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Myths & Facts of Low Carb Diets
With ever-increasing applications emerging for therapeutic ketogenic diets, it’s important for healthcare professionals and the lay public alike to understand the facts about dietary carbohydrate restriction and to separate those facts from the myths that may stand in the way of people implementing a nutritional strategy that can have a profound beneficial impact on metabolic…
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Carb Restriction for Type 1 Diabetes
The Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners recently published a position statement on therapeutic carbohydrate reduction for type 1 diabetes in the Journal of Metabolic Health. Noting that nearly 80 percent of adults with type 1 diabetes (T1D) in the US don’t achieve the American Diabetes Association’s (ADA’s) target hemoglobin A1c goal of <7.0% and that…
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Higher LDLs with Low Carbs?
As increasing numbers of people adopt low-carb and ketogenic diets, new data are emerging that raise intriguing questions about the effects of these ways of eating on long-term cardiometabolic health. A paper published recently in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition sheds new light on the phenomenon of increased LDL-cholesterol among a subset of people…
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Does Quality Matter with Low Carb Diets?
Researchers from Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health recently published an analysis of the association between low carbohydrate diets (LCDs) and long-term weight control, with a special focus on diet quality. The analysis included 3 well-described prospective cohorts, the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) and Nurses’ Health Study II (NHSII), and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study…
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Low Carb vs DASH Diet
A new study in the Annals of Family Medicine pitted a very-low-carbohydrate diet against the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) for adults with hypertension, type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, and overweight or obesity. While both interventions led to improvements in HbA1c, systolic blood pressure, and body weight, improvements among the low-carb group were…
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Low Carb & Type 2 Diabetes
A paper published recently in BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health documents remission of type 2 diabetes among patients following a low-carb diet as well as significant improvements in metabolic health among patients with decreases in HbA1c who didn’t achieve remission.
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Low Carb & Kidney Health
A paper published recently in Molecular Biology Reports highlights various mechanisms by which very low carb diets or ketogenic diets (KDs) may be helpful for chronic kidney disease (CKD). Although research supports use of these diets for a wide array of medical conditions, exploration regarding efficacy for CKD is a new, emerging area.
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Medication Awareness with Very Low Carb Diets
“The most significant adverse effects from a LCK [low-carbohydrate ketogenic] diet originate from over-medication with hypoglycemic and anti-hypertensive medications following a dramatic dietary change.” (Cucuzzella et al., 2021)
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Caution Combining SGLT-2 Meds & Low Carb Diets
A recent case report of ketoacidosis in an individual taking a sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitor (SGLT2i) medication while following a ketogenic diet highlights the possibility for developing ketoacidosis when these two therapies are combined. As explained in a previous article, nutritional ketosis induced via a very low carbohydrate intake is different from diabetic ketoacidosis. However, practitioners…