Autophagy & Fasting: How to Use the Glucose Ketone Index (GKI) for Therapeutic Health Benefits

This podcast episode delves into the powerful combination of autophagy, fasting, and a ketogenic diet for improving severe health conditions like insulin resistance, diabetes, and cancer. Dr. Ekberg introduces the Glucose Ketone Index (GKI), a metric developed in research involving Thomas Seyfried, which measures the ratio of glucose to ketones in the blood. The core idea is that by reducing glucose and increasing ketones, the body enters a state of 'self-eating' (autophagy), where it efficiently recycles cellular debris, pathogens, and even cancer cells, which primarily rely on glucose for fuel (the Warburg effect). The GKI provides a quantifiable way to determine if one is in a therapeutic zone for these benefits.

The episode explains the mechanics of autophagy, highlighting its role in anti-aging, reducing cancer risk, combating neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, improving immune function, detoxification, and mitochondrial repair. It details how to calculate the GKI by dividing glucose (converted to millimoles if necessary) by ketones (typically already in millimoles). Different GKI ranges are presented, correlating with varying levels of ketosis and therapeutic benefits: a GKI over 9 indicates no significant ketosis, 6-9 for low ketosis and potential weight loss, 3-6 for medium ketosis and reversal of type 2 diabetes/insulin resistance, 1.5-3 for high ketosis beneficial for Alzheimer's/Parkinson's/TBI, and the optimal therapeutic zone for maximum autophagy and tumor breakdown being 0.7-1.5.

Dr. Ekberg shares his personal experience with a multi-day water fast, tracking his GKI to illustrate how the body transitions into these therapeutic zones. He notes that after 63 hours of fasting (with some fat in coffee), his GKI reached 1.4, entering the optimal range. He emphasizes that while calorie restriction showed benefits in mice studies, a ketogenic diet in humans often leads to natural calorie restriction due to increased satiety, achieving similar benefits without explicit calorie counting. The speaker also highlights the difference between mice and human responses to ketogenic diets and calorie restriction.

Practical advice for safely achieving and sustaining therapeutic autophagy includes gradually progressing through fasting protocols (intermittent fasting, OMAD, 36-42 hour fasts, then 3-5 day fasts), using glucose and ketone meters to monitor GKI, and maintaining a low-protein, high-fat diet. He cautions against going into long fasts without prior experience or medical supervision, and advises stopping a fast if feeling genuinely unwell. The key to sustaining autophagy, even while eating, is to keep protein intake low (less than 20 grams) as protein can halt the self-eating process, which relies on the scarcity of external protein for cellular recycling.

"Autophagy means self eating so when you're not adding a lot of food when you're not putting a lot of new nutrients into the body for a period of time then the body has to get better at using the nutrients that are already there and one of the best methods of doing that is to get really really good at cleaning house."

"cancer cells are different they rely primarily on glucose so if you cut your glucose way way way way back so that your body starts relying on more ketones then you're essentially starving the cancer cells selectively and this was known as the Warburg effect."

"they developed an index called the GKI index glucose ketone index which is basically just a ratio between these two and they found that once they get the ketones and the glucose about equal amounts in the blood as measured by milli moles then they managed controlled and even reversed the growth of the tumors."

"you divide your regular number by 18 and then you get millimoles if you live in the rest of the world then you might already get your glucose as millimoles ketones are typically measured in millions already so you just divide one by the other."

"any ratio over 9 means that you are not in ketosis you do not have a significant amount of ketones so you're not really getting any of the therapeutic benefits of ketosis orotava g."

"between 1.5 and 3 you have a high level of ketosis and now you're getting therapeutic benefits from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and traumatic brain injury."

"the maximum authophagy the optimal therapeutic zone when your body will start breaking down all kinds of things including probably brain tumors is between 0.7 to 1.5."

"protein is the main thing that stops autophagy because the protein is the resource that the body is looking for and when it the protein is scarce when you're not adding it that's when the body goes scavenging and cleaning up inside the body."

"a ketogenic diet doesn't mean ketogenic unless you can measure and you have actual ketone bodies in your bloodstream."

"I would not recommend that you go more than three days or a lot more than three days I think three to five is fine as long as you've done all this gradual trial but if you're gonna go longer if you're not experienced I would strongly recommend that you're under a doctor's supervision."