In a new study, researchers found that a ketogenic diet can lead to several flu-like symptoms within the first few weeks on the diet.
These symptoms peak in the first 7 days and dwindle after four weeks and range in severity, as reported by users on social media.
Common symptoms include flu fatigue, nausea, dizziness, decreased energy, feeling faint and heartbeat alterations.
The research was conducted by a team at the University of Tasmania in Australia.
The effectiveness of the keto diet has only been established for intractable epilepsy, but despite this, a ketogenic diet is often self-administered for weight loss, cognitive and memory enhancement, type II diabetes or cancer.
A commonly discussed side effect of this diet is the so-called “keto flu”, a cluster of transient symptoms that occur within the first few weeks on the diet.
To better understand how these symptoms evolve, the team identified 43 online forums referring to “keto flu” and manually gathered personal experiences of 101 people describing symptoms, severity and time course.
The team found reports of headache, difficulty concentrating and gastrointestinal discomfort, following the initiation of a keto diet.
Additionally, they reveal further common symptoms, such as flu, fatigue, nausea, dizziness, decreased energy, feeling faint and heartbeat alterations.
Consumers often experienced more than one symptom, with differing degrees of severity.
But there is also good news for people experiencing such a “keto flu”. The results of this study highlight the sudden onset of symptoms, peaking in the first and dwindling after four weeks.
Once symptoms manifested, most of them resolved within little more than two weeks.
Online forum user conversations were generally supportive, sharing remedies to others based on popular beliefs, such as maintaining hydration and correcting electrolyte imbalances.
The results of this study were limited to conversation threads in online forums and therefore lack of any confirmatory evidence that ketone levels were raised.
Likewise, experiences of online forum users may not be representative of the larger pool of individuals on a keto diet.
Nevertheless, the symptom patterns yielded may indicate key lines of questioning for future survey-based approaches.
The lead author of the study is Dr. Emmanuelle Bostock of the Menzies Institute for Medical Research.
The study is published in Frontiers in Nutrition.
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