The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, low-carb diet that supports weight loss by driving your body into ketosis.
This ketosis occurs when your blood ketones are high, which means that since your body cannot get carbs for energy from meals, it uses stored up fats in ketone form. These ketone bodies will substitute glucose and provide your entire body, heart, and brain with energy.
Research has already proven that the keto diet, is excellent for weight loss, managing type 2 diabetes, reducing seizures, and boosting cognitive performance, and heart health, among many others.
The challenges of the keto diet
However, it is challenging to follow the traditional keto diet. This diet involves eating only about 5% carbs (or less than 50 grams), 20% protein, and 75% fat. In most cases, your carbs will come from low-carb vegetables such as tomatoes, broccoli, greens, pepper, etc.
For a lot of people, keeping to this standard diet can be problematic. Therefore, these people usually up to their carb intake or follow the cyclical ketogenic diet, which includes alternating between your normal diet and the keto diet.
Nevertheless, ketosis becomes harder to achieve due to the higher amount of carbs. In turn, some people have underlying digestive issues that can make it a lot harder.
There’s also dealing with transition challenges, more commonly known as ‘keto flu’ (nausea, difficulty with exercise, vomiting, headache, fatigue, etc.) which when they happen for too long can discourage anyone from the diet. While others may have to deal with exhaustion issues on keto diets.
Due to these challenges, researchers are working hard to discover more ways to get into ketosis faster without adhering to the standard keto diet.
Bear in mind that you still have to follow the keto rules and go on a carb deficit diet. But in this case, you can sometimes eat all your favorite things without knocking yourself out of ketosis.
We recommend using digestive enzymes for the ketogenic diet, and the Bioptimizers Kapex is one of them. These digestive enzymes are small, specialized molecules that can help break down the food and drinks you eat for better absorption.
Exogenous keto supplements versus digestive enzymes for the keto diet
However, we must help you understand the reasons why digestive enzymes are the best. So let’s talk about other ways you may have heard of such as the exogenous keto supplements. Our purpose in this article is to give you all the necessary information to help you with the next step in your keto journey.
Let’s begin by explaining the use of exogenous supplements, which in reality have been around for some time.
Exogenous supplements
Exogenous keto supplements are supplements that supply the ketones to your body. In this case, your body isn’t producing the ketones but using what’s contained in the supplements. As expected, you will get into ketosis faster. However, the whole point of the keto diet is to help your body do the work of transforming stored fats into ketones. Therefore, if you are getting the ketones you need externally, it defeats the aim of using up your fat stores.
Surely exogenous supplements have benefits of boosting athletic performance, but they won’t help you lose weight or build a much healthier lifestyle.
Besides, there is a danger of your ketone blood levels becoming too high, which further prevents your body from using up your fat stores. Furthermore, ketones contain calories, which means these supplements will add more calories overall and may not be worthwhile.
What are Digestive Enzymes for Ketogenic Diet
Digestive enzymes, on the other hand, can help you get into ketosis, without supplying the ketones.
The keto diet is a high-fat diet, and such a diet can be tough on some people. This is because the ability to break down fat is critical to success.
Digestive enzymes will provide all the enzymes to break down fats (lipases) and proteins (proteases) to improve digestion.
Normally, your body has these enzymes, but a high-fat diet might be very effective to get the whole job done. This is especially true, for people who have digestive-related problems such as lactose intolerance issues and many more.
Sometimes, you might not notice that there’s something wrong with the way you digest the food. Research has already outlined all the symptoms. They include gas, bloating, belching, fullness, chronic fatigue, constipation, and acid reflux.
Science also states that without the right number of digestive enzymes, the food you eat will ferment and turn into bad gut bacteria. This can further lead to a condition called dysbiosis which means the gut grows unhealthier microorganisms and has been linked to a lot of health problems like depression, diarrhea, bad breath, anxiety, lowered immunity, and many more.
Therefore, these digestive enzymes have a huge role to play, whether on the keto diet or not. In the keto diet, these digestive enzymes can make the transition seamless and avoid all those unwanted symptoms associated with keto flu.
Benefits of Digestive Enzymes
While they might not be necessary, digestive enzymes, especially those made for keto and other low-carb diets are one of the best ways to improve digestion on keto diets.
Research has also shown that digestive enzymes can help reduce post-workout sores, which is ideal for people who are working out alongside the keto diet.
Other benefits found by studies include decreased digestive stress, immune support, and building better stores of energy from your blood ketones.
Overall, the greater energy used in making these ketones will help you achieve your weight loss goals in no time.
Even more, digestive enzymes have been found in numerous studies to help manage health conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, cancer, arthritis, autism, etc.
What to Look for in a digestive enzyme for a ketogenic diet
There are thousands of keto digestive enzymes reviews on different digestive supplements out there, but they are not created equal.
Experts recommend using a keto digestive enzyme product that can provide diverse types of lipases, amylases, and proteases. And in addition to that, give you maximum ketogenic benefits. It may also contain other kinds of enzymes such as phytase, pectinase, invertase, maltase, and beta-glucanase. You also need to ensure that your supplement has acid-stable protease enzymes so it can work even when your lower stomach is too acidic.
The one we found to fit the bill perfectly and help you overcome any shortcoming your body might have to face with the Keto or low carb diet is the Kapex Bioptimizers. We did an in-depth review of it which you can find here.
