, non-paleo hands!