The doctor’s opinion is always essential. Clinical studies do not at all show that very low carbohydrate diets are more effective, in the long term than other approaches, for example in weight reduction.
We often hear about the ketogenic diet: I would like to know what the characteristics of this diet are and if it can offer any benefits to those who, like me, are affected by coronary heart disease. I also suffer from dyslipidemia.
The essential premise, before an answer, is that your doctor must tell you if, in the specific case, this diet can be indicated or not and I explain the reasons in a few lines below. I would like to remind you that the doctor’s opinion is always essential to undertaking a diet therapeutic path, because only those who know the patient’s clinical picture, lifestyle, and possible therapy can indicate which is the best treatment. Ketogenic diets (or “keto”) are born for other reasons: they are in fact able to reduce the frequency of seizures in individuals with drug-resistant epilepsy and therefore in these cases they are indicated, but only after no results have been obtained with adequate drug therapy. They are now very much in vogue, even too much, for weight reduction, although clinical studies do not at all show that very low carbohydrate diets are more effective, in the long term than other approaches. These diets are also capable of lowering blood sugar levels, although this effect is typically only momentary and tends to decrease over time.
Raise your cholesterol
But alongside some advantages, such as those mentioned above, diets of this type also have several disadvantages, especially for cardiovascular diseases. For example, they can increase LDL cholesterol values, sometimes dramatically, and it is the type of cholesterol that we should instead try to keep at very low values. Pregnant women (probably not your case) who follow such diets are more likely to have children with neural tube defects, even if they take the necessary folic acid supplements. Additionally, these diets can increase the risk of chronic disease(including ischemic heart disease), not so much because they are “ketogenic” (that is, because they produce ketone bodies), but because to obtain a diet low in carbohydrates, one uses foods that are very high in fat and low in fiber, such as meats (especially red), cured meats, eggs.
The risks of animal fats
The slightly too generous use of animal fats is related to an increased risk of various pathological conditions including chronic kidney failure, cardiovascular disease, some cancers, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. At the same time, there are no protective effects of those foods that are excluded from ketogenic drugs, such as fruit or whole grains. To tell the truth, ketogenic diets can also be done using specially formulated products and therefore not too salty or rich in saturated fats, but in that case, the contraindication could concern the wallet. Anyway – and I go back to the initial preamble – only your doctor can judge if a short course of ketogenic could be useful, maybe to make her lose a few pounds or to improve insulin resistance. In general, ketogenic diets have more disadvantages than advantages, but this does not exclude that, in cases carefully selected by the doctor, they can be useful, under strict control, and perhaps for short periods of time.
