The researchers also found that intestinal stem cells produce unusually high levels of ketone bodies even in the absence of a high-fat diet. These ketone bodies activate a well-known signaling pathway called Notch, which has previously been shown to help regulate stem cell differentiation.
"Ketone bodies are one of the first examples of how a metabolite instructs stem cell fate in the intestine," says Omer Yilmaz, the Eisen and Chang Career Development Associate Professor of Biology and a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. "These ketone bodies, which are normally thought to play a critical role in energy maintenance during times of nutritional stress, engage the Notch pathway to enhance stem cell function. Changes in ketone body levels in different nutritional states or diets enable stem cells to adapt to different physiologies."
Comment: There is an incredible amount of money to be made keeping people in the dark about what helps keep them healthy, and what doesn't. While the vast majority of healthcare workers, academics and bureaucrats probably mean well and are the unwitting tools of corporate interests and their insidious groupthink, it remains for each of us to do our own thinking and research on a subject that most individuals seem willing to abdicate responsibility for.
As the author mentioned, "hardly a month goes by without a new double-blind trial, epidemiological study or meta-analysis in the medico-scientific journals demonstrating beyond doubt that diabetes and a range of other diseases are directly and principally attributable to the misguided guidelines recommending that carbohydrates should be the staple diet."
And with that, see this small sample of the research that's been coming out on this now very rancorous topic: