For years medical experts have encouraged people to eat low fat, high carb diets. Unfortunately, that is doing nothing but harming our health. With record numbers of diabetes, obesity, and dementia, eating a diet that’s high in glucose isn’t the way to go. Telling people to eat food that results in more elevated blood sugar and body weight isn’t the way to go — eating this way can lead to stroke and heart disease, which is precisely what we are trying to prevent. If you’re looking for a way to improve your health and fight against heart disease and stroke, the Body Reboot book discusses how a high fat, low carb diet can life changing.

Reducing insulin

Dr. Bret Sher argues that reducing insulin (aka carbs) and instead, eating more meals high in fat can reduce inflammation, slow the growth of cancer cells, and prevent heart disease!

Insulin is a hormone naturally secreted by the pancreas to help regulate blood sugar levels. Everything we eat (except possibly for 100% fat meals) causes insulin to rise. That is normal physiology. The problem occurs when our bodies become resistant to the effects of insulin, thus requiring our pancreas to make more and more and more insulin.

The problem? Insulin promotes fat storage, increase inflammation and oxidation, and can even help fuel the growth of cancer cells. Therefore, the healthiest approach is one which reduced the level of insulin to the lowest possible levels. As it happens, a Low-carb High-fat or ketogenic lifestyle (LCHF/Keto lifestyle) dramatically improves your body’s sensitivity to insulin, reduces the amount of insulin secreted, and it allows your body to naturally use your fat stores for what they are designed for: Break them down into energy! Once we see that we need to fight chronic elevations of insulin, it becomes obvious why a low-fat diet is harmful, and why a low carb diet is the true path to health.

A study by Cardiovascular Diabetology in 2018 found that by implementing a high fat, low carb diet, people who had a high risk for heart disease experienced a decrease in their blood pressure and cholesterol.

Background

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a leading cause of death among adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D). We recently reported that glycemic control in patients with T2D can be significantly improved through a continuous care intervention (CCI) including nutritional ketosis. The purpose of this study was to examine CVD risk factors in this cohort.

Methods

We investigated CVD risk factors in patients with T2D who participated in a 1 year open label, non-randomized, controlled study. The CCI group (n = 262) received treatment from a health coach and medical provider. A usual care (UC) group (n = 87) was independently recruited to track customary T2D progression. Circulating biomarkers of cholesterol metabolism and inflammation, blood pressure (BP), carotid intima media thickness (cIMT), multi-factorial risk scores and medication use were examined. A significance level of P < 0.0019 ensured two-tailed significance at the 5% level when Bonferroni adjusted for multiple comparisons.

Conclusion

A continuous care treatment including nutritional ketosis in patients with T2D improved most biomarkers of CVD risk after 1 year. The increase in LDL-cholesterol appeared limited to the large LDL subfraction. LDL particle size increased, total LDL-P and ApoB were unchanged, and inflammation and blood pressure decreased.

Eating fat to improve cholesterol

To further argue that a ketogenic diet can fight against stroke and heart disease Dr. Bret Sher says that by eating fat you can improve cholesterol, which the study we just discussed (the Cardiovascular Diabetology study) also found was the case.

Wait, what? Eating fat can improve my cholesterol? Sounds crazy, right? That goes against everything we have heard from the medical establishment. Notice I said “cholesterol.” I didn’t say the “bad” low density lipoprotein (LDL), I didn’t say the “good” high density lipoprotein (HDL), or any one specific type of cholesterol. We have over emphasized the solitary variable of LDL for too long. Total cholesterol to HDL ratio, Triglyceride to HDL ratio, lipoprotein size and density, insulin sensitivity, and other metabolic measures are more powerful predictors of cardiovascular health than just LDL.

Once again, we see that all these markers improve with a Low Carb High Fat (LCHF) lifestyle. The medical establishment needs to realize that we are more complicated than one lab value. The key is to look at the whole picture, and this picture dramatically improves with a LCHF lifestyle.

Eating low carb, high fat to regenerate cells

Want to know how else a high-fat diet can keep heart disease away? Dr. Bret Sher says a diet that’s high in fat can regenerate cells and thus, keep you younger and healthier. In other words, kick diseases like Alzheimer’s disease to the curb!

Autopha-What? In medicine we like using fancy words to make us look smart. Autophagy is a big word to describe cellular housekeeping. When we have low enough intake of carbs and protein, or when we do intermittent fasts, our bodies can take care of their “to do” lists.  That list includes breaking down weak or damaged cells, recycling the good parts and discarding the rest, and slowing down the processes that can lead to abnormal cell growth (i.e. excess proteins in Alzheimer’s disease, abnormal cancer cells etc.).

Admittedly, long term outcome studies evaluating fasting or LCHF and cancer or dementia risk have not been done. But, on the flip side, drug trials to prevent the same are showing no benefit despite hundreds of millions of dollars invested. If you asked me (which you sort of did since you are reading my article), I’d vote for autophagy as a preventative strategy any day. It makes good physiologic sense, and it is so easy to achieve.

Treating metabolic syndrome

In November 2017, a study by Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews indicating that a keto diet is excellent at regulating diseases such as diabetes. The good news that no exercise is required, although exercise can certainly help.

Abstract

A worsening epidemic of diabetes and its precursor, metabolic syndrome (MetS) is engulfing America. A healthy individual, with proper glucose regulation has an ability to switch between burning fat and carbohydrates. It has been suggested that signaling errors within this homeostatic system, characterized by impaired switching of substrate oxidation from glucose to fat in response to insulin, can contribute to the etiology of metabolic syndrome and occurs before the development of type II diabetes.

Glucose regulation with restored insulin sensitivity facilitated through clinically regulated, benign dietary ketosis (BDK), may significantly reduce, regulate and reverse the adverse pathologies common to MetS and obesity. The study assessed if prolonged maintenance of induced and controlled physiological, dietary ketosis, would reverse pathological processes induced by MetS including a reduction in fasting triglycerides, BMI (body mass index) and body fat mass (BFM), weight, a significant decrease and/or normalization of hemoglobin A1c (HgA1c) and an increase in resting metabolic rate (RMR) and blood ketones. A group of 30 adults, previously diagnosed with MetS by their primary care physician, were randomly prescribed to one of three groups: a sustained ketogenic diet with no exercise, standard American diet (SAD) with no exercise or SAD with 3-5 days per week of exercise (30 min.). The results demonstrated that the change over time from week 0 to week 10 was significant (p = 0.001) in the ketogenic group for weight, body fat percentage, BMI, HgA1c and ketones. All variables for the ketogenic group out-performed those of the exercise and non-exercise groups, with five of the seven demonstrating statistical significance.

Bulletproof further explains the Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews below:

Ketosis reverses metabolic syndrome pathologies

The study shows that for someone with MetS, the body can’t convert glucose to fat in response to insulin in the way that it should. However, if glucose is regulated and insulin sensitivity is restored to homeostasis through dietary ketosis, the adverse pathologies reverse. A keto diet also leads to a reduction in fasting triglycerides, BMI, body fat mass, and weight, while HgA1c (the indicator for diabetes) normalizes. In related news, another recent study found that weight loss in and of itself, without the use of medication, reversed diabetes.

Is Keto the right lifestyle for you? It just may be. To learn more about keto, simply help us cover shipping and receive the Body Reboot book free.

Sources: Dr. Bret Sher, Cardiovascular Diabetology 2018, Science Direct: Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews, November 2017, Bulletproof