Health Checks for the Ketogenic Diet

There are several Health Risks of the Ketogenic Diet, so unlike other diets, health tests and monitoring are important. Note that a ketogenic diet should be under medical supervision, which includes this monitoring.

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1 Basic Monitoring

• Ketone Testing. To know if you are on a ketogenic diet or not, you will need to check your ketone levels.
  • Daily Blood Ketone Testing. The levels of Blood Ketones should be checked each day.
  • Urine Ketone Levels. In addition to checking Blood Ketones, it is fairly cheap and simple to check urine ketone levels. This is not as accurate or reliable as blood testing, but it can be performed more frequently, so you get a sense of how your ketone levels change to the day.
• Blood Glucose. Blood glucose should be monitored every 6–8 hours during the first few days of the diet.
• Blood in the Urine. Because of the risk of kidney stones, urine should be checked for trace levels of blood at least weekly. It can be done with Multistix or the cheaper Phinex Multistix equivalent. These strips check for 10 different things, including trace blood, Ketone levels, hydration status and urine acidity.
• Blood lipid levels. Cholesterol and triglyceride levels should be checked before starting the diet, and every few months.
• Blood selenium levels should be checked every three months, though this may not be frequent enough.

2 Recommended Laboratory Tests

The following tests are recommended for children starting the ketogenic diet for epilepsy. Details of these tests are outside the scope of this article.

• Complete blood count with platelets.
• Electrolytes, including serum bicarbonate, total protein, calcium, zinc, selenium, magnesium and phosphate.
• Serum liver and kidney test (including albumen, AST, ALT, blood urea nitrogen creatinine)
• Fasting lipid profile.
• Serum acylcarnitine profile.
• Urinalysis.
• Urine calcium and creatinine.
• Urine organic salts.
• Serum amino acids.