Can a Keto Diet Help Reduce Your Allergies?
Scientists discovered that mice who adhere to a low-carb, high-fat diet (which the scientists describe as a ketogenic diet), may be less susceptible to asthma – a condition that affects over 19 million adults in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Human tests are now on the run to determine wether yes or no a keto diet helps with your allergies .
The study was published Wednesday in the journal Immunity.
This is a preliminary animal study, so it’s many steps away from proving the diet has the same effect in humans. But senior author Christoph Wilhelm, a professor at the University of Bonn, tells Inverse that the team is already trying to figure out if these results translate.
“We haven’t performed any human studies yet, but there is some evidence that ketogenic diet may be effective in combating cancer or epilepsy,” Wilhelm says. “There are no further restrictions to start performing clinical trials testing the efficacy of the ketogenic diet in humans. In fact, we are in the process of setting up such a trial.”
The keto diet doesn’t have a perfect track record. The US News and World Report gave the diet a 2/5 stars when weighing short and long-term weight loss, how easy it was to follow, and proposed health benefits (it got just 1.8 of 5 stars in terms of health).
The keto diet does allow for short-term improvements, other research suggests. A mouse study published in Nature Metabolism found that after one week, metabolism improved and inflammation decreased in mice. But after two to three months those trends reversed. The mice became obese, had slower metabolisms, and higher rates of inflammation.
This study focused on aspects of the diet you’re less likely to see touted on Instagram or fitness blogs: the way that it might impact chronic health conditions. As Wilhelm notes, the diet is currently used as an intervention for epilepsy patients. In that case, it’s sometimes prescribed by doctors for patients (often children) for whom traditional medicines don’t work.
Wilhem and his colleagues examined the way that going keto affects asthma by narrowing in on type 2 innate lymphoid cells, which stimulate mucus production. In manageable amounts, mucus is good – it forms a protective lining in the airways. But when mucus production gets sent into overdrive, it becomes a problem, especially when asthmatics encounter a triggering allergen.
That’s because when certain allergens are encountered, these immune-system cells begin to proliferate quicker than they otherwise would, which triggers increased inflammation in airways.
A series of cell-based experiments suggest that these cells were able to proliferate so quickly because they became better at absorbing glucose from the environment. Glucose, which provides the cells with energy, allows cells to uptake fatty acids, which they can use to build crucial features, like the cell wall. In short, the glucose allows the cell to set the reproductive process in motion.
This Diet Doesn’t Suit You? Take a Look to Those: Diets
The idea behind feeing mice a keto diet is that it would severely limit a fast source of glucose that comes from the diet: carbs. To test this, they exposed two groups of mice to a common allergen test: a papain (an enzyme that comes from a papaya plant). This papain, in theory, is supposed to trigger an asthmatic response in the mice.
Compared to a control group of litter-mates that got a normal, carbohydrate-filled diet, the scientists found keto diet mice had significantly fewer innate lymphoid cells in their lung tissue when they were exposed to the papain.
Importantly, this wasn’t the case in other organs when they weren’t in front of the allergen, suggesting that the keto diet may have a specific effect. Wilhelm explains that these results point towards THE USE OF A DIET TO TREAT ASTHMA, and perhaps other chronic inflammatory conditions in the distant future.
“[The] ketogenic diet may help to treat asthma and that dietary interventions or restrictions could be effective to treat chronic inflammation,” he says.
Still, this is far from enough information to encourage asthmatics to step away from real treatment, both short-term (like inhalers) and long-term (medication) . While in the future, the diet may be helpful in controlling the condition, there’s still no evidence from this study that it can alleviate an asthma attack.
Asthmatics need to be particularly aware of their condition and managing it during the coronavirus pandemic, given that they fall into the category of people who may experience more severe complications from the virus. People excited about the diet’s ability to combat asthma should press pause, for now.
This study suggests that scientists have more than one iron in the fire when it comes to looking for long-term solutions for the management of asthma under normal circumstances. One of those irons, oddly, means avoiding carbo-loading.
