Named the dangers of variations on the keto diet

A new study has found that regular consumption of a low-carb, high-fat diet has been associated with increased levels of LDL cholesterol – or “bad” cholesterol – and an increased risk of heart disease, according to Vancouver-based study lead author Dr. Julia Yatan. (Canada).

“This study is an important contribution to the scientific literature and suggests that the harms outweigh the benefits,” said Christopher Gardner, a professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center who led clinical trials of the keto diet.

“Elevated LDL cholesterol should not be discounted as just a minor side effect of the VLCD (very low calorie diet) or ketogenic diet,” Gardner said, pointing out the higher risk of cardiovascular events in people with higher blood ketones, according to compared to those on a more standard diet.

According to CNN, the study identified a low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) diet as 45% of total daily calories from fat and 25% from carbohydrates. The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, was presented at the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Meeting in conjunction with the World Congress of Cardiology.

“Our study was justified by the fact that in our cardiovascular disease prevention clinic we will be seeing patients with severe hypercholesterolemia on this diet,” says Dr. Yatan.

Hypercholesterolemia, or high cholesterol, increases a person’s risk of having a heart attack or other adverse cardiovascular events, CNN explains.

“It got us thinking about the relationship between these low-carb, high-fat diets, lipid levels, and cardiovascular disease. And so, despite this, there is a limited amount of data on these relationships,” said Dr. Yatan.

The researchers compared the diets of 305 people on the LCHF diet with about 1,200 people on the standard diet, using health information from the UK Biobank, which has been tracking people for at least a decade.

Researchers found that people on the LCHF diet had higher levels of low-density lipoproteins, also known as LDL, cholesterol, and apolipoprotein B. Apolipoprotein B is a protein that coats LDL cholesterol proteins and can predict heart disease better than elevated levels. LDL cholesterol.

The researchers also noticed that the total fat intake of the LCHF diet participants was higher in saturated fat and twice the intake of animal sources (33%) compared to that of the control group (16%).

“After an average of 11.8 years of follow-up — and after adjusting for other heart disease risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and smoking — people on the LCHF diet had a risk of several major cardiovascular events, such as blockages in an artery that needed to be opened with stenting procedures, heart attack, stroke, and peripheral arterial disease,” the researchers found.

The researchers said in a press release that their study “can only show an association between diet and an increased risk of serious cardiac events, and not a causal relationship” as it was an observational study, but their findings merit further study, “especially when around 1 out of 5 Americans report being on a low-carb, keto-like, or full keto diet.”

Dr. Yatan emphasizes that the study’s limitations included measurement errors that come with self-assessment of dietary intake, the study’s small sample size, and the fact that the majority of participants were British and did not include other ethnic groups.

The study also looked at the longitudinal effect of dieting, while most people on a keto-like diet tend to do it intermittently for shorter periods of time.

The majority of the participants – 73% – were women, which Dr. Yatan says is “quite interesting to observe, but it also confirms the existing literature that women in general tend to diet more, tend to be more interested in changing their lifestyle.” .

Dr. David Katz, a lifestyle medicine specialist who was not involved in the study, said that “there are various ways to formulate a diet with LCHF, and it is very unlikely that they all have the same effect on serum lipids or heart attacks.”

However, he added, “That the LCHF diet is associated with side effects in this study is a reality check for those who follow such diets just because they are in vogue.”

Most health experts say the trendy keto diet, which bans carbs to force your body to burn fat for fuel, excludes healthy foods like fruits, beans and legumes, as well as whole grains. On a keto diet, you limit your carbohydrate intake to just 20-50 per day – the lower the better. To put this into perspective, a medium-sized banana or apple contains about 27 carbs, a daily value.

“The food groups that need to be eliminated to achieve ketosis are the main sources of fiber in the diet, as well as many important nutrients, phytochemicals, and antioxidants. This is of concern to many healthcare professionals who consider VLCD or the ketogenic diet to be detrimental to long-term health,” notes Dr. Gardner.

As CNN explains, keto is short for ketosis, the metabolic state that occurs when your liver starts using stored fat to produce ketones for energy. The liver is programmed to do this when your body loses access to its preferred fuel – carbohydrates – and thinks it’s starving. The keto diet has been around since the 1920s, when a doctor stumbled upon it as a way to combat seizures in children with epilepsy who were resistant to other treatments.

Low carb diets like keto rely heavily on fat to keep you full. At least 70% of the keto diet will be fat; some say it’s more like 90%. While you can get all of this fat from healthy unsaturated fats like avocados, tofu, nuts, seeds, and olive oil, saturated fats, like lard, butter and coconut oil, as well as whole grain milk, cheese, and mayonnaise, are also allowed in the diet. Eating lots of foods high in saturated fat increases the body’s production of LDL cholesterol, which can build up inside the arteries and restrict blood flow to the heart and brain.