Who should follow the advice here?
A social-media discussion (1) pointed out a gap on this site to me, one I’d like to close on the spot:
The gist of it was:
What works for you can be fatal for others. You shouldn’t do anything without consulting a doctor, and certainly not follow some random advice from the internet.
And I agree with that statement fairly comprehensively - with one caveat:
Medical approval doesn’t always help. After all, nobody consults a doctor about whether they should drink Cola - or they simply ignore the answer, even though there isn’t a single rational reason to consider it healthy. And as if I’d seen it coming, I’ve already written a fitting article about it: Nobody wants to take your pizza away (Spoiler: …and that’s exactly the problem)
Experiments are possible in any case, and I advise no one against seeking medical recommendations. Strictly speaking, I don’t give advice at all (2): Neither for the experiment, nor for avoiding it. I merely inform about the options and the consequences of a dietary change, and about my own findings.
Disclaimer for butterbei.de
Nothing on butterbei.de contains advice on how you should change your own diet. I don’t sell anything on this site. I don’t (at least for now) submit to the algorithmic platforms in order to generate or optimise traffic.
Every page here contains (top right) a “Notice” that links to the About page, which states this explicitly once more.
I use this article as an internal collection of links that may help with the order of exploration. I’m creating it in early July 2026 and intend to add to it occasionally - but it’s certainly not kept up to date day by day. That means there are probably newer articles not yet listed here. On top of that, this article doesn’t link to every article published so far, either.
Medical advice and dietary guidelines
What I consider important - even before seeking medical advice: Anyone who knows the available options has a better chance of making the right decisions, even if that option is unknown to the doctor, or if the suggestion would mean too much work for them: the typical doctor’s appointment is under time pressure, and there currently aren’t enough resources for large-scale nutritional counselling. But even where it does exist, the ketogenic option often isn’t considered; instead “more of the same” is recommended - in Germany that means the DGE guidelines (even though these explicitly apply only to healthy people).
Medical training contains a minimal amount of information about the effects of nutrition, and doesn’t necessarily go beyond a reference to the classic dietary guidelines (“avoid fat”, or more recently “avoid saturated fat”).
On top of that
- the DGE guidelines explicitly apply exclusively to healthy people between 18 and 65
- “health” is not prioritised in the guidelines
- the scientific foundations cited by the DGE are explicitly optimisation mathematics, not nutritional science
- the most natural of metabolic processes, ketosis - the state we are all born into and remain in until we’re weaned - is described as a “derailment” in the DGE “Fat Guideline”
- the Planetary Health Diet is cited by the DGE for an aspect the report explicitly did not examine: the “health of the planet”
- even established nutritional physicians don’t necessarily recommend a ketogenic diet, simply because they don’t trust their patients to stick with it. And that’s despite the fact that many of those affected would love to take the reins themselves.
Current research
It always takes a while for current research to actually arrive in medicine as a treatment option - and even then:
- Research into
lucrative medications
is considerably more popular than research into
nutrition - especially when it concerns natural foods rather than highly
processed industrial products
- Currently without its own article, but a logical continuation of the point: there are medications that successfully lower cholesterol and blood sugar. There are no medications that lower insulin levels - yet with the right diet it’s trivial to lower insulin and blood sugar at the same time
- Nutritional research has taken quite a few shortcuts that the rest of science deliberately avoids - particularly with regard to the prevailing observational studies and their significance (3)
- There’s a lot of inertia pushing to keep the existing guidelines, even though existing research has long shown that the current guidelines aren’t necessarily beneficial, and that the way they came about was in part corrupt or flawed.
- Current research into ketogenic nutrition is happening in so many fields that it’s pointless to list it all here. You’ll find a selection here. The basis for this research is that there are already many case reports of success stories. Patients who would like some agency in their own treatment should have the chance to know about it.
Changing your diet is low-risk and reversible
- This site was built around the
metabolism simulator,
which can demonstrate the effects of various foods on the metabolism.
- The metabolism simulator can easily be adapted to your own metabolism.
- Since then, a protein calculator (for visualising protein supply - especially with essential amino acids) and an absorption calculator for magnesium from wheat have joined it.
- No article yet: a one-month low-carb self-experiment without Cola is hardly going to have a bigger impact on your personal risk than a lifetime of a high-carb diet does. Especially since, despite the dietary guidelines, the non-communicable diseases have reached epidemic proportions.
- Science lives on the refutation of hypotheses. A refuted hypothesis beats even a randomised trial. And that can perfectly well be tested or refuted in a self-experiment.
- The dietary guidelines only know one direction, and are happy to ignore the alternative tools that exist.
Who might experiment?
Let me repeat myself for a start: this is not advice, but information about existing options! (4)
I myself simply experimented with a ketogenic diet out of intellectual curiosity, and I’m so convinced by the result that I’ve never actually ended my planned test month (September 2012) so far (I’m writing this in July 2026, with an update in August). So there are no preconditions. Sure, all of my health markers (blood tests) changed for the better, but my main reason for sticking with it was clearly the mental focus and the clarity that came with ketosis.
Only later did I discover that a fibre-free diet brought me tangible health improvements, and in doing so I found that I’m no unicorn, but rather that fibre is rightly not considered essential.
The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ernährung - German Nutritional Society, a largely government funded NGO, designated as appointed authority on nutritional matters may serve as a baseline: its dietary guidelines are expressly addressed to healthy people between 18 and 65 who eat a mixed diet, and even the criteria and scientific foundations it names itself are worth a second look: anyone who isn’t healthy, or who finds those criteria as unappealing as I do, may well want to draw their own conclusions from that.
Since engaging with the current science and departing from the dietary guidelines myself, I’ve come across more and more non-communicable diseases that seemingly correlate with the increasingly carbohydrate-heavy diet:
- Diabetes, type 1
- Diabetes, type 2
- High blood pressure (article in preparation, currently planned as chapter 5 of the insulin series)
- Autoimmune diseases, digestive-tract disorders, mental illnesses (articles in preparation, but a list of current research already exists)
- Cancer (article in preparation. Worth highlighting are the works of Dr. Thomas Seyfried (5))
- Gallstones
- Now and then I also refer to Die Ernährungsdocs from German television, or their podcast - currently to episodes on mental illness and multiple sclerosis.
And even for mostly healthy people there’s something here:
Why should I even look into this?
Quite simply: anyone who takes a closer look at human metabolism will notice that it behaves rather differently than is commonly taught:
- Good carbs - bad carbs
- How many carbohydrates does a human need per day?
- Which fuel does the body prefer?
- Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight has to either go on a starvation diet and count calories (spoiler: hardly helps), or understand how insulin works. (Spoiler: with a low insulin level, counting calories is unnecessary, and hunger is the first feeling that usually stops in ketosis. That’s what makes losing weight easy.)
- Eating habits have changed over time - but never as fast and as sweepingly as in the last 100-200 years. And there’s a lot to observe there - enough for a whole series of articles (only the prelude is linked here).
