In this week’s podcast, we continue our conversation on therapeutic aspects of the ketogenic diet. More specifically, how the ketogenic diet affects the NADH/NAD ratio. What’s that you might ask?
Well, NAD stands for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. It’s a cofactor found in every cell in our body and is a pivotal player in numerous reactions throughout our entire body.
We focused on the role of NAD as it pertains to the proteins called sirtuins. Sirtuins are a group of proteins that control how old or young our cells are. When they’re active, they’re able to perform a process called deacetylation, which is very important within our cells. Removing acetyl groups from proteins allows them to be acted upon and puts them in their “active” form, meaning they’re now able to do work.
One of these proteins is histone. Histones are a group of proteins that our DNA wraps itself around for protection. When they have an acetyl group on them, our DNA is unwound and unprotected. However, in the presence of NAD, sirtuins are capable of removing that acetyl group, allowing our DNA to wrap back around the histones for protection. This is just one of the ways sirtuins keep our cells young.
A high carb diet depletes the body of NAD, which limits the ability of sirtuins to do their job. A ketogenic diet regenerates NAD, giving sirtuins the tools they need to perform optimally. To learn more, listen to this week’s podcast.
Links To Studies Mentioned
Awesome post! Keep up the great work! 🙂