14 DAY TRIAL // The latest diet fad to take the world by storm is something called KEN, or the Ketogenic Enteral Nutrition diet. Initially recommended for epilepsy sufferers, it is now being used to shed weight because it forces the body to go into controlled starvation mode.
In the UK, it's pushed by one of the most reputed gastroenterologists at the NHS Homerton University Hospital in London, Dr. Ray Shidrawi, who believes it could hold the key for the obesity epidemic, the Daily Mail informs.
The KEN is made of 10-day cycles, alternated with 10 days of healthy eating under a specialist's counseling.
During one such KEN cycle, dieters wear a pump at all times, which pushes a patented formula straight into their stomach, through a tube that goes in the nostril and down to the stomach.
They are only allowed to disconnect the pump for one hour a day, to bathe. They are not supposed to eat anything while on the formula, but they may drink water or sugarless tea and coffee.
The formula sends the body into controlled starvation mode, in which it burns its own fat to survive. Muscle mass and organs are not affected in any way, it is being said.
Dr. Shidrawi says the diet is both accessible and easy to stick with, because the formula also makes the feeling of hunger go away within 48 hours. This way, dieters will only have to face cravings, which are strictly forbidden.
“First, you don’t feel hungry. Second, your body starts to burn fat stores at a huge rate. When the diet is administered steadily over 24 hours, the body remains in a fat-burning mode,” he explains in an interview with the Mail.
“The heavier you are, the more weight you lose, so patients shed, on average, between four to nine per cent of total body weight in ten days,” he adds.
What's even better, energy levels will still be up, the only side effect of KEN being severe constipation, brought on by the complete absence of fibers.
To counter that, laxative drugs are prescribed.
KEN is, of course, criticized for being too drastic a fad to actually have results in the long run. It doesn't encourage a healthy lifestyle and it certainly doesn't address the issues that, in many cases, lead to overeating – namely, the dieters' relationship with food.
Dr. Shidrawi though, says that the diet is safe and, as he puts it in not so many words, considerably much better than no diet at all.
“Early humans all lived on a ketogenic (fat burning) diet of meat and fat. Of course, we couldn’t put someone on a diet like this for weeks on end, but for ten days it is safe and improves health,” he says.
“If diets worked, if healthy food worked, we wouldn’t have obesity. People try and fail, so what do we do, look at obesity and just let that happen? I will not do that,” he concludes.
You can see more on this diet here.