“We cannot solve

problems by using the

same kind of thinking,

we used when we

created them.”

- Albert Einstein

Dr. Jeff Volek, a registered dietitian and Human Sciences professor at Ohio State University, has been a leader in low carb research for over 15 years. As an athlete himself, he took an early interest in sports nutrition to optimize his own performance. In the early 90s Jeff began to experiment with a low carb diet. Having studied dietetics in college, the expectation was that he would feel awful and quickly move on to other nutrition strategies. To his complete surprise, the opposite happened. He was leaner, had more energy, and felt less bloated.

Fascinated by how he was feeling, an experiment that was intended to be short lived quickly sparked an obsession with understanding the science behind low carb diets. Today, his scholarly work includes over 300 peer- reviewed scientific papers, 5 published books (two authored with Stephen Phinney, MD, PhD), and hundreds of lectures covering low carb research.  

Dr. Volek and Dr. Phinney

have done a large part of the

hardcore research on low-

carb dieting that is in the

medical literature today.

- Michael Eades, MD

Low carb diets have a somewhat controversial history in the United States. With a few notable exceptions, with virtually no rigorous research was done on low-carbohydrate diets from the early 70s to the late 90s, despite positive work done the preceding two decades.“Every woman knows that carbohydrate is fattening,” as two British dietitians began a 1963 British Journal of Nutrition article. [1] That school of thought pretty much stopped in the 70s coinciding with the first dietary guidelines published in 1980 by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA). [2]  

For the first time the US government published its own hypothesis on the ideal American diet, which included avoiding fats, opting for lean meats and eating more carbohydrates in the form of whole grains, fruits and vegetables. This had a huge impact on the direction of nutrition research and any government policy that supported a low carb diet was halted indefinitely. The low fat paradigm was adopted by university programs across the nation and quickly became the leading perspective on nutrition. It wasn't until 2000 when a small group of researchers, including Dr. Jeff Volek, really started to investigate the low carb diet again. With almost two decades of consistent research, there are hundreds of studies that show the positive effects of a low carb diet on weight loss, management of insulin resistance and diabetes.

While research has failed to validate the low fat paradigm, there has been a burgeoning body of literature supporting the low-carb approach. Year after year, the science continues to support low carb diets, with studies now being done to show the benefits of a low carb diet on athletes and sports performance. What was once considered a fad diet, a strange theory or unorthodox hypothesis is now a transformative disease-fighting and performance- enhancing tool.  

To my surprise, in going low

carb I have never felt younger.

I have more energy, am less

hungry, and my tryglicerides

have never been lower, ever!

- J. Hoover, low carb fan

There are no formal definitions in the scientific or medical community on what constitutes a low carb diet. It can be defined in different ways based on a person's individual response. One definition is a carb level that allows a person to maintain normal blood sugar levels, which varies by individual. One person may be able to maintain good health on a level of carbs that is equal to 200 grams per day, while another person may be highly insulin resistant and need to consume 50 grams of carbs per day to maintain normal blood sugar levels and other markers of metabolic health. The level of carbohydrate one consumes needs to be personalized since people vary widely on how they respond to carbs.

There's no magic number that defines a low carb diet, but the primary objective is to control blood sugar and avoid other signs and symptoms of carbohydrate intolerance. 

The short answer is that pretty much everyone, regardless of their health or fitness goals, can adapt to a low carb diet and potentially benefit from it. If we look at human history, we've been eating a relatively low carb diet for the majority of our time on earth. It wasn't until the agricultural revolution at the turn of the 18th century when we started to see an increase of human exposure to carbs. Humans evolved to be able to maintain very good health on virtually no carbs. We're hardwired to process and burn fat for fuel in the face of very little carb availability.  

Being able to fuel all organs, including the brain, in the face of very little carbohydrate is a highly evolved and well conserved trait that all humans have, but it is put to sleep when a lot of carbohydrates are consumed. It reawakens when carbs are limited. Currently in the US, over half of us are prediabetic or diabetic, meaning those people are over-consuming carbs relative to their tolerance. These people in particular benefit the most or actually "need" to restrict carbs the most.  Chronically over-consuming carbs manifests in increased risk for heart disease, cancer and diabetes. On a day to day basis, spikes in blood sugar are often followed by a hypoglycemic episode or a crash. When blood sugar spikes and crashes it causes a very inconsistent fuel flow within the body that is associated with periods of fatigue or tiredness. This inconsistent source of fuel for the brain and other tissues is not beneficial for long-term health or steady energy levels throughout the day.

There are also very healthy people who are more insulin sensitive or carb tolerant and can maintain very good health with high carb diets, but they too can follow a low carb diet and still extract benefit from it.

There's no simple answer here. Everyone has to go on their own journey. One approach is to go full-on cold turkey and cut out the majority of carbs and enter into a state of nutritional ketosis. This approach optimizes the full spectrum of metabolic adaptations that includes minimizing carb oxidation and maximizing the body's ability to burn fat for fuel. This approach is not for everyone, but it does provide a place to start, because it represents the optimal flow of fat in the body and the most efficient state the body can be in to burn fat at a peak rate. You may find that you enjoy this state of nutritional ketosis so much that you prefer to stay there chronically and over long periods of time. 

While long-term ketosis is not necessary for everyone, it certainly is a safe and for some people a preferred state to be in. Otherwise, from ketosis you can carefully add carbs back into your diet to the point they don't manifest in signs of carbohydrate intolerance (e.g., weight gain, high blood sugar, high triglycerides, carb cravings, fatigue, etc.).  Within a person, the level of carbs can vary over time. Most people become more carb intolerant as they age, so you may be able to eat a couple hundred grams of carbs in your 20s. By the time you reach your mid-30s and beyond you may find that same level of carb intake results in you being pre- diabetic or even diabetic. It's inevitable that most people will need to adjust their carb intake as a function of age. Your level of activity can also play a role in the number of carbs you can tolerate. For example, you may not be able to tolerate the same level of carbs compared to a more active person. 

The number of carbs you personally need is a bit of a moving target that you'll consistently need to experiment with to find the level of carbs that works best for you. 

When transitioning to a low carb diet after having consistently eaten a lot of carbs, there are structural changes that need to take place in the body. There are a few common challenges people face during the time it takes the body to fully adapt to a low carb diet. The most common mistake people make is not consuming enough sodium. 

Most of us have been told that we need to get our sodium down because of the risk of increasing blood pressure, but current research on sodium is actually showing that moderate to high levels of sodium are associated with less morbidity and mortality, unless you get into really high levels over seven or eight grams per day. There's a special need for sodium on a low carb diet because the kidneys excrete more sodium and you need to compensate for that.  People experience side effects such as the Atkins flu, fainting or just being tired. Nine times out of ten, when they consume broth, bouillon, or some other source of sodium, these symptoms go away. Another common mistake people make is trying to restrict both carbs and fat. This is not a sustainable approach, because it causes people to over- consume protein.

When you're on a low carb diet, your body is switching over to burning primarily fat for fuel, so you actually need fat in your diet to provide that fuel. Fat also helps keep you full as the most satiating macronutrient. Monounsaturated and saturated fats are the preferred fats to consume on a low carb diet.  While Americans have historically been advised to choose lean meats, on a low carb diet you want to choose fatty meats because they give you the fat you need to fuel your body. These are common mistakes, because people are afraid of fat and they're also afraid of over-consuming sodium. You actually need both saturated fat and sodium to avoid the side effects and make a low carb diet work. Even when you get adequate sodium, the body still requires time to change its metabolic machinery to burn fat.

There are a lot of testimonials of real athletes achieving remarkable feats on low carb diets and now there's research to back it up. Low carb diets are very consistent with what we know about metabolism, physiology and biochemistry. From a basic science perspective, humans have evolved to prefer fat for fuel and that's why our bodies can store vast amounts of fat. On the other hand, our bodies can only store a couple thousand kilocalories of carbs, so when athletes fuel with carbs the body can't store them in appreciable amounts. The body will prioritize burning carbs, which impairs its ability to burn fat, so the more carbs you eat, the more your body becomes dependent on burning carbs and the less efficient you become at burning fat.

This is especially true for athletes, because they are pushing their bodies further and need at least several weeks in order to build up their body's ability to burn fat, a process called keto adaptation. This isn’t one single process. We're talking about changing a person's physiology in a very robust way. The exact time course for these adaptations hasn’t formally been studied, but the typical time frame for athletes is 3-4 weeks for fundamental adaptations to take place. Complete adaptation may take several months or even years.  The first week is going to feel awful for a lot of athletes if they try to maintain their usual level of training. Athletic performance can suffer initially, so it's recommended that athletes cut their exercise routines in half to give their body enough time to adapt and properly ease into the diet. After that, their performance gets back to normal and they can usually go beyond where they were prior to that.

Previous low carb research did not consider the necessary adaptation period, so experiments would put people on a low carb diet for 3-4 days and measure performance. When you look at athletes who have gone through the adaptation period, you see high levels of performance in comparison to the low performance measured in the first week.

Some athletes, despite being active into middle age, develop pre-diabetes partly because of their genetics, so we increasingly see middle-aged active people turn low carb to counteract their insulin resistance and to just feel better. Athletes will also go low carb for the improved body composition and relative ease of fat loss that occurs, which usually translates to improved performance. The body composition response to a low carb diet is important if you're an endurance athlete, because carrying around less weight improves your efficiency. We see this especially in cycling and running.

By losing body fat, you can see major improvements in performance. For people participating in ultra-endurance events that require high levels of exertion for multiple hours, it becomes very challenging to fuel with carbs, so it makes sense for the body to be in a state where it can maximally burn fat for these types of activities. We're also seeing strength and power athletes increasingly turn low carb, because fat is a cleaner burning fuel with less oxidative damage. Since there's less inflammation associated with burning fat, athletes say they're able to recover faster. Being able to lose body fat while maintaining functional tissue improves the power to weight ratio, which also results in improved performance.

It's sort of been an accepted idea that low carb diets cannot support high intensity workouts. This isn't entirely a fallacy because there is an established relationship between intensity of exercise and fuel use. As you go from low to moderate intensity exercise you will see fat oxidation increase in a pretty linear fashion. As you go from moderate to high intensity you increasingly rely more on carbs. You will still be able to burn fat at higher exercise intensities the more adapted you are, so you can certainly change this relationship. 

The longer you've been on a low-carb diet, the more you will be able to burn fat at higher exercise intensities, which has been tested in a lab. An average athlete eating a traditional high carb diet will peak in their fat burning at around 55-60 percent of V02 max. A comparable athlete who's the same body size, same caliber of athlete, but consuming a low carb diet, will peak in their fat burning closer to 70-75 percent V02 max. At any given exercise intensity you'll burn more fat if you're fat adapted, but even in the fat adapted athlete when you get up to 90% of V02 max and beyond, you're still going to rely much more on carbs. On a low carb diet, it's not like your carb sources and your glucose levels go to zero, your body still has carb stores that are available, so you can still access that high energy substrate in a low carb state.

According to our data, when we studied athletes who were keto-adapted for an average of almost 2 years, they actually maintained normal glycogen levels, similar to their high carb counterparts. This was completely surprising, because while we didn't think their glycogen levels would be 0, we thought they would be at least impaired to some extent. It was quite shocking that the glycogen levels at rest, post exercise and into recovery were exactly the same as the high carb group. It's not exactly clear how this is happening and there are metabolic explanations that need to be studied further. What it does show is that the body will adapt over time to preserve glycogen levels, so there are profound changes in the way the body manages its glycogen levels on very low carb intake.

Despite decades of research and the creation of a billion dollar sports drink industry, there has been little innovation with respect to formulation. Many current formulas still rely on sugars with an emphasis on quick energy. Sugar-based sports drinks are based on a simple concept - they rescue blood sugar during a crash. Notably, sugar based sports nutrition products encourage the body to rely on carbohydrates for energy while suppressing the use of fat for fuel. The bottom line is that existing sports drinks are not the most effective way to enhance performance and promote health.

A smart carbohydrate would provide a slower release and use of carbohydrate as fuel to avoid the spike and crash phenomena and extend maintenance of blood glucose, and a low insulin impact allows increased breakdown and utilization of fat. SuperStarch® represents an innovative solution that overcomes the negative qualities of existing carbohydrate sport drinks and is the energy solution for athletes on a low carb diet. The development of SuperStarch® evolved from an innovative product discovery of a food that could provide up to ten hours of energy (as glucose) for children with Glycogen Storage Disease, and for Diabetics who frequently experience episodes of low blood sugar during the night.

The patented and proprietary method for making the SuperStarch® involves a hydrothermal (heat- moisture) treatment process to the native starch which significantly alters the metabolism of the carbohydrate in the body.   SuperStarch® is not a sugar or fiber. Chemically, it is a complex carbohydrate or starch that is completely absorbed as energy, but doesn’t spike blood sugar or blood insulin making it a carbohydrate that’s compatible with a low-carb diet.

Click here for study published in scientific journal Nutrition, Vol 27, Issue 6

UCAN’s powdered drink mixes are the only products powered by SuperStarch® and can be used by athletes and individuals on a low carb diet in multiple ways:

1. Use UCAN Energy Powders 30 minutes prior to long and intense workouts to sustain your energy without blocking your ability to burn fat.

2. Mix Plain UCAN into a post-workout protein shake, especially after a hard session, to avoid a post workout crash and replenish your glycogen without blocking your ability to burn fat.

3. In the beginning of the diet when you might suffer from the “low carb flu” and carb/sugar cravings, have a scoop of UCAN between meals to help maintain your blood sugar and improve compliance with the diet, or try a serving of Hydrate to get sodium and additional electrolytes without any carbs/sugar.

SAVE 20% on your first order!

CODE: UCANLOWCARB

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