Many people are still opposed to the low carbohydrate diet. I just don’t know why. Like anything, not every diet is good for every person. I get that. But we are now seeing medical studies that show amazing improvements in diseases from diabetes and heart disease, to digestive diseases and cancer that are improved with a low carb diet.
Dr. Atkins was among the first to publish his theories about heart disease, diabetes and the low carb diet. Presently we have many other diets, such as Paleo and Primal that follow in the same footsteps as Atkins. Many people are experiencing extraordinary weight loss and improvements in health markers with the low carb diet.
This study on Cancer and the Low Carb Diet will hopefully show improvements in cancer patients when they go on a ketogenic diet.
The Specific Carbohydrate Diet and the GAPS diet are essentially low carb — especially the introduction diets of both. Folks with digestive disorders just seem to have lots of trouble digesting carbohydrates.
Finally Medicine is Using Diet to REVERSE Disease
Diabetic patients were put on a low carbohydrate diet and were assisted in lifestyle changes for exercise and weight lose. They were compared to a group that was put on the typical low fat diet.
Interestingly, the low carb group fared better by being able to lower their diabetic medications, lower their blood pressure and improve diastolic function. Are you surprised?
This was reported at the 5th International Congress on Prediabetes and the Metabolic Snydrome (PDMS) 2013.
Diastolic Function Dysfunction Present in Many With Diabetes
Diastolic dysfunction is generally defined in some studies as,
In some studies, diastolic dysfunction has been defined as heart failure with normal systolic function. That is, a patient is defined as having diastolic dysfunction if they have signs and symptoms of heart failure but the left ventricular ejection fraction is normal.
It gets much more complicated in part because other studies define it differently and use different cardiac tests and criteria. What we really need to know is that diastolic dysfunction can lead to heart failure and that can be fatal — especially in patients with insulin resistance or diabetes.
Glucose Metabolism and Blood Pressure Improved in Low Carb Group
While both groups experienced some weight loss, the low carb group had a really significant improvement in glucose metabolism that lead to a decrease in need for diabetic medication of 86% after only three weeks on the program. That is amazing!
The low carb group also experienced a decrease of 10 points in the systolic blood pressure after three weeks. Also amazing!
The condition of diastolic function also improved on the low carb diet — not related to the blood pressure reduction.
Prof Helene von Bibra (Technical University Munich, Germany) reported her findings at the Congress — She noted,
Many patients with insulin resistance, diabetes, or both have subclinical diastolic dysfunction, with severe prognostic implications if it becomes symptomatic… The gains in diastolic function probably were not independently related to the associated blood-pressure reductions; rather, she proposed, they reflected improvements in myocardial energy utilization on the low-glycemic diet.
What do you think? Have you had success on the low carb diet for a condition? Please leave a comment and share!