#119 Dr. David G. Harper – Protect Immunity With Keto

Meet Dr. David G. Harper

DR. DAVID G. HARPER is an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of the Fraser Valley and a visiting scientist at the BC Cancer Research Center, Terry Fox Laboratory. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in comparative physiology at the University of Cambridge. He is on the scientific advisory board of the Canadian Clinicians for Therapeutic Nutrition and is a member of the Institute for Personalized Therapeutic Nutrition.

Show Notes:

ABOUT DR. DAVID HARPER

• If they have heard about me, maybe it is because of the book me and wife finished last years
• The book is called BioDiet and people can go to biodiet.org to check out
• In the book, there are hundreds or category on how the ketogenic diet benefits your health
• Some of my research is looking at the therapeutic benefits of the ketogenic diet in particular for those women with metastatic breast cancer
• That’s the study that I am working with as a very small part of a big team and the team is headed with Dr. Jeff Bullock
• I am also a university professor, health educator and I teach anatomy physiology, pathology, contemporary health and so on
• Part of what I talked about at the Low-carb Denver was my research and part of it was about this new virus because there are potentially some benefits to a ketogenic diet that might help with resistance to this new virus.
  
• Having a good immune system is going to protect you from colds, flu, and other respiratory diseases and other infectious diseases, that’s how it works
• The reason why this new virus is such a concern because one, there is no herd immunity, in other words, it is a novel virus
• So nobody in the human population has any resistance to it
• Although now, anybody who has had it and had recovered should be pretty resistant to it
• Those that are dying from this new virus and yes, there are odd cases that young people died too just as young healthy people die from flu sometimes, but it is usually a respiratory challenge
• So these people are older, tend to be over 80, they have morbidities which are others that are causing illness like diabetes, heart disease or cancer, and their immunity is being challenged by these diseases and they do not have much scope for an additional challenge
• What we all need to do is to sit at home for a couple of weeks and prevent the spread of this virus into care centers, senior homes even at home with our parents or grandparents
• Don’t think that you are young and healthy that you’re necessarily immune, nobody is immune in this thing
• But in the end, for 80% of us, our immune system will do its job and will recognize the virus, and if it does, it will create the antibodies necessary to clear the disease

HOW DOES THE KETO KETOGENIC DIET PROTECT THE IMMUNE SYSTEM OR INFECTION

• Starting off with the basics, we know anecdotally that people are in keto diet seems to get less cold, flu and things that are going around
• We have some ideas about why this might be, but we do not have any absolute evidence – it’s just a hypothesis at this point
• One is, keto is very good at addressing the things that are cause those chronic diseases
• Those are metabolic disorders and ketogenic diet seem to be really effective in treating them and we do have robust science to indicate that the ketogenic diet lowers your risk of heart disease, lowers blood pressure, controls blood sugar, reduces insulin resistance, reduces inflammation
• If you are improving those things, by extension you are reducing your risk of having the new virus
• Number two, because it is so effective at controlling blood sugar because you’re essentially not eating sugar and just producing the blood sugar you need in your body, then your blood sugar is regulated and your insulin as well
• High blood sugar suppresses your immune system and now is not the time to consume sugar
• We should avoid sugar, high glycemic index and carbohydrates to improve our immune response
  
• The way this virus work is it gets into your lungs and it’s the point of entry to the cells that is something called ACE-2 receptor
• It appears in a study that it looked at the effect of the ketogenic diet on this ACE-2 receptor and those monkeys who are on the keto diet have down-regulated those receptors
• It means that they have fewer of those receptors in the respiratory cells which means fewer attachments point for the virus, which means that the virus has a tougher time getting in which will give your body a time to react
• That was a study a few years back in response to Sars
• There was a study out from Yale in November that showed ketogenic diet and this was with mice looking with an influenza virus which is similar to coronavirus
• With these mice, they used AH1N1 which is a very pathogenic virus for mice
• In the research group that are keto-adapted have very good survival rates and they figured if it had something to do again with the ability to the virus to attach to these respiratory cells
  
• We have basically 3 barriers, the first barrier is your physical barrier which is your skin, mucus membranes, and the secretion of those mucus membranes that are trying to protect things from getting in
• But, the world is polluted and full of bacteria so they are going to get in eventually, so your immune system has to react
• The next phase is what we call, innate immune system and this is a series of cells and the chemicals that they release. It is also our host cells ability that produce these chemicals those cytokines and chemokine, and they provide a non-specific respond and they try and stop things from getting into the body and they do that through various defense mechanisms of secretions and signaling
• One of the signals is called, gamma interferon and it is particularly active when cells are virally infected
• The virus is not bacteria, they are little bits of DNA and RNA – the new virus is an RNA virus. They are wrapped in a little protein coat and had a lipid around them, and they get into cells and hijack the cells, so instead of rebuilding new healthy cells, it just produces viruses
• When a cell becomes virally infected, it sends out the signal to other cells to protect itself and that is called gamma interferon
• When you have a lot of gamma interferon in your system, you will feel sick
• This gamma interferon also down-regulates the ACE-2 receptor, so the gamma interferon seems to be the mechanism by which this receptor for the coronavirus are down-regulated – they are fewer numbers for people who are keto-adapted
• What we show at our lab, we compared some controlled group of general people to people who have been keto-adapted and going 6 month to a year
• We took their white cells out their blood, and we challenged them with a viral and bacterial challenge to see how they respond
• What we saw is upregulation of a number different kinds of chemokine and one of this is gamma interferon
• People who are keto-adapted, seem to have this improved resistance to infection even specifically with this new virus but keto is not for everybody
• But it is best to reduce your cardio-metabolic risk which will improve your immunity and lower your blood sugar
• Of course, these are all hypothetically and it’s too early to prove any of this
  
• The daily restricting eating window is I think, beneficial
• The multi-day which is okay once in a while
• I am not a big fan of longer fasts because I think this longer fast can start triggering these thrifty genes which actually lower our metabolism and can cause to store fat again and we don’t want to do that
• But in general, the benefits you get from fasting is the same on what you get from the ketogenic diet

ADVICE

• You need to stay calm
• This is the time to practice meditation or exercise indoors and that will help you relax
• Try to keep things in perspective
• Get some adequate sleep and get the screens out of your bedroom
• Be careful on what you’re eating and how you’re eating
  
• The other great thing about the keto diet is it controls this leptin and ghrelin which are the signal on when to stop to eat so you won’t overeat
• Only eat when you’re hungry, don’t eat when your bored
• Make sure you’re not eating too much sugar
• Set yourself some goals

WHERE CAN PEOPLE FIND YOU

• You can buy the book, BioDiet at biodiet.org
• Facebook: Dave Harper
• LinkedIn: Dr. David G Harper

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