August 15, 2019 – High Fat for Life?

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Anchor lead: High fat diets may help cognition but what about other health issues? Elizabeth Tracey reports

High fat low carb diets work by changing the body’s energy source to fat, and producing something called ketones in the process. A recent Johns Hopkins study showed such a diet improved cognition in people who were mildly cognitively impaired. Jason Brandt, the study’s lead investigator, says the diet did not compromise heart health, as some thought it might.

Brandt: We saw that people who were in the modified Atkins group did not show an elevation of their triglycerides, low density lipoproteins and other markers of cardiovascular risk, so eating a high fat diet can be good for you if keep your carbohydrates low. The ultimate question is if you do this lifelong, if you  start in middle age, if you start on a ketogenic diet, or a low carb, high fat diet, over the long term will you reduce your risk? :30

Brandt says no long term studies have been done to assess the impact of such a diet over a lifetime. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.