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Carb Your Enthusiasm

If you open a medical textbook and look up "Essential Nutrients"—the specific compounds humans must eat to avoid death—you will find a list of Essential Amino Acids (Protein). You will find a list of Essential Fatty Acids (Fat).

You will not find a single "Essential Carbohydrate."


This controversially contradicts everything we are told about "balanced diets," but the biochemistry is indisputable. While your body uses glucose, it does not need to eat glucose.

The Distinction: Requirement vs. Synthesis

To survive, the human body has specific hardware requirements.

  • Essential Amino Acids: There are 9 amino acids (like Leucine and Tryptophan) your body cannot make. If you don't eat them, your muscles waste away and you die.

  • Essential Fatty Acids: There are fats (like Omega-3 and Omega-6) your body cannot create. If you don't eat them, your cells fail.


Carbohydrates do not make this list. You could theoretically live the rest of your life without eating a single gram of sugar or starch, and your blood sugar would remain perfectly normal.

The Magic Trick: Gluconeogenesis

How is this possible if the brain runs on glucose?

As I mentioned in a previous post, the answer lies a metabolic pathway called Gluconeogenesis (literally: "making new sugar").

When dietary carbohydrates drop to near zero, the liver acts as a biological transformer. It takes non-carbohydrate sources and converts them into glucose to feed the few cells (like red blood cells and parts of the brain) that absolutely require it.

  1. From Fat: It strips the "Glycerol" backbone off of triglycerides.

  2. From Protein: It recycles "Glucogenic Amino Acids" (like Alanine) from the protein you eat.

  3. From Waste: It recycles Lactate produced by your muscles.

The Survival Mechanism

This isn't a "hack" or a backup generator; it is a primary survival system. If humans required dietary carbohydrates to survive, we would have gone extinct during the first heavy winter or ice age when plants were buried under snow.


The Inuit populations of the Arctic lived for centuries on a diet of almost exclusively seal meat, whale blubber, and fish—effectively zero carbohydrates—without developing scurvy or hypoglycemia.

The "Recommended" Confusion

You might see government guidelines (RDA - Recommended Daily Allowance) suggesting 130g of carbs per day. It is important to read the fine print. This is not a biological requirement for survival; it is an estimate based on the brain's glucose usage in a person who is not in ketosis.

Once you are keto-adapted, the brain switches to running 75% on ketones, drastically reducing the demand for glucose, which the liver then easily covers.

You need fuel. You need building blocks. You do not need bread.

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Location: Halifax Regional Municipality, NS, Canada

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